When it comes to the quality of your indoor comfort, investing in a digital thermostat can be the way. Many peoele are familiar with a traditional mechanical/analog thermostat,moving the knob to their desired temperature without any digit display. Today, more and more people are now upgrading from an analog to a digital thermostat. Lets take a look at the benefits a digital thermostat below.
A digital thermostat allows a homeowner to adjust their indoor temperature. It allows them to create a programmable schedule for heating and cooling. Unlike analog thermostats, digital ones have a digital display for temperature and settings. Many digital thermostats are actually smart thermostats. These will sync with your digital devices. This allows you to control your thermostat from anywhere you have internet connection.
How does digital thermostat works?
Most of these thermostats on the market have a built-in clock. It shows the date and time and allows the homeowner to set their thermostat for future dates. Many homeowners program their thermostat for bedtime. They turn down the heat before bed and turn up the heat before they wake up in the morning. This helps them to save on energy costs by maximizing system performance. As you start with a digital thermostat, you'll enjoy the benefits of programming. It will even allow you to switch up its programming depending on the day of the week.
There’re several benefits to use the digital thermostats. First, these thermostats work to save you money. A digital thermostat gives you the ability to preset temperatures. This means that you can kick down the heat or air conditioning in the daytime when you're at work. This will reduce your system's energy costs. It won't need to work so hard to maintain comfortable temperatures.
The thermostat is an important component for any heating and cooling system, as it communicates the HVAC equipment’s operating instructions to maintain comfortable room temperatures. While there’re lots of different thermostat models on the market, but we can distinguish to only a few types of thermostats.
THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF THERMOSTATS
Differentiating the types of thermostats is done by looking at the various functions and features they provide. In general,there are two different types of thermostats: line-voltage thermostats and low-voltage thermostats. Each of these thermostat types works with certain types of heating systems and they differ based on the voltage they use to operate.
Line-voltage thermostats(110-230VAC): Line-voltage thermostats are most often used to control electric resistance heating equipment. Typically, they are paired with electric baseboard heaters, underfloor heating matts, in-wall heaters, radiant heaters, and other heating units.
The line-voltage thermostat gets its name fromeither 120 volts or 240 volts. This type of thermostat essentially acts as a switch that supplies the heater with power, as electrical current flows through the unit.
Low-voltage thermostats: Low-voltage thermostats are used with central forced air heating systems such as furnaces and heat pumps, as well as central boiler heating systems. Because electrical resistance is not used to create heat in these systems, much less voltage is required versus a line-voltage thermostat. A low-voltage thermostat requires around 24 volts to run, or with alkaline battery e.g. AA*2 or AAA*2 ,which is ideal for powering system equipment like boiler, pumps, and fans which has their own power. Low-voltage thermostats do not run on the heating system’s circuit – the thermostat communicates with the heater through low-voltage signals to control operation rather than sending power to the heater to operate it.
There are two main options when considering KNX thermostats.
Display&Control with integrated temperature sensor and regulation. This will output a signal based on the defined set point and temperature. The control may have a display to change the set point or alternatively this will need to be set from a separate user interface
Thermostat with integrated temperature sensor only. This will need to be sent to a separate regulator, which will then output the demand signal. With no display a user interface will need to be provided elsewhere on the system.
The location of the thermostat can affect the operation of the system, however as this is generally outside of the integrators control it is possible to counter this by:
Calibration - All KNX temperature sensors have the ability to offset the temperature. Once an accurate temperature from the room is received, the sensor value can be calibrated.
External temperature sensor - This allows a temperature from the bus to be used to either average a room temperature or replace it. As most KNX switches now have a built in temperature sensor, you can read the temperature at each end of the room creating a more representative reading.
The majority of KNX heating regulators support 4 stages of heating and cooling:
– Heating Basic
– Sub Heating
– Cooling Basic
– Sub Cooling
Each stage has a separate output and defined thresholds for use.
If the temperature falls below the set point, less the additional band (20-2=18) then the radiators will be used until the temperature rises. In this way the room temperature will be constantly maintained in the most comfortable way possible.
There are various devices the can be used for external regulators including - manifold controls, logic modules, input devices and servers. In each case it is important to confirm the functionality as some are limited to only 2 stage i.e heating and cooling with no additional stages.