Mode that emulates a manual TRV behavior for Smart Radiator Thermostat
Comments
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Upvoting. It would be extremely helpful.
I've got tado TRVs in 5 rooms that cool down very fast and as all the valves call for heat without any coordination, the boiler keeps running all the time.
And this is a really easy thing to productise (product manager and ux designer speaking here): in Smart Schedule, under Advanced settings, add a new toggle reading something like "Don't request heat".
Can we do that? (It looks like just a few lines of code because you only need to slightly repurpose what you already can do for the 'No zone controller' option.)0 -
Call for heat is now available in room settings. You can choose de device that relay the heat demand to the boiler. It it possible to set 'none'.
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Can you be more specific where this can be found? I have found a 'Heating' switch in the the smart schedule time blocks but this just sets it to frost protection. Ideally I want to be able to park the valve open to scavenge heat rather than close it until frost level but stopping heat call would be useful. Thanks0
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It is not in the schedule. In the bottom menu you should have "home", "parameters" and "more" (not sure about exact naming in English because my app is in french). Go in "parameter". Then tap the first line, it should be "room and devices". Enter in the room setting page by tapping on the arrow of the room you are interested in. On the last line you can choose which device relays the heating demand. You can select "none".0
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Many thanks. In the English version (android and ios) it is in settings, rooms and devices. Strangely, in the android version there is no arrow but if you tap, it goes to the page. Even more strange is why the French and English versions are structured differently! Thanks again.0
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You can park the valve wide open (as far as possible) by setting maximum temperature (25C) and prevent a request for heat by removing the zone controller from that room.
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Yes, I can see how that would work. Good suggestion. It would be nice though to have it under block control without the need to go into settings. A simple 'call for heat' slider would suffice as oyy comments.1
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@o00batman00o I know, and this is the very functionality that I'd like the tado team to elaborate on. In its present state it doesn't work for me because it *prevents* the room from requesting heat. But I do want it to call for heat at certain times (say I want to "force" 21 degrees in the bathroom between 7pm and midnight, but at all other times it can just heat when a 'more important' room calls for heat).1
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I have several rooms set to “no zone controller” so they are independent. However, they still show up in the “care and protect” area so it looks like the heating has been on all day, because those unused rooms dipped below their set temp.
It would be good if care and pretext omitted the rooms that aren’t able to call for heat.
Or have a separate set of stats, for how long the boiler has actually been on.2 -
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What would also be good is for the room Tile on the main screen to not change colour when it’s in a passive mode, nor show the heat bars. Or keep the heat bars and have a separate icon as a flame maybe to show if that room is actively calling for heat.2
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I’ve just re-read this thread from the original post and believe it or not it is coming up to its second birthday in February! It throes up some interesting things and the debate centres around the ability to switch between TRV and SRT modes.
As @Jurian (admin) notes, some of the requests are indeed satisfied by setting ‘no zone controller’ which stops call for heat and the valve operates as a TRV. What is not so clear, is that the Tado valve actually operates as a smart TRV. A standard TRV caps the maximum room temperature to the set value (usually 1-5) and then sits there waiting for heat to come through. The Tado valve set with no zone control operates in the same way except the maximum room temperature can be set in the time blocks so allowing a degree of flexibility and precision not available with a standard TRV.
The current position is that SRT or TRV mode is set at the room level and as @Jurian comments, is properly placed in the settings. However, this makes it in practice an either/ or choice and doesn’t give the desired level of flexibility to call for heat. What many posters are requesting (myself included) is the ability to switch modes of operation in block control which would satisfy all of the use cases cited and probably any that can be thought of. Other suggestions include how the mode should be indicated @Fox2263 etc and are all important too.
Apologies if this seem like teaching mothers to suck eggs but I thought that a summary would be useful and also give Tado the opportunity to comment on a two year old thread as to whether this is something in their plans or not.
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I would personally like an "Advanced" setting under Smart Schedule or temperature setting screen (NOT the room settings) that allows me extra control over the SRT:
1) can it call for heat or not?
2) what is the default valve position position if temperature exceeds the one set, open or closed? Feel free to put as many disclaimers as you want there, i.e. that "the this should not be used in lieu of a (lack of) bypass system"?
3) if valve is open, allow me to explicitly set the percentage open rather than Tado deciding it for me. This could be either be a fixed percentage in a step function (i.e. 20/40/60/80/100, I choose "40") or a min/max setting (i.e. min=20, max=60, works like today as long as these thresholds are not exceeded).
These all seem pretty basic to me. I don't really have any hopes that any of the above will happen. Still, I know that @Jurian and @Rob read this, maybe between the discussion here and https://community.tado.com/en-gb/discussion/7040/maximum-opening-percent-and-time-on-radiator-thermostate/p1 some of these will be implemented.
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I am certainly reading this. Including what @stooby wrote. Fair suggestions, that I communicate to our devs frequently. It is not as basic as it might seem though, as things like relative valve position impact the firmware of the devices.
Within the app it's not as straightforward as it might seem either. As you are probably well aware our radiator thermostats find the start and end point of the valve pin during calibration. How far do you need to press the valve to fully close and fully open it? This sounds sufficient for your step function, but it's not. Our calibration is based on the resistance of the pin that is being pressed, not the flow of water. If you press the pin 50% of the pressable length, is it then 50% closed? As in, 50% reduction of water flow? Usually not; a 50% pressed pin can result in a valve that is still fully open, but it can also be 80% closed, and so on. There is a lot of variety among the many different makes and models of valves. Sure, we could communicate it as simply the pressable length of the valve pin, but that would make it a very unintuitive function for a very large percentage of tado° users. Just as an explanation to why this is more complex than it might seem. I personally do see why you want a feature like this, so please do not see this paragraph as a way to downplay the issue.
I will have another discussion with our devs about the possibilities. No promises on the results of that discussion though.
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Whilst I follow the sentiment of @mperedim, I think that @Rob only tells half the story. This is a pressure (flow)/ temperature system. Flows are balanced by the lockshield end of the radiator to heat each radiator at a similar rate. I fail to see what a 50% open valve would achieve as the radiator would just take a little longer to heat up but would still achieve the boiler water temperature flowing around. Surely you would just use the SRT to control the temperature of the room - isn’t that the point? The position of the valve will be open if the sensor sees a temperature below the set point and closed when it reaches/ approaches it. Once the thermal mass of the radiator has been expended into the room and the room temperature falls, it reopens and calls for heat. There is no user adjustable (or published) hunting control but the thermal lag in the system is such that it is a balance between too sensitive and under sensitive. Looking at my own graphs, Tado seem to have got the balance about right (I just wish they wouldn’t mess with the vertical scale!). It is certainly much better than bimetallic thermostats. Before TRV’s, you would ‘crack’ a valve to keep a radiator aired in little used rooms but now you can just dial it in. In my view, open/ close control is all that is required and being able to not call for heat in the time blocks would allow intelligent TRV type operation where you could scavenge heat but cap the room temperature even at a level it might never achieve thus keeping the valve open. There would be no need to control the position of the valve as it would just sit open in under temperature situations within the block or closed by setting to ‘off’.
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I would very much welcome the possibility to enable call for heat in the schedule - I am also concerned about different rooms turning on/off at different times causing the boiler to fire for longer (even if it is at lower outputs) and having this passive mode at certain times of the day would certainly help reduce boiler on time.
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@Rob I think the most important feature is to be able to schedule the switching of the thermostat to be connected to a zone controller or not and to be able to quickly change whether a thermostat is connected to the zone controller
If elements such as percentage control of the pin being open are not feasible then I think most people would be happy to ignore this
In my case I have a utility room which we sometimes dry clothes in.
I'd like to put this on the schedule to passively heat when other rooms are heating but not actually call for heat itself
But then if I've got clothes hanging out I may want to manually set it to a temperature and have it call for heat, this also might be something I'd schedule like keeping a single room warm for cats when I'm away that we normally passively heat.
I don't think it's feasible for these mode switches to occur on the thermostat itself but in the app having a quick drop-down or button on the room where you set temperature to switch the zone controller would be great to basically turn the active call for heat on and off and the ability to switch it in time blocks on the schedule would be fantastic0 -
I recently needed to open all thermostats myself for heating maintenance, which had me jumping through the UI to set the offset to -10. There are similar ask under "prevent TRVs from getting stuck" and "percent open".
Between "offset" and "Zone controller: independent" this feature is practically there already [at least for homes that don't get above 35C]. All that it would take is to expose these two settings under smart schedule and everyone would be happy.
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The use of "No Zone" controller is one way to sort of trick this but if this won't work you still want to heat this room on a scheduled basis where it actually turns on the heat.
Something that could work, and is more adaptable for more use cases is to add a "stand-alone" checkbox to a time-block.
When the checkbox is ticked, the SRT basically works without talking to a "zone controller" It will try to remain the heat set in the time-block when other rooms call for heat.
This way, you still have the ability to control the heater with the SRT and and heat just that room if the checkbox is unticked
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@Epy this why i suggested "Scheduled Call for Heat" see here https://community.tado.com/en-gb/discussion/15293/scheduled-call-for-heat
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@Rob can you pass this suggestion on to your dev team ? https://community.tado.com/en-gb/discussion/15293/scheduled-call-for-heat
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Adding one more comment / use case here. I just installed a circulator since the one that comes with the boiler is not sufficient for the entire installation, if all radiators need flow. For good reasons, said circulator works with a simple temp sensor rather than firing with the boiler; if temp exceeds a threshold (i.e. 45C) the circulator kicks in, if not it idles away.
The problem is that during night hours the following happens. 1) boiler heats water to 68C 2) tado warms bedrooms 3) bedrooms hit 19C 4) tado shuts off valves 5) circulator pushes flow through bypass and a couple of always-on radiators without a smart SRT until water temp drops below threshold.
Unfortunately step-5 takes a bit too long and the noise is a little bit too annoying. Whereas if there were a simple setting of "radiator default position OPEN" in the smart schedule
a. noise would be lower (it's one thing for water to flow through pipes, another to flow through big radiators)
b. heat would dissipate faster (lower noise levels for a shorter time!)
c. heat would dissipate in the bedrooms rather than (just) the bypass systems and the bathrooms, which is what I actually want during night.
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@XKRMonkey honestly I just shared this in the really off chance that Tado can see the light and appreciate that being able to manipulate the SRT default position (as part of smart schedule no less) rather than have it default to "flow off" is not a hack but more about user control.
Personally I don't see this happening (they seem to have seized any serious feature investment in their firmware). I just bought a Shelly-1, will connect it to my circulator and do some lightweight Tado API integration along the lines of (if heat is OFF turn on circulator; else turn on circulator)
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