Can Tado do this ?

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I have a Ideal Logic boiler with a hot water cylinder attached to it (Kingspan).

This has 2 (very bad) wired thermostats attached to it (one for the house in the hallway and one for the master bedroom).

We have a 4 bedroom house and I would like to be able to control the temperature in the other bedrooms independently from each other, as well as the living room and home office.

I would assume with Tado, It would mean I would need to buy 2 wired thermostats and then a smart radiator valve for each room I want separate temperature control in ? Or is this not possible in general ?

Answers

  • johnnyp78
    johnnyp78 ✭✭✭
    edited September 2022
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    It sounds like you have a two zone house so you would need to replace each of the wired thermostats with Tado wired thermos. That would be enough to control upstairs and downstairs separately. If the house isn’t zoned you could just replace one wired thermostat and unwire the other.

    If you want room control, put Tado trvs on the radiators.

    If you want Tado to control your hot water as well you’ll need the wireless receiver connected to your boiler and cylinder.
  • JorisE87
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    Thanks Johnnyp87

    I don't have a separate hot water control, nor do I ever change any settings at all, hence would there be a need for this at all ?

    Also from your experience, how accurate are the TRVs on the radiators ? given they are just next to it, accuracy may not be too great ?

    My thinking would be to: replace both wired thermostats with the tado one, and except for the master bedroom, use a tado TRV (4 upstairs, 7 downstairs). I should then be able to put them in zones and control them ?

  • johnnyp78
    johnnyp78 ✭✭✭
    edited September 2022
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    If you don’t have a separate hot water control, how do you set when the hot water comes on? Is it done through the thermostats? If so it might be a more complex install. The only Tado device which can control hot water is the wireless receiver.

    Your plan sounds fine. Bear in mind that if you don’t have trvs in the master bedroom, but you do have a Tado thermostat, if that room reaches the temp target and other rooms are still calling for heat there will be a conflict. I’ve found the trvs to be fine on my system but I’ve never bothered to use an external thermometer. In one room I have a wireless temperature sensor set away from the trvs and it seems to match up so I’ve left it as is.
  • JorisE87
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    The current 2 wired thermostats we have, work completely independent from each other. i.e. even if one has reached the temp target, the other one will work fully independent. Currently the downstairs on is one and upstairs is completely off. They never conflict with each other.

    The hot water is just on demand to my knowledge but I could be wrong. While the thermostats have a hot water setting, I've never had to touch this at all and there is warm water at any point in time. I think this may be just set to supply on demand from the water tank and from there it refills ?

  • johnnyp78
    johnnyp78 ✭✭✭
    edited September 2022
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    You have a two zone heating system. That isn’t the issue. The problem would be having a master bedroom without trvs but with a thermostat and the other bedrooms with trvs. If the temp in the master bedroom reaches target, the trvs in other bedrooms can’t then call for heat without pushing the temp in the master bedroom over target, creating a conflict. Not sure how Tado would resolve this but I suspect it would stop the other trvs calling for heat.

    I don’t think you get on demand hot water with system boilers, unless your cylinder is being kept at a constant temperature 24 hours a day. Either way you will need to figure out how this works and how it’s wired or you’ll lose control of it when you install the Tado wired thermostats. If it’s controlled totally independently from the boiler - maybe a control panel on the cylinder - you might be ok.
  • davidlyall
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    What we don't know is if the current wired thermostats actually control individual zone valves. @JorisE87 , this should be relatively easy to test by turning down the main thermostat and turning up the bedroom one. If only the bedroom rads get hot them it's safe to assume that there is a zone valve for that room. If the rads in the other zone also get hot then no valve is present. You can repeat the test the other way round once the rads cool down just to confirm that the main stat also controls a zone valve

    If there are zone valves then the wired thermostats can be replaced with Tado. You could then add TRVs to give individual room control

    If there are no valves then you would definitely need smart TRVs to get the room control that you want

    If you can post your boiler and current controls model numbers then that will help to identify the system

  • JorisE87
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    @davidlyall

    The two current wired thermostats control individual valves, I've tasted as you mentioned and they can work fully independent from each other.

    I therefore assume that for the master bedroom, I can just replace the thermostat without having to add a smart TRV.

    The rest of the house would then probably need another thermostat, with smart TRV's on all radiators. (13 radiators and 1 towel heater that currently has a TRV), which would allow me to zone it appropriately.

    In addition I understand I would need a wireless thermostat as well to control hot water ?

    Current Setup:

    Boiler: Ideal Logic Heat H24

    Unvented (indirect) twin zone Cylinder: Kingspan Range Tribune XE

    Thermostats: Danfoss TPOne-M

  • GrilledCheese2
    GrilledCheese2 ✭✭✭
    edited October 2022
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    @JorisE87 one of your Danfoss thermostats will schedule your hot water and you need to establish which one before purchasing Tado. With a cylinder the heating of the water is not on demand, but will be scheduled.

    On each thermostat. If you press the menu button followed by up/down it will take you to the schedule. One of your thermostats will have a single option for Heating and the other thermostat will have two options for Hot Water and Heating.

  • JorisE87
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    @GrilledCheese2

    It is the downstairs thermostat that does hot water in that case !

    How does it make a difference for purchasing it ? I will regardless need 2 wired thermostats and a wireless one. It seems like quite a substantial product flaw if the wired one has less functionality than the wireless one to be really honest.

  • GrilledCheese2
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    It makes a difference, as need to establish that you don't have a non-standard setup.

    For downstairs you will need a Wireless Receiver with Hot Water Starter Kit. And for upstairs you need an Add-On Wired Thermostat.

    Downstairs the Wireless Receiver will replace the Danfoss thermostat in the hall. You will then have a wireless temperature sensor that you can mount next to the receiver or in your preferred location (living room?).

    If you want smart TRVs I'd suggest purchasing these as a second phase. Setup the main thermostats and make sure you're happy with the new system before investing in the TRVs.

  • davidlyall
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    @JorisE87 , be aware that Tado currently has a 10 room limit on rooms that can call for heat. This doesn't limit the number of TRVs (although there is a hard limit on number of devices) When you do go for TRVs, you may just want to have a think about which rooms you want to be able to call and which ones will just get heat if another room is calling. It may not be worth putting Tado on some rooms e.g. towel rail and rooms where you don't spend any time

    e.g. in my house, I have TRVs on all rads but don't allow the downstairs toilet or landing to call for heat as I didn't want the system cycling the boiler too much. Seems to work OK. Also, when we got our bathrooms done a couple of years ago, I had the towel rails plumbed into the HW circuit so they get heated all year round