In the former Soviet Union we just have central heating
The government maintains indoor temperature at 24 degrees from October to May, and the water is heated at the power stations.
Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
101–110 of 232 posts
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like a nightmare for a future buyer to operate. Some people are unlucky enough to buy homes where a machine engineer designed the boiler setup and the boiler room have enough valves and manometers to like operate the engine of Titanic. I guess programmers are the new sinners in this area nowadays.
If we ever sell this (which we don't plan to), I know what to install (it'll be quite good, just not this perfect). I have it in a cupboard (a Siemens Connected Home thermostat system), the downside of that is that the combined UFH+radiator rooms will be less comfortable. (But still more comfortable than 99% of the houses I've been in.) I haven't mentioned in the parent comment but as a test I've dismantled the HA sy…
Sounds well thought out. Many seem to forget designing for replacing.
In generall I think all these IoT systems will be a major headache as they age.
My thermostats on the radiators are 45 year old by now. That is kinda the expected service life we are used to.
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#103Funny how the manufacturer proudly claims that the protocol is encrypted, but completely forget to mitigate replay attacks,thus making the encryption completely useless
Which raises the question whether the OP now unknowingly also controls the heater in the apartment next to his...
Probably not otherwise the original would also potentially run that risk
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#104Funny how the manufacturer proudly claims that the protocol is encrypted, but completely forget to mitigate replay attacks,thus making the encryption completely useless
Which raises the question whether the OP now unknowingly also controls the heater in the apartment next to his...
Unlikely. This kind of wireless thermostat has two parts: the thermostat itself, and a separate receiver box that's directly connected to the boiler. There's usually a pairing process that you can go through where the two parts negotiate a shared value used in the protocol; this prevents one thermostat unintentionally controlling other boilers. You can see this described in the Installation Guide for the thermostat linked from the article (it's called 'binding' in the guide).
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#105It's an awesome hack! It seems like the easier hack would be to put a peltier heater/cooler under the thermostat then control that remotely to assume control over what temperature the thermostat sees. The link to the exact model of thermostat isn't working, so I don't know how amenable its design is to this approach, but the thermostats I've used are generally wall-mounted and putting a heat/cool source under them wo…
yeah i put mine in the freezer
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#106Instead of attacking a radio controlled relay, the author should have read up on how their heating system works. All they need is a relay controlled by an internet connected thing to replace the thermostat receiver. I could understand if the receiver was locked away but the video clearly shows they have access to the boiler.
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#107> I also have it so the heating turns off when I go into town and turns back on when I'm just a few train stops away so my place is nice and toasty for me getting home! If your goal is saving energy/money, you don’t want a system capable of going from cool to toasty in 20 minutes. Instead, you want a system that runs (much) lower water circulation temperatures (giving lower losses in the unconditioned spaces and more…
This is a great post which describes how most commercial boilers are controlled. I’m looking at a sequence of operations for a boiler project I did recently and the hot water supply setpoint for -20F outdoor air is 145F and for +45F the hot water supply setpoint is 120F.
Most home boilers lack an outdoor air reference temp sensor but all commercial boilers have them.
Also, condensing boilers are amazing, the size difference alone vs an old tube boiler is wild, very small in comparison.
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#108Instead of attacking a radio controlled relay, the author should have read up on how their heating system works. All they need is a relay controlled by an internet connected thing to replace the thermostat receiver. I could understand if the receiver was locked away but the video clearly shows they have access to the boiler.
That leaves very visible evidence that things have been hacked. Any time the landlord comes around you'd want to remove that. And if there's some sort of infrastructure emergency (plumbing problem, heat goes out, fire in the building) it could be very challenging to get there and remove all traces before the landlord is stomping around.
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s an artifact of how heating is setup inside your home. Which is more efficient depends on where you’re dumping heat inside the home, levels of insulation, etc. Energy moves from hot to cold linearly with temperature differences. Hypothetically, if the pipe was the same temperatures as the inside of your home all the heat transferred would be outside the envelope. The hotter the pipe the better this ratio become…
I moved all my radiators away from under windows (and upgraded the windows to triple glazing) to avoid maximising the temperature differential and energy loss through the wall under the windows, while eliminating the cool drafts that the under-window radiator placement was intended to counter.
Radiators were originally designed to heat more than needed, so you could open the windows.
In New York, at least - the standards were never changed to accomodate for closed windows in 1920. Snopes has a rundown. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/apartment-radiator-pandemi...
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work entirely remote so, other than travel, there are not many long periods when the house is unoccupied. I target the long run time to maximize efficiency. A 160°F pipe will lose more heat to the part of the building that I don’t want to heat as well as more heat to the wall right behind the radiators. It also results in the house going micro too-hot, too-cold, too-hot, too-cold as it cycles. Mine is constantly tr…
Btw, a heated blanket would be a lot more efficient, as it warms just your butt.
Heated blankets are ok, but you have to arrange them just so, and then you can’t move without fussing with the cord. It’s the last resort after layering warm clothes before bumping up the thermostat.