Do we need a Heatmiser Neo Hub?

[Benpointer]

We are about to enter 2nd fix when all our 7 wired room stats and 2 dew-point floor sensors will be connected via our two 8-port Heatmiser wiring hubs to control 16 loops (most rooms have two or more loops).  

 

Today's dumb question:  Do we also need a Heatmiser Neo Hub, and what would it give us?  

 

If it's simply smart home capability, I wonder if we actually need that.  In our last house we set the room stats to a comfortable level and ran the UFH 24x7 52 weeks per year (it was never demanded during the warmer months at all).  That worked fine.  

 

I guess with solar and batteries, plus an Octopus agile tariff, we might want to control the UFH with respect to battery charge, solar output and variable tariff rates but we could probably do that through the Panasonic HP app if needed.  

 

Any thoughts?  

 

Thanks 

[JohnMo]

1 hour ago, Benpointer said:

guess with solar and batteries, plus an Octopus agile tariff, we might want to control the UFH with respect to battery charge, solar output and variable tariff rates but we could probably do that through the Panasonic HP app if needed

I have tried to that with mine and hit a few issues

 

First issue, was actually predicting how much energy to add to house. When setup it over applied heat and it wasn't accurately predicting future heating needs. It actually upped the flow target temperature and generally used more energy than really needed. Example two similar temperature days one doing everything based on cheap rates, battery, PV etc, it used 14kWh through ASHP, the second day nly used 8.8kWh.  The second day was very much simplified just run WC and let heat pump run as it wanted.

 

Second you are dependant on the internet, something like home assistant to drag across your battery/solar and weather data. You may be able to sort it all out, but will anyone else if something isn't working as expected and you aren't there.

 

Third, couldn't get Agile to make any financial sense (not enough cheap slots) and the added complexity just a pain. So went Cosy, super simple. If you are running thermostats, just add 0.2-0.5 degs to target temp in the 3x cheap slots, the heat pump should stay idle for hours after, especially if your heat pump can run a second higher flow temp set point during cheap slots.

[Kelvin]

Short answer no. Although there is a manual integration for it into Home Assistant. 
 

I don’t have Agile. It seems a bit complicated to use unless the battery system has an integration for it and can automate everything. Cosy is likely more straightforward. We have Intelligent Go so it’s even easier. Battery charges at the cheap rate and discharges throughout the day supported by whatever the PV can generate. In the generating season then it’s supplying the house and exporting the excess. I run our system in an AI mode so it works out when to start discharging (exporting) whatever is left in the battery until 11:30 when the cheap tariff starts and it starts charging the battery back up to 100%. I don’t bother doing anything with the ASHP it heats the house and water whenever there’s demand. So far the battery is getting us through the day so we haven’t drawn from the grid at peak rate since it was installed but we’re not in the peak heating season yet. 

[Andehh]

It is really useful to keep an eye on what's going on, and adjusting temperatures and times I wouldn't be without it.

[Alan Ambrose]

>>> Heatmiser Neo Hub

 

It's v. helpful for remote access. Also, fiddling with any schedules / settings etc is far easier on an app than on the stats themselves. I can set everything to 'holiday mode (off except for frost) in the app in 2 secs, which saves some power and £ - pretty much nobody can be  bothered to do this by fiddling with every stat.

[Benpointer]

5 hours ago, JohnMo said:

I have tried to that with mine and hit a few issues

 

First issue, was actually predicting how much energy to add to house. When setup it over applied heat and it wasn't accurately predicting future heating needs. It actually upped the flow target temperature and generally used more energy than really needed. Example two similar temperature days one doing everything based on cheap rates, battery, PV etc, it used 14kWh through ASHP, the second day nly used 8.8kWh.  The second day was very much simplified just run WC and let heat pump run as it wanted.

 

Second you are dependant on the internet, something like home assistant to drag across your battery/solar and weather data. You may be able to sort it all out, but will anyone else if something isn't working as expected and you aren't there.

 

Third, couldn't get Agile to make any financial sense (not enough cheap slots) and the added complexity just a pain. So went Cosy, super simple. If you are running thermostats, just add 0.2-0.5 degs to target temp in the 3x cheap slots, the heat pump should stay idle for hours after, especially if your heat pump can run a second higher flow temp set point during cheap slots.

Good steer John.  We used Cosy this way in our previous house and it worked well.  

 

Just to conclude though - no need for the Heatmiser Neo Hub? 

[Kelvin]

I have one and I rarely use it. If you want to see graphs of run time then it can show you that. Once you set your system up then there’s not much to change. I don’t access the heating remotely. It’s also quite dear for what it is. I bought mine second hand on FB marketplace for £35 just because it popped up locally. I wouldn’t have bought one new.