Hi MushyMatt,
I have the same wishes (I want 3 zones in my house) and while I'm not yet ready to make a choice and implement, I have done some research.
Request to other readers: I'm not an expert on this stuff (by far) so if anybody else has extra/better information,
please give your feedback!. Even if it is only a small matter, it can be beneficial to many, many people.
To my understanding, there are 5 basic solutions. This is based on research in the Holland situation, so I don't know if it applies to other countries
Standard in most NL homes = wall thermostat in living room
1 zone for the whole house. Wall thermostat in the living room. Temperature in living room determines if the Boiler/Furnace ('CV-ketel') is turned on or off.
If the Boiler/Furnace is on, then using Radiator Thermostats on each individual radiator panel you can control each rad.panel individually. Basically, each rad.panel is a zone.
If the Boiler/Furnace is off, then nothing helps to heat rooms. No amount of fancy devices/gadgets can help.
It amazes me that new homes in NL are still being build using this primitive configuration
Therefore, the key to having more comfort in the house is to have more detailed control over when the Boiler/Furnace is on versus off.
Some options I have read/heard about:
Option 1: Weather-dependent temperature readings ('WA-regeling').
Wall Thermostat still in living room. But the actual temperature readings come from outside the house. In practice this means that the Boiler/Furnace will be on more frequently (= also higher energy costs). If using this solution, every radiator panel should have a radiator thermostat installed. Otherwise, a panel could be heating a room all day/all night.
Option 2: using a wireless Wall Thermostat
Which you can take with you to other rooms. It takes temperature readings in whatever room it sits and then tells the Boiler to turn on/off. Other rooms in the house are still dependent on that 1 temperature reading whether they can be heated or not.
Option 3: Wall Thermostat controlled by smartphone
New Wall Thermostats from various (energy) companies which you can control by phone. So you can tell the Boiler/Furnace to turn on while you are approaching the house. Or from that one room in the house from where you are working.
Option 4: Wall Thermostat accessible for Home Automation controllers
New Wall Thermostat which is accessible for Home Automation controllers (Homeseer, Vera, Fibaro, .....) which then allows you more finely tuned control settings and scenario's. If you combine this with wireless controlled radiator panels you should have very fine detailed control per panel. However, last time I looked at this (>1 year ago) there were no 100% satisfactory solutions available. Perhaps now there is? Look in this forum on topics such as OpenTherm (communications protocol for Wall Thermostats) and Danfoss (z-wave wireless radiator thermostat)
-----------------------------------------------------
All of the above solutions attempt to give more control on when the Furnace/Boiler is turned on. In practice, all of the above options will probably result in the Boiler/Furnace being turned on more times than before. Fair enough, higher comfort = normally more expensive. However, even with a good working Option 4, all of my heating pipes in the house are being heated because the whole house is 1 physical piping zone. Could be wastefull, but I'm not 100% sure if that is the case
Option 5: Create multiple physical zones
Go from 1 physical zone to multiple ones. So you can have multiple Wall Thermostats which independently from each other can inform the Boiler/Furnace to turn on or off. This means that if Zone 2 Wall Thermostat tells the Furnace to turn on, all the rooms + the piping structure in Zone 1 are not being heated. That should be more heat efficient. See the pictures below for more information. (source:
http://www.heatnet.nl/zoneregeling.html).
For each 'Zone Wall Thermostat' = 1 zone, you can then also apply (I think) options 2, 3 or 4.
------------------------------------------------------
My own questions to other forum readers/members:
1. Is it correct to assume that Option 4 + 5 create the optimal solution and the least amount of wasted energy?
2. Or is a well programmed Option 4 sufficient? That I don't need Option 5?
3. Is there now a well functioning Option 4? If so, which wall thermostat and which wireless radiator thermostats are recommended?
Cheers,
Olof