Do I really need a smart thermostat?

Hi guys,

At the moment I have installed 5 smart radiator valves that are connected to the hub and I am looking to control my rads individually via the app, so am I right in thinking that I don’t really need smart thermostat,

what would I lose by not fitting a smart thermostat? Presume all the functionality is coming from the app and web


my boiler has a external controller and thermostat which I presume I would just leave on and set to full ( thermostat )

The thermostat cost me £120 and if it’s just going to sit there and read the temperature and allow me to adjust for that zone I would rather spend that money on more smart rad valves


thanks

Best Answer

Answers

  • samd
    samd ✭✭✭

    @m0v1em4n Hello. You would have nothing in your proposed system to turn off the boiler. Depending on the design of your system the boiler would remain firing until it's own thermostat turns it off having reached the set boiler water temperature. It would keep cycling that process. At least, that is what would happen with my layout. Yours may differ but worth checking.

  • m0v1em4n
    m0v1em4n
    edited January 2020

    Hi samd

    thanks for your reply

    Presumed that if the rads where shut down by the valves the boiler would shut off till one of the rads opened again, and the valves are controlled by the app via timers etc .

  • samd
    samd ✭✭✭

    @m0v1em4n Yes and as I mentioned it really does depend on your layout and boiler. My boiler, for example, requires either a pressure relief valve or one radiator has to remain permanently open. I have the latter due to pipe routing arrangements. But even without such, because the flow and return pipes are an open circuit and can still flow with all rads off, the boiler temperature would dictate when to cease firing.

  • hi

    I have one radiator (bathroom) that remains open, so would the smart thermostat switch the main boiler off with or without schedules

  • samd
    samd ✭✭✭

    OK you are similar to me. Just give you example showing my situation. I previously had a Nest Thermostat and Bluetooth Radstats and with one radiator permanently open, whenever any radstat called for heat, that open rad got heat and when the BT radstat closed, the open rad would continue to get heat until such time as the boiler reached its boiler water temperature setting. It would continue to cycle on and off until the Nest (in the hall and cold!) turned it off.

    With tado and every tado device having primacy, although the open rad still gets heat when a tado device requests it, as soon as the tado stops calling, the boiler switches off.

    Not sure what you mean about schedules.

  • hi same

    Thanks for your reply, I am presuming you can set smart schedules on the smart thermostat like you can on the rad stats , so you can switch to boiler on and off which would take care of the bathroom rad, still wait for Tado for my install wiring diagram so unable to check