Give users access to the advanced configuration parameters
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@User1234 it's back! It said "content removed" yesterday and today and your user looked like it had been deleted o.O Weird.
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Talking to "support" is really futile endeavour.
I responded, little frustrated, to the earlier mentioned message:
"I'm sorry, I don't understand why you sent me that.
Can we get back to my request? Or do you mean that short cycling ufh pump and boiler is somehow benefitial and refuse to help?"
Tado employee wrote back:
"Hello,
As you have explained that non stop cycling of your heat pump is detrimental for your system.
The Smart Thermostat will turn the heating on until the room temperature is just above your desired set-point. Then, it’ll keep the heating off until the temperature starts to drop.
In this way, tado° prevents your heating system from switching on and off too often, helping to protect your boiler from excessive wear and tear, and making energy consumption more efficient."1 -
Yeah, I think they just use a copy paste response without even bothering to look at the issue. Wonder if someone from the development team may look into that and address those issues.0
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@Irek85 They gave me that copy paste as well initially. The "Tado prevents your heating system from switching on and off too often, helping to protect your boiler from excessive wear and tear" line is the most infuriating because it literally does the complete opposite out of the box and we have to beg to fix it. Bordering on gaslighting lol.
Wait until they hit you with a good ol "Tado is working as intended" when it clearly isn't based on the evidence you see with your own eyes by just so happening to live in your own house 🙃
@mperedim This is another gripe I have with Tado, I have been intending to start a new suggestion for this as well to show actual boiler activity when in relay mode. The heat demand is almost entirely useless in relay. Tado should show when the boiler is actually firing and denote that on the history graphs as well. Even the dumbest of dumb thermostats will tell you when the boiler is on but we have to go into the boiler room to see what's actually happening or make guesses on the history graph 🙃
Perhaps Tado has been designed almost entirely for opentherm/ebus etc and all these issues we're facing on relay mode were not considered at all.
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Very odd, but perhaps the post was removed whilst they decided whether I was going to be a problem for them or not!
I'm still perusing my options, but I'm now becoming keener on the idea of the Secure Meters H3747 (Horstmann) 4 channel programmer. It's not cheap at around €250 including the wifi adapter, but it specifically mentions it can be adjusted to avoid the short-cycling issue that I have. It seems Secure Meters are not frightened to let the owner of the device adjust the product they own, themselves. It may not be as user-friendly as the tado, but I am technically minded enough to work through anything it throws my way just as long as I can adjust it to suit my system, which it appears I can. Secure Meters has an excellent customer service team too (I am assured).
I'm sure tado is good enough for many, perhaps most systems in use today. The problem lies in the 1 or 2 percent of owners with less conventional systems. A jack of all trades is master of none. I was perfectly willing to work on the tado system to get it functioning, but all my requests for assistance went unanswered/ignored by tado. And when support goes quiet, I have to assume it's not possible to help me. The chat function was useless for me too. I would always prefer a company to actually tell me "sorry, this is not the right product for you" than ignore me and leave me trying to get something working that never will, but for some reason they feel that silence is better than honesty.
Tado has potential, and as I said, it probably works fine for most, but short-cycling an oil boiler is commonly known to increase fuel usage and wear & tear significantly. All oil boilers work better when burned for as few, long periods as possible as it's the initial firing that uses most oil. Since fitting tado I've never used so much oil, yet the app keeps telling me how much I've saved! With oil now €1 per litre here in Ireland, we have to do what we can to save the precious liquid, so thinking going "smart" would pay for itself in a year or so I had no issues paying out for a long-term gain. I did not expect it to nearly triple my oil usage.
Good luck to everyone suffering with issues, I hope eventually tado begin to listen to the customer that pays their wages rather than ignore them, but I'm afraid I am having to give up as I cannot afford to triple my oil usage for the 'convenience' of a smart system that clearly does not work with my boiler.
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@FreshFromTheGrave I think you might be right about OpenTherm:
"Perhaps Tado has been designed almost entirely for opentherm/ebus etc and all these issues we're facing on relay mode were not considered at all."Mine works really well using OpenTherm - ramps up the flow temperature in the morning when getting the house warm, and then reduces the flow temperature to maintain the temperature in the house to within +/- 0.1 degrees during the day. When I last had it serviced the engineer made a point of mentioning that the boiler works much better under OpenTherm control, but not many get installed that way. A 30-35% saving in gas use, and a much more comfortable house as a result too.
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+1 this needs to happen!1
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@User1234 We have three boilers serving eight large heating zones in one property at the charity.
Four of those zones are handled by a Horstmann H3747, purchased complete with its wireless adaptor. Each zone is assigned to a dedicated Horstmann channel to save me the trouble of rewiring control of the channels, from four into two. It was also adopted because we already had a Tado wireless receiver handling one boiler and at that time Tado was utterly silent when facing the question of how best to handle multiple boilers on the same account.
My experience with Horstmann was, well, not great and - after discussing my problems with one of the major heating installation firms in the country discovered that - my experience wasnt unusual:
- The app is rudimentary. It does allow one to set schedules for local, non-local, winter, summer mode. However, even with the wireless add on, Horstmann does not have a server which allows one to study whats happening when away from the building. It only works, even with its wireless interface, in the proximity of the building's wireless network. If that is all you need however, it will do.
- The second challenge is more serious. H3747s have been unreliable. You'll see a lot of H3747s turn up on Ebay, all of them new. There is a reason.
- We're on our third one now in 3 years. While it is really dead simple to install, we've had one breakdown every year since the original purchase. The last time it failed in mid winter when it was -6 centigrade and winds were 46mph. Horstmann took seven weeks to replace it. So we bought another H3747 so we didnt have to wait out that period in extreme cold and the replacement is now a standby device for the next time.
- The batteries can't be changed. Like Tado it doesnt use mains power to run its relays, it uses its internal battery, hence it can make a NOVOLT connection. But that battery seems to fail within a year to 18 months. Now, they have a seven year warranty and their support team are excellent, quick to give advice and help with diagnostics, but that 7 year warranty doesnt perform, because of the wait times in getting a replacement. Thats why so many replacement devices, still in their boxes, brand new, complete with an untainted warranty, are being sold on Ebay.
In comparison, we've found Tado far more reliable. They've saved us considerably on our running costs. The downside? Lack of telephone access to support when handling complicated problems difficult to describe in an email. And thats why we volunteer here.
@pcone One of our team took apart their thermostats and receivers to study the boards in 2013 and that geek was surprised to see how much protection was built into the board. They were designed to work well in relay mode and a lot of thought was given to the protection they give end users when a wiring error is made.
For the record - I dont work for them. Just another volunteer. Do I think the company can potentially offer end users app settings to reduce cycling? Yes.
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Thanks for the info.
It's sad really, it seems there are no heating controller manufacturers that understand no two heating systems are alike. It appears to me that they design something, test it in a handful of homes probably belonging to the designers and their families, and call it done and dusted when it works just about well enough.
I've said it before; tado is actually not awful, backed up by my professional boiler service chap who said if the burn time (and other advanced parameters) were available, it would be fine and up there with Nest and others. It's actually not that difficult to understand, things need fine tuning, what is odd is they just don't allow it, instead they seem happy to be called out on forums like this and take the flack. It begs the question; why?
You'd think one or two of tado's 22 investors would be asking the same thing, as if tado allowed fine-tuning, their overall ratings, and sales, would increase. Then maybe people wouldn't be so miffed when they're asked to pay a subscription just for using the app.
I've had a minor breakthrough in the control of my heating. As its a simple two zone system, switched by a wall thermostat, I've been wondering why I can't just replace the wall thermostat with a "no negative" wifi (light) switch like those made by Tapo. I can control it via the Tapo app and create schedules on the same app to turn the heat on and off. I can even Geofence it! Then I add KASA TRVs to all rads and control the individual room temperatures with those (using the same Tapo app). I can even create routines on Alexa. It solves the one issue tado won't sort; burn time. Gone will be the constant on-off-on-off…..of the tado wall thermostats, the KASA TRVs will control the temperatures the Tapo switch will simply have global control leaving the rest up to the boiler.
I can't see an issue with the plan yet, I'm just replacing a temperature controlled switch with a non-temperature controlled switch, there's no difference between a light switch and turning a wheel thermostat up to max, logic suggests it should work perfectly, in my case.
We'll see!
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We've been informed that Tado seem to agree the notion of offering someting for end users to handle. Just dont know when or what.
I got around the burn time by fitting a smart pump, set to operate on differential pressure rather than a constant pressure pump; and also replacing the zone valves with automatic bypass valves, carefully calibrated. Then waited a month. Things changed considerably after about 5 weeks.
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+1. My room consistently overheats and I'm just so tired of it. The officially given explanation of why tado would overheat make no sense to me at all since I don't have a boiler, instead I'm using district heating. There is not reason at all why tado keeps heating once the target temperature is reached, which it does all the time. I just want a way to adjust this myself so I can calibrate the controller. Please make it happen.
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@KaffeePause Have you contacted Support? How old is your thermostat? Is it still under warranty? If it is under warranty have it replaced immediately. If it isnt, use the app and force a temperature offset so that you are counteracting whatever it is thats forcing it to switch late.
If it is under warranty and support have been made aware, start a new thread and we'll try to help you escalate it. Shouldnt be happening.
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