Honeywell Evo Home, help desperately needed. anyone got one?

[dobbslc]

Desperate help needed please.
My neighbour has one of these systems and it's decided not to work the day after her husband passed away
Now Richard was a tech head and has all the radiators controlled off this system with "smart" valves.
They had a power cut last week but I'm not sure if that's connected.
I can't get it to do anything ie turn a rad on or off etc. We've reconnected it to the hub and it has a good signal.
The weird thing is the kitchen rad has been hot all day but the others are cold except one upstairs that the lady took the valve off to try it elsewhere so the system seems to have heat and the pump must be ok if it's getting hot upstairs.
Does anyone have any suggestions with this?
Thanks

 

[waddycall]

Take the valve heads off.

 

[dave h 2]

Heads crashed due to power cut. My fridge did the same thing after a cut, just shut down, we nearly lost a freezer full. 3 pin reset required only with out the voltage spike.

 

[dobbslc]

What's a three pin reset?

 

[zzr1200]

Pull the plug out again
In reality turn the power to the system off, wait a while hopefully the system will reset itself and then turn it back on, a bit like the "Blue Screen of Death for Window".

I would suggest.......

 

[dobbslc]

We tried all that.

 

[zzr1200]

Have you checked the batteries in all the valve heads?

Also try removing then replacing the batteries, perhaps each head needs resetting...

honeywell evohome comms fault reset - Google Search

 

[dobbslc]

The ones I can see look ok, a few I can't even see the rad let alone the valves! Theres a lot of stuff in that house!

 

[dobbslc]

They've also got a massive fish tank with smart controls on the lighting etc, some of that isn't working either, I'm a bit out of my depth with all this tech stuff but just want to help her

 

[zzr1200]

I suspect the control user manuals will be there somewhere, but there's probably only person who knew where they are/were, which is not helpful.....

 

[daleyd]

https://evohome.resideo.com/app/uploads/2024/04/evohome-userguide-EN.pdf

 

[voipio]

This is the trouble with all this smart home stuff. Once the person who knows the ins and outs of the system is no longer available, it tends to become rather toublesome.

Checking the batteries on the individual radiator valves would be worth doing, since a power failure might have resulted in additional system activity, as it tries to recover "smartly", resulting in extra demand, and the batteries running down faster than normal.

The installation manual might have some additional useful info:

https://www.plumbworld.co.uk/documents/honeywell-home-evohome-wireless-central-heating-controller-installation-guide.pdf

 

[Craig-SM]

If there was a power cut then reboot the router just in case it’s lost connection

 

[dobbslc]

The battery indicators looked ok on the ones I could see.
The user manual I managed to find had nothing in it about faults or problem solving, must mean it's perfect then

If there was a power cut then reboot the router just in case it’s lost connection

We've done that.

 

[Neilj]

I've got a couple of Evohome setups but I'm not at home at the moment so can't help out with much in the way of menu's. Firstly, unlike some of the other smart heating systems, if you're using the Evohome main controller (touchscreen) to operate the system then it works fine without any internet connectivity, so you don't need to worry about routers or wifi at this stage.
On the main screen, if you touch and hold the Settings button for a couple of seconds that will get you into the installer menu and you can do an RF comms check from there, which will at least confirm that it's talking to the smart TRV heads and any other devices. You probably have a boiler relay unit as well (BDR91) to control the boiler but it's a very flexible system so you may not have.
An easy thing to do as a starter is reboot The controller. It sits on a stand or wall bracket so it's got AC power, lift it off that and remove the two AA batteries from the back of the unit. Leave it a minute, pop them back in and put it back on it's stand, then see if that helps.

 

[dobbslc]

Thanks that's very helpful!
It does have a BDR91. The thing is the boiler is working and the pipes are getting hot but the valves aren't opening, it must be the smart system that's the problem.

 

[Neilj]

The system takes inputs from various devices, in this case individual TRV heads. If any one of those calls for heat (i.e. room temperature near or below setpoint) then it will instruct the BDR91 to fire the boiler. So at least one of the TRV's must be communicating to the controller for the boiler to fire. Each TRV is 'bound' to the controller and so is the BDR91, so the controller can communicate with each device. It's possible that these bindings have been corrupted, but this can get a bit messy if you just try and rebind something as it's possible to double-bind things in error. The only way to be sure something is not double-bound is do a factory reset and start from scratch, which is quite a bit of work. So for now, let's ignore doing any binding or anything like that.
The first thing I would do is go into the installer menu and:
1. Access the Zone Settings menu. You should see a list of all the devices configured with their respective zone names (e.g. bathroom, kitchen, hall etc), the BDR91 will also be shown (probably as Boiler Control, depends on firmware revision). Don't change anything in this menu, it's just a check to make sure everything is still configured correctly.
2. Carry out an RF comms check from the controller and also from each TRV head.
Copy of the installation manual attached which is more in-depth that the operator manual. Page 29 onwards is the stuff you want to read for the Zone Settings & Comms Checks.
What model TRV heads are they, do you know? HR92 are the common ones and have a display which helps with diagnostic work

One thing to note, if you swap TRV heads around, Evohome doesn't know you've done that and will assume the TRV is still in it's original named location. If for example the hall and kitchen TRV heads are swapped and you request heat in the hall, the kitchen rad will come on. If they've been mixed up, an easy way to figure out which head is which in the menu is set the temperature high on a particular head and see which one changes setpoint on the controller.

 

[dobbslc]

Thanks.
The kitchen rad is always hot so maybe that's connected somhow but I couldn't get it to react with the controller.
I didn't go that deep into the menus so haven't done a RF check so that will be next if I get a chance, I'm leaving them to grieve now as they have a few electric heaters and a log burner so should be warm enough.
Thanks people

 

[zzr1200]

Considering you have heat from a couple of radiators, why not remove the auto thermo valve heads and manually open the valves so heat is available in the cold rooms?

As per my link above, the valves will need to be "Reset/Calibrated" once the problem is found...

It's not the answer but it will warm the house or at least the rooms that need to be warm....for the time being...

 

[voipio]

Thanks.
The kitchen rad is always hot so maybe that's connected somhow but I couldn't get it to react with the controller.
I didn't go that deep into the menus so haven't done a RF check so that will be next if I get a chance, I'm leaving them to grieve now as they have a few electric heaters and a log burner so should be warm enough.
Thanks people

It's quite common for one radiator to be always on, as a way of preventing the boiler flow from hitting a "short circuit", which would occur when all the other radiators could have thermostatically operated valves that are closed.