The Project
Large family home with 34 zones of heating and whole home lighting & blind control using KNX. The heating plant rooms, including the state of seven 2-port valves throughout the house anre controlled & monitored for fault conditions. Given the age of the property centralised heating distribution plant wasn’t possible so there are 10 underfloor heating manifolds dotted throughout the house. 2 hot water tanks at either end of the property are also brought under the control of the KNX system. Lighting control uses a mixture of Gira Push button sensors and discreet Jung PIRs, whilst the Gira X1 & S1 provide security, visualisation and remote support.
How does this Project demonstrate the diversity/flexibility of KNX?
Before coming to us the client was originally planning to use a mixture of RF systems to control heating & lighting. However, as the house was undergoing a full refurbishment, a full wired KNX installation was possible, giving the client the flexibility to control all the building management systems from a single central app. Products from multiple manufacturers were chosen based on the specific use case.
How does KNX add value and ease of use for building owners/occupiers
Having the entire system under control of one app is a big proirity for the client. The property is old so there can be large swings in temperature throughout the property. Additionally there are plans to add additional outbuildings to the KNX system so being able to future proof the system and expand it were high on the list of priorities. Monitoring the heating system was also important to the clients so we integrated monitoring of various parts of the plant and added them to the visualisation.
How has this project resolved an identified need for the building user and/or developer ?
The Heating system is complex as it has a mixture of underfloor heating manifolds and radiators controlled via 2-port valves. To allow monitoring of the valves binary inputs were used to track the state of the valve. This allows us and the clients to see via app/notifications whether there are any issues with valves stuck and not responding to commands. Additionally as the project is remote to us, a high level of monitoring is useful as it allows us to assist the local heating engineers remotely
