TRV set point reached too quickly without thermostat?
Impressed so far, but one issue I’ve found already seems to be that the desired room set point (as set via the smart TRV) is reached too quickly because the TRV is attached to and therefore in very close proximity to the radiator.
This issue would obviously not exist if the TRV were coupled with a room thermostat, which would be located in part of the room such that it reflects an average room temperature (rather than a temperature from right next to the radiator).
My question is therefore: can Tado really work optimally without the thermostat? Is there a setting on the TRV that calibrates it accounting for this proximity to the radiator? My ideal solution is to have TRVs on every radiator in the house and allow them to control the boiler pump through the pressure differential, rather than relying on the thermostat to control both the TRVs and the boiler itself.
If this issue isn’t solvable then - why does Tado sell the TRVs with temperature sensors on them? Why not just sell them in a package with the thermostat and just have automated (i.e. thermostat-controlled) TRVs rather than “smart” TRVs?
Thanks!
Sam
Best Answer
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@sambob0 Where the TRVs are on a large rad, or riser pipe, or behind furniture, or all, the issue of local over-temperature sensing will happen. For us, one large rad in the lounge presented the over-temperature measurement and room 2 deg C colder than expected. No issue with smaller rads elsewhere. We tried the temperature offset feature for a couple months. That worked to get to the right room temperature. However we found it to be a poor compromise for lower room temperatures. The addition of a separate wireless thermostat is the best answer. Mrs W happy now.
@kaibababy87 before commenting on your temperature issue, can you provide a bit more information about your heating setup?
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It would be good to see a response to this. I installed 3TRVs and so far they're useless as the rooms they're in don't get warm. They cost a lot of money for such a design flaw as this. I hope there's a way to fix it as I'm having to set the temperature to over 22c to even feel a tiny bit of warmth in the rooms they're in.1
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I have two rooms with TRVs + temperature sensors but the other rooms have TRVs alone. These work pretty well but I have added an offset to some. As with any TRVs, smart or otherwise, it’s important they’re not covered by curtains or hard up against furniture . . .0
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Thanks for your help, didn’t know about the offset function but seems to have done the trick. How it goes in deep winter remains to be seen but glad to have solved this for now so thanks again :-)0
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Offset won't work as great if you have heating off at night.0
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Thanks SPT, I tend to have a set-back temperature rather than switching all heating off at night to avoid a cold house that takes hours to warm up in the morning (which I assume is what you mean by your comment).
For anyone interested in this thread, my conclusion is that for larger rooms that are used a lot, the offset tends to work well enough but would probably benefit from a strategically placed thermostat. Given the costs of each piece of kit though (both the TRVs and thermostats) I don’t know if they will ever pay off over their useful lifetimes. I guess the main benefit is that you don’t have to walk around your house turning valves on and off all day. My house is 3 bed, 3 floors and ~130 square metres, so would be a pain to have to keep monitoring temperatures and adjusting valves accordingly (my view is that houses of this size shouldn’t use one central thermostat to control the radiators across the whole house, this to me is wasteful).0 -
We had similar problems to you when we installed the Tado system in our house. After a bit of research we decided to create our own WiFi thermostat because the Tado ones were just too expensive. We have recently released our remote WiFi temperature sensor to the public. We call it ambi. It's battery powered so you can place it anywhere in a room. The ambi measures the room temperature and dynamically adjusts the Tado room offset, if it needs to be, every 15 minutes. If you are interested you can find ambi here
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