Homeassistant Config for Vaillant Heating System

Heating Device

Vaillant aroTHERM plus VWL 125

General Information

• All important configuration is done in yaml files, not the ui editor to be able to store the config in git.
• The heating system is installed in an apartment building containing 3 flats. The temperatures from those 3 flats are used to automate heating control.
• Private information (like flat names or notification devices) are stored in secrets.yaml and not part of this repo. A secrets.yaml.example is included which can be easily adapted for your needs.

Prerequisites

• ebus Adapter: https://ebusd.eu/
• ebus Daemon running as HA Addon (https://github.com/LukasGrebe/ha-addons) or separate docker container, addon configuration:

  "scanconfig": true,
  "loglevel_all": "error",
  "mqtttopic": "ebusd",
  "mqttint": "/config/ebusd/mqtt-hassio.cfg",
  "mqttjson": true,
  "mode": "ens",
  "configpath": "/config/ebusd/csvs/ebusd-2.1.x/en",
  "latency": 10,
  "device": "/dev/ttyACM0"

• mqtt Broker running as HA Addon (https://github.com/home-assistant/addons/tree/master/mosquitto) or separate docker container, addon configuration:

  "logins": [],
  "require_certificate": false,
  "certfile": "fullchain.pem",
  "keyfile": "privkey.pem",
  "customize": {
    "active": true,
    "folder": "mosquitto"
  }

• Advanced SSH Addon (https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-ssh), addon configuration:

  "ssh": {
    "username": "hassio",
    "password": "",
    "authorized_keys": [
      "ssh-rsa <your ssh pubkey here>"
    ],
    "sftp": false,
    "compatibility_mode": false,
    "allow_agent_forwarding": true,
    "allow_remote_port_forwarding": false,
    "allow_tcp_forwarding": false
  },
  "zsh": false,
  "share_sessions": false,
  "packages": [],
  "init_commands": [
    "(crontab -l | grep -v ebus; cat /config/ebusd/crontab) | crontab -",
    "crond"
  ]

Installation

• Install the ebus hardware adapter
• Install the required addons as listed above
• Share one /config folder among all docker containers (ha, ebusd). This happens automatically with HA green.
• Checkout this repo into /config
• Checkout the ebusd config from https://github.com/cluk1/ebusd-configuration into /config/ebusd/csvs
• Configure the ebusd addon to use the csv files from the checkout (see addon config above).
• Start the ebusd addon, check if it scans the bus (ebusctl info) and submits messages to mqtt (listen to ebusd/#)

Custom sensors, templates and inputs

• Flat temperatures are read from fritz!Dect thermometers, a sensor for the minimal and average flat temp is defined in packages/heating/heating_groups.yaml
• Several config parameters for the heating and hotwater automation are stored in input elements defined in packages/heating/heating_input_number.yaml and packages/hotwater/hotwater_input_number.yaml.

Homeassistant Heating and Hotwater Device Config

• Heating and Hotwater devices should be created by the ebus daemon through Mqtt discovery. You should find them in Settings | Devices | MQTT. The Homeassistant Heating (climate) and Hotwater devices are defined in packages/heating/heating_device.yaml and packages/hotwater/hotwater_device.yaml, they provide current temperatures, setpoint temperatures, heating and hotwater mode setting. Using the devices in a dashboard enables you to switch heating or hotwater to off, time controlled or manual mode. It also lets you define the temperature setpoint for both.

Heating Automations

• Manually increasing or decreasing heating power: Webhook triggered automation which uses the heating device service to increase (or decrease) the heating setpoint. This can be used from various buttons to manually control heating power.
• Automatic heating power control: Triggered by changes in average flat temperatures to reduce heating power when flat temperatures rise due to solar gains.
• Automatic heating power off: Triggered by heating overruns from the heat pump, if the flat temps a above 21.5 °C turn the heating system off for 30 minutes. Check again afterwards.

Hotwater Automations

• Hotwater Winter / Summer: Increase hotwater setpoint and hysteresis if outside temperature is high enough to turn heating off. To reduce heatpump on / off cycles in summer mode.
• Legionella Prevention: Try to run a legionella prevention program everyday, but only if the last successful run is at least 4 weeks ago, the outside temp is high enough and the sun is shining(for the heatpump to work efficiently) and the flats heating demand is low. Then increase the hotwater setpoint to 65 °C and start the circulation pump. Wait for 120 mins for the heatpump to reach at least 60°C in the hotwater storage.