Robert McQueen

it's been a very difficult year or two for @gnome and, to continue to exist, the foundation really needs you. however, we first want to ask you to *donate less*: blogs.gnome.org/steven/2025/06… #gnome

@RichMWPHS Much appreciated, thanks. Will drop you a DM.

@ramcq Best thing to do is get me a diagram of what you have and give me a call about it? 👍🏻 Hard work on X mate… 😂

@RichMWPHS I've got these UFH manifolds with a pump & manual mixer on the side: wundatrade.co.uk/shop/home/unde… Is it possible to retrofit an actuator onto this valve, or get a motorised valve that would fit in the narrow space? Or should I fit a valve upstream to control temp?

@RichMWPHS Open to suggestions! A bit nervous about whether the Evohome signal from different parts of the house would reach one controller as it's a very old solid stone at one end, and new extension at the other (bodged in to the existing basically S-plan system).

@RichMWPHS There might be some middle grounds where I just use one mixer for all the heating (ie the rads zones) and bring the UFH into the Evohome system somehow (as just zones) so I have a level of app control? But I need to at least mix down the buffer tank and set up PDHW to use WC.

Alright so how do I find who to follow on BSky? bsky.app/profile/ramcq.… Hands up if you're on there but not on Mastodon.

@plumbers_urban Absolutely love this. Keep up the amazing work!

New video is up. That was the biggest job we have ever done How To Cut Your Bills By £10,000 With Heat Pumps. youtu.be/9hVgzvkujM0

@theolodian @tomasmcguinness @Openenergymon I'd just buy all those bits and follow the recipe as far as it applies, then diverge when it comes to the analysis. If you go off with Modbus, MQTT, etc you will just need to arrange your own time series store and waste a bunch of time "plumbing".

@theolodian @tomasmcguinness @Openenergymon I'd just get OEM in place to measure, aggregate and store everything. You can at worst just export the data into your Excel model, or you could write a plugin like the heatpump one, if very enthusiastic.

@theolodian @tomasmcguinness @Openenergymon shop.openenergymonitor.com/emontx5-6-chan… adds a bunch of CTs. shop.openenergymonitor.com/emonbase-433mh… is a base without CTs.

@theolodian @tomasmcguinness @Openenergymon The CTs are wireless, you can get as many as you like ans put them anywhere. Main tails, specific circuits, monitor temperatures on pipes, etc.

@theolodian @tomasmcguinness @Openenergymon Openenergymon doesn't eat the SF card, they've thought of that. Or, put an SSD into your Pi which is what I did. OEM software is a very capable time series data capture and visualisation framework. You can pull in MQTT, Modbus, etc and graph, apply functions, etc.

@theolodian @tomasmcguinness @Openenergymon And even if you want to go on and do your own analysis or graphing or whatever via MQTT you can. But it's a really uniquely powerful gateway / aggregator of so many devices and sources, even if you don't automate much of anything.

@theolodian @tomasmcguinness @Openenergymon I was also very anti Home Assistant originally but my NodeRed stuff was a hot mess, and some really compelling cloud only and local integrations won me over. Tesla Powerwall via LAN for monitoring, cloud for control, Solar Edge local, Octopus cloud, Heatmiser local, etc etc.

@theolodian @tomasmcguinness ebusd.eu is what you want for Vaillant to read it over MQTT with the appropriate dongle

@RichMWPHS @Damon_BPHR @swebster56 (The board on the boiler can control a mixer directly and can do PDHW so planning to use the boiler controls for the rad zone / DHW, but the UFH zones would then be cascaded off this. Trying to compare cost/benefit of separate controllers versus a 2nd boiler wiring centre.)

Looking at adding WC mixing to 2x UFH and 1x rad zone to try and use up biomass+electric buffer tank more slowly. Anyone got suggestions for good standalone WC/mixer controllers for UFH systems? @RichMWPHS @Damon_BPHR @swebster56