Smart heating questions – trvs zoning and schedules

Looking at smart heating to upgrade the existing schedule-based central heating controller.

Looking at tado as they have the smart trvs which seems a simple way to add zoning. Any obvious downsides to this method?  Any other smart systems do rad trvs?

Does the tado system allow each zone to have its own timer schedule? Eg. Living areas start to heat first then bedrooms later, and vice-versa in the morning?

Bump for daytime

I have Tado, I’ve copy and pasted my update about the install below. I’m sure other people find it easier..

Yes, tado smart TRVs will fire up the boiler and allow you to run “zones” but at the cost of a TRV per room it’s a bloody expensive set up. Each smart unit, either smart thermostat or smart TRV, can have it’s own smart schedule We have two smart TRVs, one in hall and one in lounge and they run on different schedules to each other.

if you do order smart TRVs make sure to check that tado supply them with the updated version of the plastic collars that attach them to your rads, the original versions were woeful. The new ones are OK.

“promised to update this thread with some detail on the insall and operation of my Tado system. Sorry it’s taken so long to reply, it’s taken this long to get it working properly.

Delivery took a fortnight from order (this was over the new year period so couldn’t expect much better). It was delivered via UPS from Germany.

Install of the TRVs was simple enough but the plastic adaptors are not effective (more on this later).

Install of the smart thermostat appeared to be simple enough at first, the diagrams and process of the online tool is good. However, this is where the issues started. Once installed the new smart thermostat appears to have totally messed up the heating controls in the boiler. Basically the heating was not responding, the thermostat appeared to be thinking that the room was up to heat, when it wasn’t. I contacted Tado technical support, it was friday night, no one was around so I had to wait. One of the coldest weekends of the year and it looked like we’d have no heating. Tried reinstalling the old thermostat, it wasn’t working. Finally after cycling power through the boiler it fired up, and stayed on. We have SSE boiler care so they were called out and on the following Monday they came out. The engineer was totally puzzled and ended up installing a new room thermostat and wireless control which took some doing and eventually got the heating working again.

After some time tado got back in touch, their solution was that since my set up had now changed I needed to buy another bit of kit, an extension kit. (another £80). They offered no help or explanation as to the reason why the initial install had screwed up

At this point I decided to let them do the install and paid an additional £90 to have one of their guys install it all. The new kit came in a few days (UPS express because I’d kicked off) and install was booked for mid Jan. It was installed by a company from East Kilbride and the guy had what he called “a right nightmare” doing the install. Apparently in his experience Tado is always hard work. He had to spend 45 mins on the phone to the tado help line having the smart thermostat reset. (not something that was offered to me as an option or even explored when I made contact). Eventually the room thermostat and extension kit were installed and working. Happy days!

That’s not the end of the saga though. A few days after installing the TRVs one of them started popping off the valve assembly. The units have an electrically powered shaft in them which operates the rad valve. The pressure of this can cause the TRV to pop off the plastic adaptors that Tado provide. Despite various attempted bodges nothing worked so after some internet searching I found a guy in germany selling metal danfoss adaptors which do the trick (and look better) but cost £14 incl P&P. Being honest it pissed me off that i’d spent a bundle of cash and got lousy kit with a known issue and no help from Tado.

After pushing Tado hard including complaining they now admit that they know of the issue with the plastic adaptors and can ship an alternative batch (only if asked and they won’t be retrospectively sending these to existing customers unless asked).

So it’s taken six weeks to have the install complete and the system working as designed. It’s been substantially harder work than Tado suggest it ought to and to be honest their support hasn’t been great.

Now it’s working it seems to be good, time will tell if it’s just a bloody expensive white box on the wall and some fancy TRVs.

My set up was – Danfoss room thermostat, danfoss TRVs and a Worscester greenstar boiler. Now – two smart TRVs, some traditional TRVs. Tado smart room thermostat and wirelss extension unit.

PS, the smart TRVs do send a demand to the boiler so it will fire up if the room thermostat isn’t also putting demand for heat at the same time.”

I have a netatmo smart thermostat and they offer smart trvs. I don’t own any of the smart trvs due to the cost. The actual thermostat was easy to fit on a Combi system and the app to operate it is good also. Worth a look for another option.

Yes, with Tado you can set individual zones to have different timings. A zone can be one rad or several grouped togther. Within a zone you can set any bit of hardware to be the one monitoring the temp for that zone (either TVR’s or thermostats).

One thing you might not have picked up on is with Tado you want the rad next to the thermostat(s) to also have a TRV. This is a no-no in a ‘dumb’ system but in a smart system it allows heat to go to zones requesting it without always heating up that rad.

Honeywell Evohome here, which is the original smart trv zoning system. Each trv has it’s own programmed schedule, which you can at any time intervene via the knob on the trv, the Evohome controller, your phone, laptop or smart hub thing (google mini / amazon echo / apple homekit etc etc). I also use IFTTT to turn it off when I leave home and on again when nearly home. Only downside is the cost, altho I’ve only put them in the main rooms – lounge / kitchen / bedrooms, other rooms just have standard trv’s set on low.

As well as Tado getting in on the act, there are a couple of others on the market now, I think Netatmo and possibly Heat Genius

I have zoned my heating system by having  two boilers. One upstairs, one downstairs.

It works remarkably well but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Great feedback thanks folks.  Looking at the Drayton Wiser system now as well as prices seem better particularly for adding other smart TRVs.