Electrical contractor James Duggie has used Hager’s Tebis system to simplify the installation and control of a ‘green’ heating system that uses two renewable sources of energy for a home in Lossiemouth. The bus-based system also provides the home with sophisticated lighting control.

Simple Local Heating Control - Tebis TX

 

Water is heated for the underfloor system using a combination of solar panels and a ground source heat compressor that extracts energy from the ground via two 100 metre bore holes. A Tebis module switches the compressor on and off in response to the temperature of the water in the holding tank.

Each room in the house has an individual Tebis room controller, which combines a thermostat with switching. These thermostats connect to a Horstmann four channel heating controller, which controls the heating, towel rails, hot water and the temperature of the water in the central pump.

Depending on demand, Tebis switches the valves for the underfloor heating to different rooms.

Says James Duggie of James M Duggie & Sons: “Tebis has made an extremely sophisticated heating system easy to install and programme. Using just a single bus line and connecting the components together has made it simple to combine and manage two renewable sources of energy".

"Using a conventional hard wired system would require complex wiring diagrams and detailed planning with information needed from several sources. It would then need multicore cabling and any alterations would have involved extra multicore cabling."

"We have avoided all of these complications by using a bus system. We only need to install one bus line or cable and all of the devices tap into into this. Also there is no need to worry about control scenarios until the end of the process and any change is easy to achieve with no disruption."

"A bus system also means that we can also programme in extra functionality. It gives us truly local heating control for each room. So for example we can time heating to come on at different times in rooms. The child’s bedroom switches on at 8.00pm while the master bedroom switches on later at 10.00pm."

"Bus system technology can significantly contribute to efficient energy consumption, not just by making it simple to use renewable sources, but also in the management of that energy usage."

The Tebis system also controls other services in the home. It switches and dims lighting and will set different lighting scenes, again using the room controller. A master switch by the front door can switch off all the lights in the home and if desired all the heating down to frost protection.

The smoke alarm is also connected to Tebis, so that if there is a fire, lights are switched on to illuminate an escape route.Says Duggie: "Tebis can be used to provide almost any functionality in the home without the disruption that hard wiring would cause. It is also easy to change this functionality in the future. We find that the best approach is to install the Tebis system, let the homeowners live in the house for a few months and then come back to programme the system to meet their needs."