Tado or Nest – anyone got one fitted?

Just wondering what the experience has been like so far? Just got an old style dial thermostat and tempted to change to something a bit more intelligent. Thanks.

Isn’t nest USA only at the moment? 110v and all that…

Yes. I think it’s actually the voltage used by the boiler that’s different (24v maybe?) Also I think you can only set the location to be the US so it doesn’t have the right timezone, or something like that. Though there are reports that people have got it working.

Tempted by a Tado but also tempted to hold out for the Nest. UK version due before end of 2013 apparently.

Edit: Ah apparently it’s the aircon that works at different voltages. Some stuff about it here.

I think an acquaintance in Canadia got a Leaf recently, I’ll try and find out how he is getting on.

That Tado looks good though. The thing for me with the Leaf is (apart from it not being available in the UK) that it doesn’t seem to have a wireless temperature sensor. Which is a bit useless for us because our thermostat is in the hall.

Tado is 250 quid though, which is quite pricey. I’d hope the nest is a bit cheaper seeing as it’s $250 in the US.

Ok.

Have spoken to the chap in Canada with the Leaf. Says it works well, but placement is an issue since it sometimes thought they were out when they weren’t. Looks good (he is an Apple stroker), easy to use and provides loads of reporting. Can’t tell at the moment how much it is saving them money, as they have forced air heating and the furnace pretty much runs 24/7 in winter. Would recommend it though.

That aside, I have pulled the trigger on the Tado. Gone for the rental option, as £120 saving in the first year or ‘no questions asked money back’ is a bold claim – essentially 30% off our gas bill. So I anticipate it to be a free trial, and can then decide if I want to buy it outright.

Think I’m going for the Tado too. That is a pretty impressive claim.

Anyone tried the British Gas thing or the Owl ones?

torsoinalake, you heard from them yet? Put my order in on Wednesday last week and not a peep.

Last email said it would ship today:

Your order is being processed.
Due to the high demand we will need the coming weeks to ship your tado°. We work as fast as we can to process your order.
Planned shipping date: until 16.12.2013

Sounds good. I’ll chase them up.

Did you request installation or you going to do it yourself?

DIY

Bugger… mine not shipping till the 13th of Jan 🙁

I ordered a Tado late November and was informed 16th December shipping. It eventually arrived 23rd December.

Self installation was ok even though our existing heating setup was a bit non conventional. Google is your friend for wiring diagrams etc.

So far it’s been very good. It switches off when we leave the house and back on when we head home. The app and website are great, easy to use.

It switches on quite early in the morning to achieve the desired temperature at wake up time but I think this is because it’s still “learning”.

The house certainly seems warmer than it was, which was not the aim, but might suggest Tado controls the heating more accurately then our old thermostat. With the old controller it was always to hot, too cold or maybe somewhere inbetween,Tado seems more steady.

I’ve taken meter readings and I’m going to compare daily consumption with last Winter to see if the savings pan out, but I’m going to take additional readings from time to time and cut out the learning period to get a more representative measure once Tado knows how to heat our house.

Sounds good. I’d read in a review somewhere that it takes a while to settle down as it learns.

I went for the installation in the end as it was a free offer, but not heard anything about that. Should be trivial though as our installation is fairly new. May just do it myself if the box arrives and there’s no news from an installer.

NEST just got bought for $3.2b by Google…

http://www.neowin.net/news/google-to-acquire-nest-labs-for-32-billion

A fair wedge of cash that.

Just got the tado here. Ended up doing the installation myself. The online instructions were actually very good and made it seem simple (which to be fair it was.)

Keep checking to see what it’s doing. Set the temp and times, installed the apps, shall just let it do it’s thing for a few days before I start fiddling 🙂

I might get a NEST next, but I only installed a Heatmiser controller just before xmas (even though I bought it a year ago). Have to say it’s very nice being able to control the CH from an iPhone at home or out and about…..

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Heatmiser Wifi Thermostat iPhone App[/url] by brf[/url], on Flickr

Not as intelligent as NEST, but way better than a standard thermostat…

Have had attempted delivery of the Tado this week. Will pick it up tomorrow.

Did anyone else get a T-Shirt and chocolate Santa as compensation for late delivery?

We’ve just ordered a Tado – week 9 for delivery, they’re busy it seems…

Did anyone else get a T-Shirt and chocolate Santa as compensation for late delivery?

WTF? No t-shirt or chocolate here despite having to wait about a month for delivery 🙁

Tado installed. Real easy, took about 30 minutes all said and done. There were only 3 wires to hook up in the thermostat though.

First impressions are that it is going to take a bit of tuning. It is now quite obvious how inefficient our central heating is, and how useless our old thermostat was, both in where it was located and temperature control.

Did you get chocolate?

Happy with ours so far. Boiler seemed to be on and off all the time before, seems less so now. Interestingly it decided to come on about 20 mins earlier today than it did yesterday, assuming because the house was colder and it was colder outside too. Quite clever.

Tado is 250 quid though, which is quite pricey. I’d hope the nest is a bit cheaper seeing as it’s $250 in the US.

$250 = £250 usually, by the time VAT and various other taxes etc are added.

Chocolate and a T-Shirt for me.

The tado is £250, but I have just seen on their Twitter feed that if you convert from the rental option in the first 12 months, they will credit your rental payments to the purchase price.

Couple that with the money back guarantee if you rent, and you essentially have a 12 month trial either way.

Tado server outage…?

Well after a week or so of having the tado my confidence has been shaken somewhat. They made some DNS changes last night which meant their servers have been unavailable as the changes are propagated. So been out here for over 12 hours now.

Upshot is that tado doesn’t get to know when people are home so doesn’t turn the heating back on. There is a manual over-ride button that can turn it on though, and ours has been heating the place just fine, but judging by the feedback on twitter some people haven’t been as lucky.

Bit of a dumb thing to do in the middle of winter to a device that controls your heating.

I fitted a manual override switch when I installed the Heatmiser, in case it got confused, so I have a simple way of switching the CH on and off……

So far I’ve not needed to use it yet!

Footflaps, a good idea that. I’ve still got the old mechanical thermostat, so if the worst does happen then it’s a 5 min job to swap it over. Luckily the over-ride button on the tado seemed to work fine for me. Couldn’t check the app or the web site though so had no idea what it was actually doing and was nervously watching the boiler to see if/when it came on!

It’s the start of SKYNET! It’s going to freeze/boil us in our houses!!!

Should I be expecting a visit from their T1000 maintenance engineer?

Is your name ‘John Connor’?

Personally I’m not keen on any controller that needs central control eg what if your cable provides goes down for a few days etc..

Plus there’s the whole Skynet concern…..

Yes, it is a bit of a failing. I believe they are addressing this to add control over your local LAN.

It does have an override button on the wall unit though. All I lost was the presence detection and the ability to configure and report usage. It’s inconvenient but not disastrous.

The ‘Beta’ stickers all over the box it came in, and on their website means that we are Guinea pigs at the moment, so there may be the odd hiccup.

We just used the manual override and it’s all back today.

Yes, not a big deal really. Though seeing as it was apparently planned work, some sort of prior notification would have been good (maybe a banner on mytado page.)

True.

I’m not sure the home button worked on my tado during the outage. Boiler certainly didn’t come on (but orange light did), but not sure of the temperature though so it may be that it was ok. Seems like they dropped a b*llock with that one if it doesn’t work which is a shame as otherwise it’s been superb. House has a much more even temperature – rooms that were cold are now warm and we don’t get the hot/cold fluctuations we used to. Had an issue with the temperature sensor and they just sent out a replacement set without quibble so they’re definitely trying hard. Even if it saves me no money, it’s worth it for a warm house and a happy wife 😉

Having been thinking about one of these for a few weeks our thermostat has suddenly packed up, so now with a replacement need rather than an upgrade I think we’ll take the plunge.

However… Has anyone installed a tado (or any of the others) to replace a 2 wire stat? Ours was a battery powered timer/programmer stat hence it’s effectively just a switch on the live.

May be worth asking Tado about it. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere for a battery. You may be able to install it near the programmer and then just use the remote temperature sensor.

They were offering free installation too, may be worth checking that out.

I wondered how folk were getting on with these after a couple of months use? Pondering a purchase of one, we have no room thermostat at all at the moment. Not sure whether to go with Tado or wait and see if/when the Nest gets launched in this country.