The Big Idea Archive
Comments
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If you mean a standard TRV valve body on to which the Tado smart TRV is attached these are already available. If you mean the Tado smart TRV then it is mainly white but does have a chrome screw fitting it uses to attach to the main valve body.
If you mean an option for the main Tado smart TRV body itself to be chrome then it would be worth clarifying your post.
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That would be nice. 1+ from me too.
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Hi,
I like warm towels after a shower or bath even in the summer. I currently have my bathroom TRV set to 21c at 6.30am for a 7.30ish shower and run on for 3 hours so they actually dry as well. If the detected room temp is 21 or higher and I put a wet towel on the radiator, or if the 21c is reached 5 minutes after coming on for example it would never warm them prior to showering or continue to dry them when finished.
I think a great improvement would be an 'always heat' option, per device/zone, which basically ignores the room temp (even in away mode)
I'm in the UK so absolutely zero chance of ambiently warmed or dried towels even the summer! 😀
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I believe some people put heated towel rails on the same circuit as their hot water tank rather than their heating circuit. This might give a similar result.
I am considering simply not having a TRV on the heated towel rail so whenever any room calls for heat it will get some.
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I don't have a HWT.
The 'problem' with the 2nd option is it will never come on in the summer, because no where else will have a need for heat.
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Would it be possible to have an administrator login level so you can block individual rooms from manual adjustments at the radiator?0
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Yep, I have open loop, ON/OFF control of my hot water from Tado, I sort of have temperature control via the bimetallic thermostat.
Why not accurate specific temperature control using a thermocouple?
I could set a specific temperature, within safe bands, all the existing algorithms within Tado could be adapted; ‘away’ mode, weather adaptation time to heat etc...
We could even get really clever, rather than heat to >65DegC everyday to avoid microbiological growth, we could do it less often, perhaps weekly. How much money and energy would that save, whilst maintaining safe bug free hot water?0 -
I had the misfortune to be burgled recently, but I was able to tell the police the exact time that I was broken into, as the Tado graph fell away rapidly when the door was smashed in.
It would seem only a small enhancement to the 'window open' functionality to allow a user to elect to be notified when the property is vacant but the temperature is rapidly falling (possible intruder), or rapidly rising (possible fire). I'd like that option.0 -
Just upgraded to Auto Assist; I do have a fan in the bathroom ceiling but I also crack the window.... and with Auto Assist the bathroom rad automatically gets turned off!
Something is absolutely needed to override/ignore Away Mode/Auto Assist in these cases!
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My radiator is linked in to the hot water tank and has a TADO TRV on it - I just turn the valve manually, or up the temperature for an hour or two on the app, to get towels dried .
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Yeah as I said my rad is on the heating as I don't have HWT. Even if I did, re-plumbing it would cost way more than I'm supposedly going to save with Tado 🤣
Doesn't what you're doing kind of defeat the automated purposes, especially from Auto Assist. This would be easy to fix by having a setting per-zone like 'Follow Schedule Only', because I want my bathroom to only come on and off because of its schedule. Not because of away mode, or open window, or current room temp.
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We are new to this system and found the same thing. Heating starts anywhere between 4 and 5 in the morning to heat up for a 7 o'clock target temperature. I reaches that temperature consistently 1-2 hours before target. A 'smart algorithm' is supposed to control this, but we see no improvement.
Support has now tweaked 'something in our account' - which doesn't sound too re-assuring for the 'smart algorithm' functionality.
We chose Tado over competitors hoping that this pure-player would ensure development of functionalities continuously - rather than renowned brands like Honeywell or Bosch - who are more likely to get sidetracked with new heating hardware in other parts of their business. If we would have known that basic functionalities like these are not resolved for years now, that makes me seriously doubt or choice.
(Better yet: we have a whole system of TVR's to be installed shortly, over and above the thermostat we have now... second guessing that plan as we speak!)
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I am not a plumber but I believe the following applies.
All the hot water tanks I have seen have had a local temperature sensor on which you set the target temperature. These then send a simple satisfied (or not) signal back to the boiler. These are purely analogue devices and totally dumb.
Other than sending a signal to the boiler to say they have reached the target temperature you would configure them to ensure the hot water is not too hot to avoid the risk of scalding.
Typically you would only heat up the hot water once or twice a day (via a separate timer programmer) and rely on the hot water tank being sufficiently big and sufficiently well insulated to last in between.
I can certainly see the logic to what you suggest and perhaps if plumbing was being 'invented' today your suggestion would be the approach used.
Note: The Tado Extension unit would in this case receive the signal from the above mentioned hot water tank sensor and use that to determine whether to turn on the boiler.
Also if rather than the above which assumes you have a separate hot water tank you actually have a 'combination' boiler then this does not apply at all as hot water is heated in real time when you turn on a tap.
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You can already do that!
Go to ‘smart schedule’, click on a time block, click ‘advanced’, disable ‘location based control’
You might have to do this for all time blocks in that room0 -
Put active LED on extension unit to indicate if thermostat/TRV are calling for demad
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checking in to report the same issue. Even my 10+ year old chronoterm modulation is better in doing this job!
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Would be essential to have more IFTTT triggers when the thermostats request heat and stop requesting heat.
Like: thermostat requests heat / thermostat needs no more heat
I want to adjust the underfloor heating’s valves but without these i can only set fix values (above/below temperature threshold) which is a fixed value and less than ideal0 -
It/and provide the ability to see in the app what the current status is for the extension kit/which rad valve or water heating is calling for the boiler.
I have a very cold house right now with no ability to see the status if the extension kit, the only indicator is a click with the hot water on but no noise from the heating side. Could really do with knowing what the rad valves think vs the thermostat and the extension kit.0 -
Have an emergency heating over ride where the extension kit works on heating during set times if there is an issue with tado or firmware update issue.
I have an issue where the rad valves and thermostat appear to not be calling for heating or the extension kit is not receiving the request properly but no ability to over ride. The house is now stupid cold while i wait for support to look into the issue.0 -
Provide an update log when each device is updated, what was the previous firmware (known good state) and what is the new version.
Provide a rollback button next to the update so that if an issue arises it can be rolled back.
If an issue the arises after the update the user knows what has changed.0 -
I have a room thermostat connected to an extension box and 3 radiator themostats. I can see the graphs for each device and when they require heating and how much (1,2 or 3 stripes). Some of them are overlapping and some are not. It would be nice for seeing a graph, a histogram perhaps, showing the intensity of the heating during the day.
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Hello
Not sure what you mean by overlapping - it can only be one level of heat or am I missing something?
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The way the valves on my radiators are installed make that the characters on the display of the knobs appear upside down. An option to inverse the display would be handy.0
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During the day room1 shows 0,1,2 or 3 stripes fo heating. The smart thermostats in 3 other rooms have all their own smart shedule and for each of them in the graphs I can see 0-3 stipes. But there is not een easy way to see that at certain moments 2,3 of 4 of them require heating at the same time. It is not, because room1 shows 1 stripe and SRT2 shows 2 stripes that the heater is working at full power (3 stripes) because it's the same heating circuit. In fact, it's the extension box who receives through the internet gateway the commands for heating. This is not how much degrees, but how much power (temperature of water) is needed.
So I should find it interesting to see a global representation, perhaps rather a historgram, of the reactions of the extension box and thus the heater during the day. In fact, saving energy must be done by the heater. Of course, Tado has not that information, but they have the information of the device that is commanding the heater and this is the extension box.
If someone should see that 80% of the time the extension box is asking for full power, then he should look for the reason of this. I'm happy to say that, after switching from an old system to Tado this is certainly not the case with me.
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Makes sense now - thanks for that - would be worthwhile.
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Sounds as if you have bought vertical rather than horizontal devices (or the other way round) - will your seller exchange them?
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Idoodle you can turn off Window Detection for individual Radiators.0
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In the Summer my radiators are OFF.
I have portable fans and coolers in rooms where there is a TRV.
Its sensor still reads the temperature.
It would be amazing if TADO could link via IFTTT or a skill of some kind to a 3rd party app to control a smart plug and turn on those coolers during periods where the temperature is too hot.
E.g.
Bedroom radiator detects 24 degrees
A setting in the Tado App has radiator to off but a link enabled to send a power on function to a smart switch (via a companion app) to run the portable fan in that room.
Alternatively Tado could introduce their own devices linked to existing Temperature.sensors or containing their own onboard sensor.0 -
I recently changed my boiler/heater and decided to buy a Baxi Duo-Tec+ 33GA which has native OpenTherm support.
I bought a Tado Smart Thermostat and the Extension Kit, to connect wirelessly my thermostat to the heater/boiler which is located in a different room.
Following Tado tech-support advice, I decided to use low voltage connectivity with OpenTherm.
Baxi implementation of OpenTherm is quite rich, and Baxi sells an optional remote control device which is certified for this boiler. This remote control device speaks Baxi OpenTherm+ and just connects with two wires (polarity is not important) to contacts 1 and 2 available on M2 connector (the long one). Baxi remote control device gets power from the same two wires. Once remote control device is connected, the heater control panel is mostly disabled, and all controls are given to the remote control device, which bidirectionally talks to the heater control board.
I did not buy this remote control device. I connected Tado according to the specs, removed the bridge connection from the M1 conntector on the boiler (where the open relay / timer should go) and performed configuration thru the smart thermostat interface.
After this setup, I got no errors on tado, and tado mobile phone interface shows an icon in the main menu where I can control hot water temperature. I could see that the temperature set from the app went thru the opentherm link to the boiler, but hot water was not working.
I also realized that Tado does not allow any control on the hot water temperature going to the heaters. When you connect tado via OpenTherm, you lose control of the water temperature going to the heaters, because that setup is not anymore available from the Baxi panel too. Speaking with Tado support technician I understood that Tado can control the hot water temperature in the heating circuit, but this setup is not available to the customer, and only is accessible to Tado support, and defined in the cloud back-end application. Apparently, this temperature is independent from the boiler/heater model, and does not consider if the system is a condensing heater, which allows, with lower delta temperatures, the maximum energy efficiency.
Given these conditions, and having no real benefit in controlling the hot water temperature, I decided to switch my configuration to open relay mode, disconnecting the wires from M2 connector and moving to M1 relay, changing the connections in the extension kit to the relay side, and reprogramming the system from the thermostat panel according to the relay connection
With this setup I can easily control from the Baxi panel the heating water temperature, as well as the hot water temperature in the faucets. I also get all the benefits of Tado app with its connection with Weather forecast, away settings, preheating, etc...
I think that this setup is far more energy efficient, in my configuration, that the OpenTherm connection.
Best regards
Marco Guardigli
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During my experimentating with OpenTherm protocol connection to Baxi, i managed to have Baxi board stuck in a Error 83 situation, which was quite nasty, and the only way to reset the system was to temporarily connect the original remote control device. Luckily my plumber -who is a certified baxi specialist- was patient enough to allow these experiments.
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