Just double checking before I go for it…..

We have a have a relatively new condenser boiler system with a hot water tank and a biggish rural detached house. Massive log stove in the middle of house takes a lot of the work of keeping us warm. Rural Highlands and at 300m altitude on lpg. We need the central heating (mainly to heat the wfh spaces and bedrooms and to start taking the chill off the centre ot of the house before the stove has kicked in) but it needs to be a bit smarter and less spendy. Thinking the tado is the system for us.

Quick Qs:-

Starter kit comes with a wireless thermostat – if you add lots of smart TRV what is the point of the thermostat?

If the wireless thermostat is in the heart of the home which is warm from the stove and you want to warm a bedroom before you go to bed (not mental warm, but over 10 deg would be nice!*) – will the boiler kick in if you program it to increase the temp on a single trv at a particular time?

Any particular issues – I understand the app now has some subscription only features that used to be free – feels a bit cheeky! It sounds if you read the blurb like it learns how long rooms take to warm up and can use the weather too – that could work well for us if it really works.

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*Yes – insulate first yada yada. In truth it’s not great but the next steps are big jobs and will be sorted with luck within a big house development some point later this year.

Starter kit comes with a wireless thermostat – if you add lots of smart TRV what is the point of the thermostat?

That’ll be your main controller that speaks to everything, boiler, smart TRVs, tado central servers, your mobile phone etc etc so it’s the heart of the system. The little thermostat within it, which is a small part and is effectively for people who don’t buy the smart TRVs, will go dumb once you start adding smart TRVs. That answers your second question as well. If it’s anything like the Evohome system you can if you wish reactivate it and bind it to a smart TRV in the same zone to use as a remote thermostat.

Because they are fairly new to the smart TRV game I think they are still calling it a thermostat which was a main function, but with smart TRVs it isn’t a thermostat anymore, it’s a system controller, so they should probably re name it IMO.

I jumped into the Tado thing a couple of years back – our house had been built by an electrician (for himself, if that makes sense), so was perhaps a little over-furnished with room thermostats and central heating controllers. I got a few cheap in a deal, and have since added a few more radiator controllers.

The smart thermostat can work for the whole house, or you can just allocate it a ‘room’. When you add additional smart TRV, they can either be added to that room, or you can create a new room. Each room can then be set up with its own ‘smart schedule’.

You set your CH system to be on the whole time, and in effect the control element is handed off to the Tado system – that took me a little while to get my head around.

The app does cost a bit – I tried it without and decided I liked the extra features it gives, but not convinced it’s essential. The benefit is, when you are in the house, it will keep the house at the temperature you want, then if you go out for a few hours, it will drop it back to whatever you have set for your ‘away’ temperature. You can also set it to start warming the place up, as you get closer to home again. It’s pretty simple to set up, and means that when heading off for a week or two (remember that?), you don’t have to fiddle around with the central heating system settings, it just drops it back down until you come back.

Drop me a DM if you want to chat a bit more about it.

Thanks both.

Gavin – thanks for the offer of a DM. I might well take you up on this.

Thanks both.

Well TBH I’ve got Evohome, but I think what I’ve said is basically correct as I did research Tado and they appeared to work to the same principles in this area. There were +/- to both systems (3-4 yrs ago), I went with Evohome mainly because their smart TRVs had been out for years, whereas the Tado smart TRVs were being launched the next month and I didn’t fancy being an early adopter.

I bought into the Tado thing a couple of years ago, it was a ball ache to set up (but that may be individual to my set up)..here’s a link to my previous post

More info here

The only things I would add as another Tado user (6/7 years now)..

We bought the smart thermostat alone initially. Great as a replacement thermostat. Location based stuff is brill, but working a mile or two away from home meant that the general house temp during the day was only kept a degree or so below the set temp. It’s fine if you manage that by setting a lower daytime temp, but one of the things I liked was that I set temp to 20 degrees and then heating is on or off depending on whether I’m at home or not.

Smart rad thermostats. Nice addition. Bought one for my daughters nursery to control the temp in there somewhat better. Biggest problem, when the smart rad thermostat determines heat is required, the boiler comes on and all rads heat. We’ve since added smart rad thermostats to all upstairs rooms and use the main thermostat for downstairs. So the problem is diminished somewhat.

Also happy to take questions about my experience.

Bought one for my daughters nursery to control the temp in there somewhat better. Biggest problem, when the smart rad thermostat determines heat is required, the boiler comes on and all rads heat.

I think it’s the same with all smart systems once you start adding smart TRVs, to make it worthwhile you kind of have to go all in, at least with the main regularly used rooms. Incidental rooms that you don’t use or spend much time in (box room, kit room, laundry room, guest room etc) I’ve found to be fine on standard TRVs just set low or off. My bypass rad is on the landing.

I have a Tado set up including their TRV’s on every rad (except towel rails as the open loop – and who doesn’t want toasty towels at any time of day!). I started simple (just a Smart Thermostat) and added to it over time when things were on offer or popped up on eBay.

A few thoughts;
– I love my set up and still think it is superior to other brands based on people’s description of them – but it is the only one I have used so that’s pretty meaningless!
– It’a a bit of a case of love the product, hate the company. eg. the introduction of the subscription model for certain features was handled badly. In the end there was enough shouting from customers that they U-turned and gave existing users the new features without a sub. Also their sporadic ‘mega’ offers on hardware to customers tend to be higher prices than the standard Amazon price.
– Regarding the subscription, I personally feel you need it, as having to switch the system from home/away manually totally defeats a core feature of the system. I think this can be mitigated with use of IFTTT automation though, and seems to be how a lot of the competitor systems work.
– Be aware that it is a cloud-based system from a small company. If the company goes under you are going to be left with an awful lot of dead expensive plastic. Also if their servers are down you are left with only manual control of the system – over several years of use we are talking maybe 5-10 hrs per year on average.
– Don’t fall for their cost saving claims. I’m pretty sure their claims are based off comparing to a system on 24/7 rather than set to any kind of schedule. You will save money though, especially if you go full in on TRV’s so that you have room-by-room control. In fairness I think they still have a money back guarantee on cost savings.
– You have to be realistic about the ability of a TRV millimetres from the radiator to accurately also be monitoring the temperate in the room (clue – it’s a bit of a stretch). There is a fix for this, but is not cheap, as you can set either an additional smart thermostat, or the specific temp monitor they now sell, as the temp measuring device for that room. A room can consist of any number of devices and you just set in the app which one you want to be measuring the temp in the room.
– You really need to go all or nothing on the TRV’s as if you only have them on some rads then all the rads without them will be heated whenever any of the TRV’s call for heat from the boiler. Going all in includes having a TRV in the same room as the smart thermostat that controls the boiler (against ‘old school’ wisdom where the stat and dumb TRV would fight).
– If home automation is your thing in general, in my hands it integrates very nicely with Apple Homekit – so you can shout at Siri to manually adjust the heating. It also offers Google/Amazon compatibility and, more interestingly also with IFTTT so that, for instance, you can get Tado’s detection of eg. home/away status, temp or humidity level to trigger other actions (eg. turn off/on lights / open blinds / send notifications/ turn on a smart plug controlling a de-humidifier).

I’ve spent all that mainly highlighting the caveats, but it is a very, very good system and I really do love mine (as evidence I currently have 7x Smart thermostats and 10x TRV’s in my system*). I would happily buy again, but I’d also look more closely at the competition now as it has matured.

*final caveat – I get through a fair amount of AA/AAA batteries!

Great – thanks so much for all that info.

I’ve taken the plunge and ordered a load – starter kit, 2 additional temp sensors and 8 TRVs. It’ll be a while before I see the money back but hopefully a warmer house in the right places and cooler where it can be.

Good stuff.

I found with a relatively complex system I had to clarify to Tado customer support how I was using it so that they could get the back-end set up correctly. eg. “Stat serial number X is used as a temp sensor for room Y and needs to call for heat from the boiler via Stat serial number Z”. Though now they are actually selling temperature sensors I guess it should be pretty obvious to them what you are trying to achieve.

Are there any non-cloud based systems, ie ones that can be controlled from a home server or the like?

Are there any non-cloud based systems, ie ones that can be controlled from a home server or the like?

This does worry me slightly…. a question I should have asked at the top – what happens if your internet goes down? Mildly concerned about my internet at the house going down whilst we are away (sometimes a hard reset of our router is required to get it back up and running) and it be being cold enough the house freezes/burst pipes.

I think if it loses internet connectivity it will just follow the schedules set as if you are home.

I think you’ll be OK. If you lose internet then you still have manual control via the control on the stat/TRVs. If you are away when you lose internet then it would stay at whatever temp you have set for away condition (10-15 deg typically), or actually maybe it assumes you are at home and goes to the normal schedule – either way the house won’t freeze. There’s also a frost protection thing which I think stops it dropping below 5 deg even if you turn the heating totally ‘off’.

Same as Timmy says, You just won’t be able to control the heating from your phone away from home. The heating will still work tho and you’ll be able to control it at the controller (main thermostat) and TRVs.