Thank you for this wonderful thread!!!
I read all comments and like the idea to split/upgrade this Problem/task for different levels of skills.
A beginner would thankfully set up an easy way of controlling his/her home. Maybe not as comfortable or as perfect as it could be, but on a level he/she could deal with and understand what is going on.
Maybe it needs more steps to improve the solution step by step with more functions to get a more comfortable way to control it:
- in the first step setup temperatures within rules and with hard coded times (= cron) will work
- add flexibility with preset temperatures
- add more flexibility with time-of-day DP
Maybe this will be very useful for beginners who are new to openHAB to get things work and to learn step-by-step to improve their own skill in programming rules and to understand the constraints within a smart home (=> time-of-day is not only useful for central heating).
I also learned a lot of heating systems around the world. Thank you @rlkoshak for your detailed description of an “average” house in the US. Here in Germany the most used heating system is central heating with oil/gas/wood and one (controlled) radiator per room. In appartment houses (most common) you have no direct access to the central heating and you can only control each radiator.
In my house (I bought in 2010, was build mid of the 1960s) there was a similar approach as @rlkoshak described: we had a tiled stove with oil burner and hot air funnels to the rooms (two floors). But there was no vents to the heating, just the hot air flow worked on this. The only control was a two point control in the living room which was working on the burner, but the rest of the house was on the resulting temperature.
We “updated” to a new gas central heating with radiators in every room (=standard in older houses) and have now the ability to control every room by temperature sensor and radiator valve and could even control the central burner (if all valves are off there is no heating reequired…).
Another task in relation to the heating system with controlled radiator valves is the limescale protection. Normally the valves are cycle once a week to prevent limescale deposition within the valve. So once a week (even in summer) the valve opens and closes to the min and max position to prevent this.
Thanks again for this wonderful thread of information…
Andreas