In many homes, the hot water system is part of the wider Heating, Ventilation & Air Conditioning (HVAC) system but, it will be much more efficient and deliver a better user experience if it is intelligently controlled independently. In the UK, space heating is often not required during the summer months but, there is still a need for hot water during this period.
In our current home, our hot water is delivered via a gas boiler under full contextual smart home control. This means our smart home can adaptively schedule the hot water based on the status of our home. It also has NOT DEFINED on the hot water tank, so it can monitor the amount of hot water available and answer questions such as, "Is there enough hot water for a bath?".
Where they are multiple heat sources, the smart home can manage and prioritise energy usage to deliver the best user experience (i.e. make sure there is hot water when you need it), efficiency and cost (use the lowest cost energy source available).
As smart as the contextual smart home is, it can't always predict our hot water needs with 100% accuracy and sometimes we need to just 'boost' the hot water heating in our current home. To achieve this we use a '+30' and '+60' buttons, which extend the time the water heating is on be a set time. In the contextual smart home buttons can be physical buttons or software buttons within various user interfaces.
