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?!
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
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.