Zoned Heating Control

[Laurence Mason <laurence@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We are building a large well insulated farm house and I would like to
have a practical system for zoning the heating. My dream system would be:

Separate zone for each room - we could consider ~20 zones
Individual override in each (or some) rooms
Central programming panel plus ability to do this via browser interface
Full seven day programming per zone
External temperature compensation
Wired system - not wireless - Radio amateur and do not want interference
either way
Unobtrusive valves as we will be fitting column radiators and want to
achieve a look in keeping with them
One or two areas of underfloor heating
Learns thermal response of room ( we will have log burners in three
rooms so not sure how this would affect the learning - and an aga in the
kitchen)

Now, we went to the self build / automation show the other week, which
was very interesting - it is some years since we last went. Still
waiting for some of the suppliers to sent us information - I guess they
must have a lot to catch up on.

Talking to the automation people it appears there are a range of
solutions, some of which are very expensive - £20K buys me a lot of
heating oil!

It would appear that the TRV body with the wired remote control head is
an economic way to control the flow of water in each of the zones - we
could even hide them in a cupboard or bathroom so they are not seen in
the main living rooms. It appears the major cost is in the controller or
are we missing something? In general we are not looking at automating
the lights or sound so don't want to pay for a system to only use 10% of
it's power to control the heating - perhaps that is why some of them
appear so expensive? We will want a monitored alarm system so perhaps
that would help to offset the cost? We would cover the wiring and plumbing.

So any suggestions on a sensible way forward or do I just fit normal
TRVs in every room and spend a little more on oil each year? The house
is well insulated but it does seem wasteful to heat the spare room, for
example, to a normal temperature profile when we have no guests!

Thanks,

Laurence