UK Underfloor Heating - Fibaro \ Aqara

Hi all, I am after a little advice please. I was trying to make my UK electric underfloor heating Smart, so I bought a Fibaro Single Switch 2. I already have an original wall thermostat control panel, but that drives me nuts as it is the most user unfriendly device I have come across!

Yesterday I connected the Fibaro to the panel, i.e. placing it in between the panel and the electric heating matt, using the neutral and live wires leaving the panel (diagram attached).
underfloor heating|428x500

Now that seemed to do the job, i.e. I can leave the heating turned on permanently from the panel 24/7 and Fibaro will turn the heating matt on and off, but just as I thought the project is complete I realised that when the panel thermostant temp reaches lets say 24 degrees, it turns off, and that means no power going to Fibaro, so even though the heating, heating matt and Fibaro is off, the Fibaro shows as still on in Smartthings \ Actiontiles (as it wasn’t properly powered off). If I tap the icon again, Fibaro show as off, but this is not ideal! In fact it would drive me more nuts than the original control panel does!

I don’t think there is any way around this if I also want to employ the use of the panel’s thermostant, but I still thought I would check if anyone has any ideas, or tried this project before.

My Plan B is to rip out the panel and direct wire the Fiabro to the mains live and neutral and use an Aqara Thermostat in the room and control the heating that way. I know the Aqara will not have a probe in the floor and cannot report the floor temperature, but I could stick the Aqara just above the floor, or may be stick it on the wall, not sure yet…what do you think?!

Everyone having problems with fibaro products since last update 30.03. Check out other threads to see if your affected.

All done! - I went with Plan B and ripped out that control panel! :slight_smile:

Also, as you mentoned, my old 2 Fibaros are running fine, but the new one I just bought doesn’t seem to refresh it’s ON or OFF status.

In case anyone picks up on this thread and wants an all-in-one retrofit for existing electric underfloor heating, I can recommend the HeatIt thermostats - I replaced all three of our ‘basic’ heating controllers and they work a treat :smiley:

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Thank you for the info., I have had a look at it and am now swayed to rip out my new Fibaro and stick in a Heatit thermostat instead :slight_smile:

Sorry, I have a couple of questions i.e.

  1. Does this use local or cloud processing?
  2. How do you create a timed schedule, can you do this in WebCORE?
  3. Can heating manually be turned on\off by pressing the on screen buttons?
  4. Most important, can ActionTiles have a tile for simple on\off (as any other device)

Sorry for the questions, but I don’t want to buy this and then have to also rip this out :slight_smile:

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

I’m using the HeatIt v1 Model (as it works with the free DTH found here: https://github.com/adampv/smartthings/blob/master/HeatitZWaveThermostat.groovy), the HeatIt v3 model which is for sale now uses an official RBoys DTH which is available for a single-fee (I think).

As it uses a custom DTH it is Cloud executed

My control is through WebCoRE, so I have a virtual switch called Underfloor Heating which when it is turned on sets all three of my HeatIt thermostats to Heat and keeps them on this until it is turned off (it also means I can say ‘Alexa, turn on/off the Underfloor Heating’

The on-screen buttons work simultaneously with programmatic interaction, and it’s quite straightforward. One thing I like is the simple interface, it literally is the temperature and an indicator light to let you know if it is heating or reached temperature.

I don’t use action tiles, but control is straightforward with HomeKit using Homebridge. If it’s not natively supported you could create a virtual switch that has a WebCoRE piston running in the background to sync the status both ways between the Thermostat and the Virtual Switch.

Cheers,
Guy

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