Make the hot water schedule "smarter"
After returning home from holiday to find there is no hot water, I'm a little disappointed at how Tado deals with the "Smart Schedule" for hot water.
I have a standard indirect hot water cylinder and have Tado set to top it up in the morning and in the evening.
I recently went on holiday for a few days and returned home in the afternoon to no hot water at all. Because we'd been away, Tado hadn't been topping up the hot water, which is as expected, but I would have expected Tado to kick in and top up the water as soon as it detected that we are returning home, despite the current schedule setting. As it knows that it hasn't heated the water for several days, so could have at least turned on the hot water for an hour when we returned home. Instead, I had to do this manually and wait for it to heat up for us to have any hot water.
Like there is for Heating, it would be good if there as also an "Eco / Balance / Comfort" setting for Hot Water. "Eco" could be how it works now, "Balance" could turn the hot water on as soon as you got home if it hadn't been on in over a day, and "Comfort" could turn the hot water on before you got home if it hadn't been on for over a day.
I know the other option is to just have our hot water set to be on all the time, during the day. But this would result in more hot water being heated than we'd use, wasting energy. As just running the hot tap for a minute or so would cause the boiler to needlessly fire up and begin topping up the hot water.
Comments
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To anyone who doesn't feel they need any changes like this, I'm curious how you deal with ensuring you have hot water upon returning from holiday? Do you:
a) Have the hot water schedule set to "On" all day (so it kicks in as soon as you get home from holiday, but wastes energy on all other days by constant topups).
b) Remember to manually turn the hot water "On" just before returning home.
c) Put up with having no hot water upon returning home, and just wait for the next schedule to kick in after a few hours.
d) Other.
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I suggested a remote tank thermostat so you can see the temperature.
I have a remote immersion timer by timeguard set for an hour a day. It is literally a switch that has on off and remote/timed. With a 1 hour advance button. It's set for 3am daily for 1 hour and if the water is hot enough the thermostat on the immersion trips. The app has boost, advance and programme settings and can't be controlled by alexa or google. Its discreet looks like a lightswitch in the airing cupboard. USES NO ENERGY Other than its own power if the Tank is warm enough. Uses up to 3kwh when it needs to heat. Combined with Tado dropped my hot water by 29%0 -
Really interested in this option and am here to post the idea myself. I have a sensor placed under the jacket halfway down the the tank - allows me to check on temp at any point :)
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I had the exact same situation..away for a few days come back to no hot water at all. We have young kids that we wanted to run a bath for and we had to wait about 20 minutes for some hot water. Not ideal.
Luckily it is a brand new house with modern system that heats up reasonably quickly. The hot water tank has no jacket however but I have been assured it is very well insulated internally.
Not convinced however as it was heated for about an hour about 30 hours prior to our return so in theory it should have kept some of that hit water.
I agree that a clever function of ' heat hot water upon return home if away for more than X hours' will be rather convenient.
At the moment I try to boost it in the night and evening time when we are all at home. And I choose to turn it on manually if we have been away for a few days.0 -
I'm really surprised how basic the hot water scheduling is. Why would anyone want to be able to schedule the HW to the minute when they are home, but leave it on all the time when they are away ?
I have an intermittent problem where the app doesn't register that I'm home. It's warm enough not to need the heating on, but waking up to go to work and finding there isn't any hot water is a pain.
This is supposed to be a "smart" system, so I shouldn't have to check my app every day just to make sure it knows I'm home.
If the location tracking on the app can't be made more reliable, I'd like to be able to replicate my hot water home and away settings, so that the water gets a boost first thing in the morning whether I'm home or not.
Failing that, I'm going to have to revert to using a time clock for the water :-(
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@GrilledCheese Wow, this is ace! Thanks for sharing, I’ll give it a go. Not aware of APILIO but looks fun!0
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Still no improvements to this?
Just back after being away for a week. Had no hot water for my son's bath this evening, as water is only scheduled to be heated in the morning for a couple of hours, (as this then lasts the rest of the day), but as we we're home then, the water didn't get heated.
@GrilledCheese2 Does your Apilio setup still work, I think mine stopped working after the IFTTT changes, and I couldn't get it working again.
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