Efficiency question

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doosnacks
doosnacks ✭
in General Questions & Topics

Hello!

We've moved into a property that already has a TADO system installed. So have not installed this ourselves.

The house is old, cold, lots of windows and poorly insulated.

We have all rooms set to 15 degrees as a baseline and raise the temperate when we're at home or using particular rooms.

However - just keeping all rooms at 15 degrees is causing the boiler to fire constantly (usually just one room dropping just below 15. So one room at a time is heating up, goes off, then another heats up. So the boiler is constantly firing and the house is not warm!

This seems to make absolutely no sense to me - boiler going all day and night and one room at a time heating - surely it would make more sense to have more rooms heating each time the boiler fires, and reduce the number of times the boiler fires per hour (or something like that).

Any guidance or advice gratefully received - thank you 😊

Answers

  • hugbilly
    hugbilly ✭✭✭
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    Set your TRVs to independent?
  • davidlyall
    davidlyall ✭✭✭
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    I would say try to make your house more energy efficient as it sounds like it's losing a lot of heat. Might be some quick, simple and relatively cheap things you can do e.g. more loft insulation

    However, if you make most of the TRVs independent as @hugbilly advised then the boiler won't fire when those rooms need heat. Instead, have one room set up with a zone controller so it can call for heat to fire the boiler and the other rooms will get heat if they need it

  • doosnacks
    doosnacks ✭
    Options

    Thank you for the comments! We're working on the insulation issues - sounds like zone controller set up is the way forward. Thanks again :)

  • paul0000
    paul0000 ✭✭✭
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    Late reply as I don't come on here too often anymore.

    I'm in a similar situation to you. Old house, poor insulation/stone walls. Been trying to get tado to "work" over the last 4 years in our house.

    My findings (related and unrelated to tado):

    • It takes a long time to heat (and keep warm) an inefficient home. I've found a higher "constant" temperature seems to work best (18c in day living areas, kitchen/lounge/dining room etc) with a boost to 20c in the mornings and evenings for a couple of hours. Away mode doesn't help as the home takes ages to warm back up
    • Bedrooms stay at a constant 17c
    • Use the offset for colder rooms - we have some cold north facing rooms so I upped the offset by +2/3c to compensate
    • Keep bathroom radiators without Tado so the rooms are always warm. That warm spreads throughout the house and into bedrooms (if en-suites)
    • Move any particularly variable rooms to independent mode - this will help with the boiler firing to heat one room by +/- 1c

    Tado value is reducing for me as I figure how best to heat my home. I'm finding the value less and less apart from bedrooms to stop wasted heat during the day. I've been reading some other threads (as I suffer from range issues given the thick walls and size of house) and will probably move to Aqara or similar next year.

    It's really disappointing in the nearly 5 years of being with Tado, there hasn't been any tangible or beneficial innovation from them.

    In the meantime AI comes along, Windows 11, Chat GPT, several iPhone/Android firmware enhancements and more - along with a bunch of other tech companies moving forward with their product lines and software features.

    What are Tado employees doing all day? My guess - stuck supporting existing frustrated users.

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