Hot water monitoring & Tado hot water tank thermostat
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Urgh.. Every time I convince myself to move my home heating and water to Tado I find a reason not to.. And a general feeling that Tado support and development is not responsive to the customer base.
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@dws1900 it's not complicated when your focus markets have a 50-70mm pipe full of hot water circulated through a building and you're simply diverting a small percentage of that flow through a radiator or a water store. The amount of energy you suck from that feed is very small and so the system works as designed. The whole of the UK is a corner case in that each home has a small domestic boiler and not a community heating supply.
Domestic boilers in the UK have slowly evolved and now have some rudimentary features that improve energy utilisation, but truthfully the internal boiler "smarts" need to be largely disabled when connected to an external "truly smart" controller in order to get the best and most efficient outcomes. The controlling device should be making decisions about flow (pump on/off), alongside the schedule requirements and impact of a shared S-Plan or Y-plan pipe run that also feeds hot water stores, or a larger boiler with separate CH and HW functions. They need to accommodate the fact that secondary heat sources may be available to the wet heat source (log burner, water solar, electric solar, heat pump or all four) and work to combine these sources efficiently based on accurate cost models for each source. This is complex, and although the tools now exist in more usable and accessible formats, its still not easy or cheap to deliver a service that can actually operate with such a wide remit.
This also creates a secondary problem - the consumer. Installation or programming errors leads to poor results and bad press.
All of this means that communities of power users feel alienated because they see further than the commercial elements considered by company boards and shareholders. Ultimately, this kind of system is really a community project that needs to reach a level or maturity before it can be commercialised.
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I couldn't put the argument any better than yours.
I am awaiting a new tank thermostat from another source, which uses a thermocouple and a digital readout to replace my pathetic honeywell device. I have mentioned the issue to the company involved in the hope that there may be a market. The stumbling block I foresee is knowing the protocol between Tado and a third party device. Netatmo did this with their weather station devices, encrypted the data.
If Tado and the third party could come to an arrangement, then the many users who do not fiddle with their system, have the basic system, probably not going to have any other source of water heating would have the final bit in what is a very good system. Another point is if DIY's are messing with the wiring and operation of their systems have they considered the insurance issues?
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The whole market shape needs to evolve:
Manufacturers like Tado need to evolve past glorified mechanical timeclocks - this is no longer a timeclock-replacement industry, it's a specialised eco and household budget driven technology platform that is bigger than swapping a mercury switch thermostat and a legacy boiler timer.
Trades need to evolve - Electricians and boiler installers need to become smart-tech savvy to ADVISE customers on how to embrace and leverage the new tech. There needs to be a move away from "Price to swap your boiler missus ?" and a move towards consulting with the householder about changes to plumbing to get the best outcomes. (Side note, British Gas installed a replacement boiler for my 80+ year old parents a year ago - they put in a swanky new ECO-friendly Vaillant which is lovely, but didn't bother to mention that they needed to install TRV valves on the radiators and adjust the pipe runs if they wanted to actually realise any real savings from their new Eco boiler, so now have another significant cost and disruption in order to drain and change things so that they can use energy/cost saving products).
Finally, there need to be better controls on new-builds to ensure that solar energy (water and electricity) and smart technologies are built in at the outset on new housing stock to encourage take-up and increase awareness of the values of these things generally. Stop calling them eco-homes as if they wear sandals and glue themselves to roads, and start talking about them as if they are the "norm".
Product vendors such as Tado could and should be driving this kind of change.
XKRMonkey
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I have found a company in Germany that has a system for monitoring the temp of your thermal store etc and can fire up the boiler when need to top it up. Then the tado extension kit is connected to the system as a room thermostat to activate the heating pump. They have an app which apparently seems to integrate with tado. I haven’t yet got it up and running but it will be interesting to see how it works.
Check out the last image on this page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ionicframework.robinwood389999
I have bought an all in one pump group to connect my heating circuit to which includes weather control (since I can’t use that with the boiler as all it does is top up my thermal store) along with their clima 600 controller with WLAN unit. It’s due to be fitted sometime in the next couple of weeks.0 -
@SwedinScotland you may find this thread of interest:
https://community.tado.com/en-gb/discussion/comment/45406#Comment_45406
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Hi
New to the forum - had our Tado since last summer.Generally pleased with it the stat seems to have a low hysteresis compared with our old Hive system.
What I don’t understand is why the ap on hot water gives a temperature option without a thermostat on the tank.
Also we regularly leave our house for 3 nights and days per week so the Away facility is used - it does not control the hot water to off when away. No Problem with a combi but like the others and very many I’ll households we have a HWST and a header in the loft.
I think a smart tank stat is all that’s needed to make the system best in class0 -
Tado doesn’t heat my hot water at all in ‘away’ mode.
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@Peteoddcar it sounds like you have the Tado connected on a digital connection, in which case you won’t have any control over a hot water tank at all unless that’s also connected digitally.0
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You can add an element of control to the hot water in "away" mode with tado. Click on hot water>schedule and the away tab. You'll find an option to keep hot water active even when tado is in away mode (got caught out with this before as well and had to adjust so now hot water schedule is followed even when in away mode).
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Drayton do a wireless cylinder stat called a Drayton Digistat + CRF , maybe something similar to this could be made to Talk to Tado.? It feels the temperature of the cylinder bare metal via a sensor(thermistor) which is physically wired into an adjustible thermostat, the thermostat then talks by radio frequency to a receiver wired into the 230V electrics. Why can Tado not make a similar set-up?
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I would imagine that Tado don't see any profit in it.
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A wired tank thermostat already connects to your boiler, it should open the cfh circuit. Either directly or through your 3 position changeover valve.
This will either bypass the hw circuit and maintain ch. Or turn off the boiler if you only have hw selected.
Why would you need tado to control this function? It's already part of your system?
I could understand if Tado was powering an immersion heater. But again they have a preset range, so a timer function is all that is required to schedule it.
I was thinking the same myself a year or two ago but a plumber asked me what benefit there would be other than knowing the temperature. The boiler control circuit would need a connection to the tado sensor or a bypass to prevent a conflict if there was a mismatch, or a permanent heating condition if the tado unit lost connection during a hot water cycle.0 -
@Chapstar37 (also @Peteoddcar)
The tank stat you are talking about is not exactly precise - and is generally there to be a fail safe, rather than “the pre-defined temperature” of the hot water.
The question here is simpler - “What temperature is my hot water right now ?” If I want a shower immediately, am I going to get into the shower and find that the hot tank is too cool because I am between heating cycles and the water has been used for other things? If for some reason the Tado fails to operate the hot water heating cycle, how do I switch to immersion (or another control mechanism) semi/fully automatically ?
A blind time clock is NOT “smart” water heating, and completely heating the whole water tank isn’t necessarily efficient either, neither is allowing it to cool for 12 hours between heating cycles. If you have alternative mechanisms to heat (such as Solar or Solar PV) then you may not even need to run a Tado heating cycle on some days. If only one person needs a shower, then probably not any need to heat the whole water store fully.
I personally don’t run my hot water from Tado, I run it using a TH10 or TH16 from Sonoff, with the temperature probe inserted into the insulation of the tank, against the metal tank skin. The tank cutoff thermostat is set to around 75^ but the Sonoff uses timed automatic scenes to take the tank back up to my preferred ~55^ once it drops below 48^ (which is still warm enough for 2 people to get decent showers or to wash up by hand). The cost of the device and thermostat sensor is around £25-30 on Amazon (the TH10 is sufficiently since it’s only energising the tank valve, just like the Tado demand feed), and it gives me useful historic data for actual heating cycle times, I can override to boost hot water anytime from the home control app or just from the device itself. I have written elsewhere on this forum about how to do this. Of course I can still also boost from Tado app, although I see no point. I can also periodically boost hot water in either of my tanks to 75^ to perform a sanitisation cycle, all is in my control and all is visible to me.
Sadly, the UK market which specifically would benefit from this kind of integration isn’t big enough for tado, so they are unlikely to bother (like everything else suggested or requested in this forum) so if you want more than a time clock you have to roll your own.
XKRMonkey
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The OP asked for a solution, I pointed out that there are similar things around. Whether Tado want to invest time and money in it is a different thing.
Some people actually do want to see and or control the hot water temperature digitally and not just the central heating air temperature.
A Tado room sensor will be an electronic device with a thermistor in it that talks to other electronic devices. An electronic device with a longer thermistor wire could be strapped to a cylinder and electronically or via other means control s or y plan valves.
This is entirely possible and not rocket science.
For example, Vaillant do a VR65 control centre with a VR10 thermistor and it connects to Tado. It doesn't show the current HW temp on the app (it shows the target HW temp) but it controls it digitally on the app and is not just an on/off value.
If the system is an s-plan then it should have a bypass as described in the boiler manufacturer's instructions, a y-plan may not need a bypass as one port is always open, again it depends what the boiler's instruction manual says. If all rads have TRV's or smart valves then even a y-plan may require a bypass if all paths are blocked in heating mode.
A basic mechanical cylinder thermostat with a bi-metallic strip connected to an advanced system that monitors everything else, when you take a step back and think about it, could seem a bit silly.
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Once a day my heat pump warms 800 litres of water in a polyethylene tank with a large screw-on lid to 45°C max, from which the house is heated. Domestic Hot Water is also instantly preheated from this tank via a heat exchanger (no legionella risk), before an instant electric heater raises it to a higher temperature if necessary.
The heat pump is controlled by a SmartLife temperature controller:
MOES WiFi 2.4GHz Smart Monitoring Temperature Humidity Switch Module Dual Relay Controller With 103T Waterproof Temperature Sensor Kit, Work with Tuya Smart Life/Alexa/Google home, 15A https://amzn.eu/d/d3b4083
But I always wanted the tank temperature and graph to display on the Tado app. So I put a Tado smart temperature switch in a watertight butty box with some polyester fleece on top, and shoved it into the tank, where the water level is such that it’s jammed under the top of the tank half submerged in the warm water. Although the tank is insulated with foil clad PIR board, the plastic tank lid allows radio contact.
It works a treat, and agrees with the NTC of the Moes controller to within 1°C
If the box lets any moisture in the humid reading will rise, but as the lid is above the water line, this seems unlikely.
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I do believe this is what Tado told me to do when I asked about it a few years ago. Basically add the tank as another zone. I never did it as like you say strapping a wireless thermostat to the side of the tank didn't sound like the best solution to me.....
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