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In this video I want to talk to you about smart thermostat controls and why
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that matters for hydronic heating systems. So hydronic just means water based and that's the kind of thing that a solar heating system is going to be
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So imagine this is a thermostat and let's say I've set it at 72 degrees. Now this
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thermostat, let's just imagine that it's that it's controlling a pump and the
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pump is supplying hot water to a radiant in-floor heating network. So when the
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thermostat detects that the room is colder than 72, let's say 71, it is going
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to energize this pump which is going to send some hot water through the floor
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network and warm up the room and then go back for heating in your solar heating
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system. So technically as soon as that temperature rises to 72, then the
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thermostat will shut off the pump. The problem with hydronic systems is that
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there's still going to be a considerable amount of hot water sitting
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in the floor and depending on the outside temperature and depending on how
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fast your room loses heat, it can still continue to heat the room. So a normal
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thermostat, all it can do is shut off the pump but it can't control how much extra
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heating happens. So it's not unusual especially during the springtime when you've got a lot of solar energy coming in windows. That 72 degree setpoint, I
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mean that could rise to 74, you know 76 degrees, something way hotter than the
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setpoint. So a smart system starts with what you see here but it adds two things
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First of all it adds an outdoor probe. That measures the outside temperature. It
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also has an indoor probe. In this case that would be installed in the floor. So
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what a smart thermostat system can do is make note of the outdoor temperature
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make note of the floor temperature, and also note how much heat the whole room
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loses. And what it'll do is it will anticipate the heat requirements of the
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room and it comes to know how much this particular installation tends to
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overshoot the setpoint temperature given an outdoor temperature. It's really quite sophisticated. So for instance after a few days of operation your smart
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thermostat system might come to know that if I want a 72 degree room
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temperature it's going to shut off the circulator pump at 70 degrees because it
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knows that at a given outdoor temperature the system tends to overshoot the setpoint by two degrees. So in practice what you get is a much
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smoother temperature performance in your room. In my experience when I've installed these systems they are accurate to within less than one degree
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Fahrenheit. So sometimes a half a degree. So the the temperature is very very even
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the comfort level is excellent and these smart systems aren't really any
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more expensive than a regular dome thermostat. So let me take you to an
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installation I've done and just show you what the equipment looks like after it's
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installed. So this is a smart thermostat system or at least the the central brain
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of it. It's made by a company called Techmar. They're a company that makes all
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kinds of smart stuff like this. The thermostats around the house plug into
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this and the outdoor temperature probe and the in-floor temperature probes also
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plug into this and that's this is what decides the anticipation of the
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temperature and how much a given room will overshoot, how much it has to shut
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off before the set point in order that it doesn't overshoot the mark. And of
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course today we're 82 degrees Fahrenheit so we're certainly not heating but that
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number there comes from the outdoor temperature probe and it's part of the
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equation that lets this thing be smart
