The Big Idea Archive

13435363840

Comments

  • https://community.tado.com/en-gb/discussion/1412/dark-mode
  • This well thought out suggestion would address one of Tado's worst missing features. The ability to control and measure DHW energy usage. Come on Tado, it can't be that difficult to match radiator control and reporting with the same feature set for DHW. Look forward to being able to beta test this for you soon!
  • Hi!

    Why its not possible to open the Valve to the max without looking to the room temperature.

    It would be helpful to dry wet clothes on the radiator. (or somthing like that)

  • No @rischiav it's not. I asked tado. They can, however, set a maximum temperature for you. I asked them to set it on 60 degrees Celsius, via their chat support. Which they just confirmed they did.

  • I think there would a huge efficiency improvement in my system if I were able to set tolerance levels for each room, similar to the existing tolerance levels that can be set for AC systems in Tado.

    For example, if I set all my rooms in my house to 20c and to have a tolerance 0.5c, this would mean that each room would not personally ask the boiler to turn on until they drop to 19.5c or less. But IF the boiler turns on for another reason (e.g. another room needs heat) then each room would take advantage of that if they are below their target.

    A more specific example: All rooms set to 20c with tolerance of 0.5c.

    Room 1: 19.6c (does not ask boiler to turn on as it is in the tolerance level, but it will heat up if the boiler was turned on for another reason)

    Room 2: 19.8c (does not ask boiler to turn on as it is in the tolerance level, but it will heat up if the boiler was turned on for another reason)

    Room 3: 19.3c (DOES ask boiler to turn on as it has fallen below the tolerance level).

    Now that room 3 has fallen below the tolerance level, the boiler will turn on. Rooms 1 and 2 will jump at this opportunity and given the boiler is now ALREADY on because of room 3, they will take advantage of this and warm back up to target temperature.


    The reason I think this would make a huge difference (in my home at least) is that each room seems to individually ask for heat when they drop even a small amount below their target. For example, it is not uncommon to see this sequence of events:

    1. All but room 1 are at their target temperature, so boiler turns on to raise temp in JUST room 1.
    2. Boiler turns off as room 1 hits its temp
    3. 1 min later room 2 has now dropped below its temperature, so boiler turns back on to raise temp in JUST room 2
    4. Boiler turns off as room 2 has hit its temp
    5. 1 min later room 3 has now dropped below its temp, so boiler turns back on to raise temp in JUST room 3
    6. Boiler turns off as room 3 has hit its temp
    7. By this time, room 1 has now slightly fallen below temp again, so the whole cycle is repeated. The boiler is basically only ever heating 1 room at a time.


    I think maybe some newer boilers can set different heats/speeds based on demand, so the above example might not be too inefficient for modern boilers, but my boiler is either "full power" or "no power", and currently it basically spends 90% of the day turned on, but typically only to ever heat 1 single room at a time. It is WAY less efficient than no smart system at all :(


    Details of my system incase anyone has any suggestions other than the feature request above:

    1. Tado Hot water and boiler control
    2. 3 rooms that contain both a Tado TRV and a Tado wireless sensor/thermostat
    3. 1 room with just a Tado TRV.
    4. A few less used rooms with "dumb" TRVs - the doors remain closed on these rooms to isolate them from the smarter rooms. As Tado currently has my heating on virtually 24/7, these rooms stay at their desired temperature without any intervention.


  • @amfio are you aware that you can decouple your smart TRVs from the main zone so that they do not call for heat? In independent mode a smart TRV will open its valve when the room needs heat, but it will not make a call for heat to the boiler. Later, when the main zone calls for heat the room with the independent smart TRV will heat up and it will continue to until the main zone stops calling for heat, or the smart TRV closes its valve.

    Your comment about the boiler power output not matching the load is very true for older boilers, even for new modulating boilers it can still be a problem. A boiler rated at 18KW can usually modulate down to a minimum of 5KW. The typical heat output for a radiator is 1-1.5KW. For the boiler to operate efficiently it will still need 3 to 4 radiators in the heating circuit to be calling for heat

  • amfio
    amfio
    edited February 2021

    I was aware that that is an option, although I haven't actually experimented with it yet. It sounds like it might be possible to get an improvement by switching to independent mode so I will give it a go, thanks! but I still end up along the same line of thinking, I would want it to remain "independent" until maybe it drops below a certain point and then for it to decide "nope, I don't want to be independent any more, this is too cold, I am going to ask for more heat!", which ultimately I suppose is no different to my original suggestion of needing some kind of tolerance for rooms.


    I was not aware that even modern boilers had similar problems with matching power to load - if a radiator is only 1-1.5kw then my system is probably crazy inefficient when it decides to heat just 1 or 2 radiators at a time with a Suprima 50L 15kw! That would probably explain excessive pipe noise too.

    Thanks again for the info and suggestion! Although to clarify, I still think there is merit in my feature suggestion!

  • I would like this too. I want to see how much of the dats its actually asking for heating.

  • I used Drayton valves too. If you look around you can find places which sell just the body so saving a little cash.

  • @MetalNinja just saw this in Care & Protect..

    The Heating Activity would make a great widget.



  • amfio
    amfio
    edited February 2021

    I am also experiencing exactly this, where the heating is on basically 24/7 but at any given time it is only really heating 1 or 2 radiators!


    Before I found your suggestion, I have made a feature request myself similar to your 2nd option as I feel that is the better engineered solution to this problem. My suggestion was slightly different: each room would have a tolerance (e.g. 1 or 2c below target) and the room will only ask for heat if it goes below that tolerance.. but IF another room happens to ask for heat, it would take advantage of that and heat up at the same time.


    As a simpler/quicker fix for Tado to implement, I feel your first option of having a configurable minimum amount of time for the boiler could work! Setting it to e.g. 30minutes would have the effect of allowing all the rooms to cool off a little before the boiler turns on and can then heat several rooms all at once (instead of basically one at a time, which is what I am currently seeing!).


    Also just to add that someone suggested something that might help alleviate the issue: set some of your rooms to be a "independent" heating zone, which means they will only heat up when your other zones requests heat. E.g. lets say you aren't fussy about your bedroom zone maintaining a perfect temperature, and you are happy for it to be a bit more variable, you can set your bedroom to be "independent" and then is will only heat up when the boiler happens to be on for one of the other zones. The downside to this is that if the rest of your house is at temperature, but somehow your bedroom drops significantly compared to the rest of the house, your boiler will not come on, even if your bedroom was experiencing a blizzard.

    In my opinion, the only real solution is to have logic where the rooms/zones all have tolerances, and the boiler will only come on when multiple rooms need heat at the same time.

  • App notification for open window detected
  • Please carry out a search of the various sections of the Community Forum.
  • I loooove Tado, and the away feature is important, but it could be nicely extended to help save more heat.

    t,ex, 1/2 hour before I leave the house, I would like to set it away because the residual heat in the system is enough, and then let the system to go to auto-away when the timer is gone.

    I can manually do this right now, but I often forget to put it in auto away mode, so the hous is cold when I’m home.

    alternatively it could be a geofencing trigger, so I made some action manually (including away) when I had decided to leave, when I left the home-area it was set to auto-away automatically?

  • I've a four-floor house, and a single internet bridge is not enough to provide good connectivity across all the devices in the different floors. In fact, some devices spends more time unconnected than connected.
    Tado should have had a solution for this potential problem since the conception of the system, but that's not the case.
    One of the solutions could be having a secondary device/bridge that repeats the signal to/from far apart devices, whether you call it internet bridge or not.
  • GrayDav4276
    GrayDav4276 ✭✭✭
    edited February 2021
    Hi @RamonCar,
    I'm not trying to be critical.....but if you do a search in the "Suggestions, Ideas and Improvements" section, you will see that this (or very very similar) has already been suggested on numerous occasions.

    https://community.tado.com/en-gb/discussion/4068/important-please-search-for-your-request-before-opening-a-new-thread#latest

    People are actually "diminishing" the value of their suggestion by opening "new" threads for the same idea. If there are 6 or 7 open threads on the same idea and each only gets about 10ish votes.....then Tado will not even give it a second thought.
    Just look at the votes cast for suggestions that Tado is still to actively consider and you'll see what I mean.

    Maybe a MODERATOR could join together similar threads into 1 to give more impact to the number of votes cast.
  • When overriding the schedule the valve should flick back to the schedule at the next schedule change time. At the moment if I turn it up it stays there until I manually put it back to the schedule. 

    Example.

    Schedule is set to 10pm-6am -10 degrees, then set to 21 from 6am-10pm.

    If I change the heating manually to 23 (because I'm want a bit more heat in a specific room) the radiator valve will now be fixed at that temp till i turn it back, rather than flicking back to schedule at 10pm when it would have normally gone down to 10 degrees.

  • Hello @cragfast, you can already do that. Go to app, select the device of the secondary room, select area controller, and say that the device is stand alone. By unlinking the device from the area controller (in simple scenarios the main thermostat), it will not be able to turn heating on; while it will continue to open and close the radiator valve according to programmed temperature and ambient temperature. If there is heat on the pipes (because other device connected to the area controller turned heating on), then it will flow through the secondary room. Otherwise, no.
  • Hello @GrayDav4276 , really apologize.
    My only excuse is that I'm rather new on the forum, and that I was directly forwarded to the post page by the support team. Fully agree on your suggestion. For sure I'm going to search for the already opened one to upvote it.
    Thanks s lot for the advice.
  • samd
    samd ✭✭✭

    @PaulMainstone Have you not set the room to 'until next auto change'? Settings>Rooms & Devices>select room arrow.

  • I agree with all you, but I have another idea, not based on tolerance but in prediction.
    Is supposed that tado use PID prediction algorithm. Then it would be possible to sync some zones that are in the descendant ramp of the measure temperature to be heated at the same time.
    Other factor is pump running time. My boiler keeps the pump on some minutes after the boiler ir off, and there is hot water in the circuit that can be reused without the need to start the boiler again. I would suggest to have a sensor on the output pipe of the boiler that can be used to determine if boiler needs to be powered on.
  • Hey @RamonCar,

    No problem 😎 you're welcome 👍✔️
  • Hi @PaulMainstone,

    As @samd said.....you need to check your settings...and set accordingly.
  • When changing the temperature through the tado app the thermostat does a nice animation to let you know that the temperature has been changed, but when you do it through the home app it doesn’t do the animation.
  • Graph to show how long and what times the boiler was on and off on a particular day would be really usefull
  • This is what I am hoping to get too. I don't need all access on the watch, just the possibility to say yes or no to the Window detection and the home/away notification. So Yes please!!

  • Ah thanks - i didn't spot that!

  • I would go one step further and expect a connected device like a tado to constantly monitor, analyze and improve. It shouldn't be too hard to learn from heating a room how long it takes and take into account things like humidity and outside influences

  • I would like to have this one too.

  • hi @Robbie ,

    I'm not a Homekit user........I'm an Android user.........so I don't really understand your issue.....but I am interested to find out exactly what you mean. So, could you expand on what your'e after ??🤔 If you don't want to waste the space in this thread....feel free to send me a message.

    Cheers

This discussion has been closed.