X-10 to control electric heating?
F. Kevin Feeney
Hi,
My house has electric heat with individual thermostats in each room. They
switch 220 volts at about 8 amps. I'd love to find an X-10 controllable
module that I could wire in series with the existing thermostats to allow
me to control when a room has the heater turned on (letting the
thermostat still control the rooms max temp) with my regular controllers.
Or just replace the thermostat with a replacement unit that combines the
functions of thermostat with X-10 controllablility.
I see that there are some module that can control 220 at 15-20 amps, but
they are set up for plugging into a socket and being plugged into. I need
something I can wire in. Does it exist?
If so, where can I order it?
Thanks in advance
Kevin
Michel Gagnon
Dans ląarticle (in article) <53jnan$m...@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu>, F.
Kevin Feeney <fk...@cornell.edu> a dit (said) :
The "Ouellet" company, a Canadian firm that specialises in electrical
products such as baseboard heaters, convectors and thermostats has made
such a beast.
Their product looks basically like a standard line thermostat : it its on
the wall and you set the main temperature. Opening the cover reveals
dials for house code and unit code, as well as the setback applied "after
hours".
You might get more info by calling "Ouellet". They are located in the city
of "L'Islest", in the area code 408 (Eastern Québec). I donąt have their
phone number on hand.
One word of caution, alas: one or two years ago, my father looked for it
and they had withdrawled this thermostat temporarily. I think their main
problem was from customers complaining from X-10 reliability. It is no
problem when a light does not turn on because of signal noise, but it is a
larger problem when heating does not start because the code was not
received.
--
Michel Gagnon
mga...@total.net
Montréal (Québec, Canada)
Walt Amante
F. Kevin Feeney wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> My house has electric heat with individual thermostats in each room. They
> switch 220 volts at about 8 amps. I'd love to find an X-10 controllable
> module that I could wire in series with the existing thermostats to allow
> me to control when a room has the heater turned on (letting the
> thermostat still control the rooms max temp) with my regular controllers.
> Or just replace the thermostat with a replacement unit that combines the
> functions of thermostat with X-10 controllablility.
>
> I see that there are some module that can control 220 at 15-20 amps, but
> they are set up for plugging into a socket and being plugged into. I need
> something I can wire in. Does it exist?
> If so, where can I order it?
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Kevin
Kevin,
This may not be exactly what you are looking for, but in my
first house, I too had electric heat. What I used was the
X10 add-on thermostat set-backs. It mounts on the wall just
under the actual thermostat and has a switch selectable set-
back amount (5, 10, and 15 degrees if I remember right).
When I installed them, I just poked a small hole in the wall
just behind it, and another small hole at the baseboard,
and dropped the low voltage wire down inside the wall.
All in all, when completed it looked rather good (important
to me especially in the living room).
It worked very well.
Walt
F. Kevin Feeney
In article <325E5A...@early.com> Walt Amante, Wa...@early.com writes:
>This may not be exactly what you are looking for, but in my
>first house, I too had electric heat. What I used was the
>X10 add-on thermostat set-backs. It mounts on the wall just
>under the actual thermostat and has a switch selectable set-
>back amount (5, 10, and 15 degrees if I remember right).
How do these work? Are they little heaters that sit under the thermostat
to fool it into thinking the room is warmer than it is? That might work
well enough, although what i usually do is shut them totally off when I'm
not home.
Thanks for the help.
Kevin
Eldon Ziegler
Kevin,
If you want better control I've had good luck with the RCS TX-10
thermostat. It has 20 temperature settings plus ON, HEAT, COOL and AUTO
set via X-10. It's a bit ackward to program but mine has worked well.
I'm testing a beta of our HomAtion 2000 with built-in support for the
TX-10. You just set the temperature and mode you want and I figure out
what X-10 commands to send.
Eldon Ziegler
HomAtion Systems
homa...@homation.com
http://www.homation.com
des...@ibm.net
In <53jnan$m...@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu>, F. Kevin Feeney <fk...@cornell.edu> writes:
>Hi,
>
>My house has electric heat with individual thermostats in each room. They
>switch 220 volts at about 8 amps. I'd love to find an X-10 controllable
>module that I could wire in series with the existing thermostats to allow
>me to control when a room has the heater turned on (letting the
>thermostat still control the rooms max temp) with my regular controllers.
>Or just replace the thermostat with a replacement unit that combines the
>functions of thermostat with X-10 controllablility.
Ouellet Electric, a Canadian firm, makes such a beast.
I have been using their OTE-X10 unit for a couple of years now.
It uses one House and Unit code, has a 16 step setback setting. You set
the temperature on a dial like a conventional thermostat, and the setback on a
smaller dial similar to the X10 house and unit dials. An ON signal activates
the setback.
In addition, you can control it with a series of ON/DIM and ON/BRIGHT to
increase decrease the temperature by one unit of temperature.
The model I use are in Celcius units. I do not know if they have
Farenheit ones.
You can contact Ouellet at http://www.ouellet.com. The site is bilingual, and
you can select French or English
Jean-Claude
Walt Amante
Kevin,
Yep, they have little heaters inside. At a surprise to me, there
is a fixed relationship between wattage and air temperature raise.
Before installing them, I too use to turn off the heat when going
to work. With them installed, the 15 degree set-back is almost
the same thing, and I can have the heat turned back on (via an
X10 timer) before I come home.
Walt