Tado question

krooton · 29 Apr 2019 at 15:55

Our house currently has the following set up:

Danfoss thermostat in Master Bedroom, controlling a radiator with no control valve, as well as the heated towel radiator in the en suite.

Danfoss thermostat in the downstairs hallway, controlling all other radiators and the hot water.

Would a Tado V3 kit + 4 smart radiator valves be able to run 4 separate zones from within the app?

So have the main thermostat in the Master Bedroom, controlling the unvalved radiator and towel rail and hot water, and then the smart valves control the lounge, dining room, and other 2 bedrooms.

So 5 zones all controlled from within the app.

Also, how would any other radiators be controlled? As it stand, the total radiator count is 12:
Bedroom 1
Ensuite
Bedroom 2
Bedroom 3
Main bathroom
Upstairs hallway
Lounge x2
Downstairs hallway
Downstairs loo
Study
Dining room

krooton · 1 May 2019 at 14:31

No-one?

I thought Tado was the go-to smart thermo on here?

Yevgeny · 1 May 2019 at 15:09

I would just talk to Tado support. They were very helpful when I was installing thermostat. You can control multiple zones from one app. I only have one thermostat in living room, for now.

Kol · 1 May 2019 at 17:16

I've got the tado smart thermostat and then every radiator (except the towel rad in the bathroom) has a tado TRV. What I'd do is just put the smart TRVs on the rads in rooms you will use. Everything else which doesn't get used so much just a standard TRV turned to a low setting.

In my use case, I like the towels to be warm in the morning and our bedroom to be at 20degrees while getting ready for work. As the towel rad is just 'wide-open' when the bedroom rad comes on ~30mins before going in the shower but bedroom and towels are warm (the boiler barely needs to function during that time as it's heating only two rads of which both are quite efficient). The rest of the house isn't heated (as I'm not going in those rooms) so boiler not running as hard and therefore little energy used/wasted.

Each TRV (and the smart thermostat - which to be honest, as my whole house has a tado TRV isn't really required but it's 'handy') has it's own individual schedule so for me as I near Leytonstone station (you can set a radius based on gps) my lounge, hallway and kitchen zones come up to 20degrees. In turn, as the towel rad is not on a smart TRV that also warms up the bathroom.

I love tado, it works great. I've had it for almost two years now.

For the TRVs you can buy them in pairs or whatever, I just keep my eye on Amazon (tracking using keepa) so when they drop by a few quid I pick them up.

I like the energy savings reports I get each month, April was 37.6% saving, March 35.6%, Feb 46%, Jan 44.2% (based on using the geofencing, weather adaptation, open window detection etc.).

edit - I failed to answer your question, but yes, each TRV/thermostat is an independent zone, or if you have multiple rads in one room you can pair/assign TRVs to a particular zone and control that as one.

fez · 9 May 2019 at 10:21

We have a tado system for hot water and heating and its great. Love the integration with siri, the scheduling and general ease of use. We have 4 of them in our most used rooms and will get some for the others when they come up on special offer over the summer. They will take a while to recover the pure monetary cost in terms of saving energy but the price is fine when you consider the time it saves you and the control you have over your comfort. We have used the hot water control to turn on the water for when we get home, turn the heating up or off from the comfort of your sofa and it allows you to keep and eye on the humidity in all your rooms which is useful in the winter.

krooton · 9 May 2019 at 10:52

Thanks all.

And would you say self-install is viable, or is professional a must-have?

I can see the TRVs are on offer at the moment on Amazon, can I grab some to use with my existing non-Tado thermostat, and get the rest of the kit later?

krooton · 9 May 2019 at 11:24

ratface said:
I found the self install easy enough, final config had to be done by Tado support to assign TRV's to heating circuits

The TRV's require a starter kit

https://www.tado.com/gb/products/smart-radiator-starter-kit

Quattro TRV packs are on offer presently

https://www.tado.com/gb/products/smart-radiator-valve

Thanks, even cheaper on Amazon, I can get a V3 starter kit + 2 smart TRVS for £190, only vertical though.

Will they still work if my rads are horizontal? Just means the display will be sideways right?

krooton · 9 May 2019 at 14:46

fez said:
We have a tado system for hot water and heating and its great. Love the integration with siri, the scheduling and general ease of use. We have 4 of them in our most used rooms and will get some for the others when they come up on special offer over the summer. They will take a while to recover the pure monetary cost in terms of saving energy but the price is fine when you consider the time it saves you and the control you have over your comfort. We have used the hot water control to turn on the water for when we get home, turn the heating up or off from the comfort of your sofa and it allows you to keep and eye on the humidity in all your rooms which is useful in the winter.

Did you get the extension kit for your hot water?

Our current thermostat controls both heating and water, so having to slap another £80 just for that would be a bit of a pain...

fez · 10 May 2019 at 11:40

krooton said:
Did you get the extension kit for your hot water?

Our current thermostat controls both heating and water, so having to slap another £80 just for that would be a bit of a pain...

Yeah I had to get the extension kit.

Amazon have an offer of 4 vertical TRVs for £160 at the moment if anyone needs some. I will probably be selling 2 on the MM in the next few days if anyone doesn't need 4.

krooton · 10 May 2019 at 12:32

We decided to go ham on this, themo starter kit + thermo + extension kit + 10 smart TRVs, lol

Valo · 14 May 2019 at 16:01

I’m looking for some advice about Tado as I’m look at to replace my Nest Thermostat v2 that I currently have.

I’ve been using my Nest Thermostat and Nest Protects fairly happily since they begun to be sold in the UK about 4-5 years ago. With the only problems being the original Nest Protects removal of the Nest Wave feature (had my v1 Protects replaced with v2 for free) and Nests continued reluctance to add Apple HomeKit support.

The reluctance by a Nest to add official Apple HomeKit support had been resolved by using HomeBridge with the Nest plugin. I’ve had my Homebridge server setup on a Raspberry Pi3 for the past few years without an issue. This allows me to have my Nest Thermostat show up in the Home app on my iPhone and I can use Siri or the Home app on any of my Apple devices to make temperature adjustments.

It’s been announced by Google this week as part of a reorganisation of Nest within Google that the ‘Works with Nest’ program is to close, which gives access to the developer API’s that makes the Nest HomeBridge workaround work and there isn’t going to be a replacement.

With this being the case I’m looking at replacing my Nest equipment, starting with my Thermostat.

I’m looking at Tado as it carries official HomeKit support meaning I can retire my HomeBridge workaround.

My home is bungalow and I have a Worcester Bosch 38CDi combi boiler.

Radiators. - All with Danfoss TRV’s:
Master Bedroom
Bedroom 1
Study
Living room
Hall x2 radiators
Kitchen x2 radiators

En-suite - Towel Rail (Not sure of the TRV)
Bathroom - Towel Rail (Not sure of the TRV)

I’m looking for advice as to what I’ll need. I know I’ll need the Extension kit as I don’t have direct cabled connection between my boiler and my existing Nest thermostat. Will every radiator require a Tado TRV to get the full benefit of the system?

fez · 15 May 2019 at 09:33

Valo said:
I’m looking for advice as to what I’ll need. I know I’ll need the Extension kit as I don’t have direct cabled connection between my boiler and my existing Nest thermostat. Will every radiator require a Tado TRV to get the full benefit of the system?

I would say no personally. It all depends on how you like to heat your home. If you like it to be roughly the same temperature everywhere or you don't change the TRVs much then I wouldn't say there is a lot of value in them. We have an old house that is quite expensive to heat and we don't want to heat the whole thing but we do want to heat certain parts of it at different times. We have fitted them to all our radiators apart from the two toilets now but only because we got a 4 pack in the recent sale and they were sitting there.

We mainly use ours to heat only my office during the day when I am working, then we only heat the living room in the evenings and before bed we can heat whatever bedrooms we want to. It tells us if the house it getting too humid as well which is quite nice. Once the winter arrives again we will use it to keep the whole house at a minimum temperature and then do what we are doing now with various rooms.

Its nice to be able to monitor your heating/hot water from anywhere as well. I've turned the hot water on a few times on the way home from things and I suspect we will do the same with the heating when it gets cold again.

Our setup was a bit weird and I was tempted to get someone in to look at it but Tado support are great. You can literally send their support a load of pictures of your setup and they will explain exactly wheat to connect to what and what things you need.

Nikumba · 15 May 2019 at 12:12

Daft question I have normal manual trv's is it just a case of removing the plastic part and fit these ones? Will they work with my valves? What is best way to check?

krooton · 15 May 2019 at 12:53

Nikumba said:
Daft question I have normal manual trv's is it just a case of removing the plastic part and fit these ones? Will they work with my valves? What is best way to check?

The come with a variety of adaptors to fit different valve fittings, check what valves/radiators you have, and ask Tado on webchat.

Nikumba · 15 May 2019 at 13:31

krooton said:
The come with a variety of adaptors to fit different valve fittings, check what valves/radiators you have, and ask Tado on webchat.

Cheers, will have a look at the weekend see if i can work it out and check with Tado

Cosmic182 · 3 Dec 2021 at 17:26

Hi guys,

Bit of a thread revival!

Just installed tado v3 and the trvs on all radiator apart from the bathroom radiator including the wireless thermostat.....
From the app all the radiators with a tado TRV turn off on the app etc but the standard radiator in the bathroom without tado stays hot?

Any ideas of what I should do? Do I just leave it on all day turned low on the lockshields?

413x · 3 Dec 2021 at 19:25

Cosmic182 said:
Hi guys,

Bit of a thread revival!

Just installed tado v3 and the trvs on all radiator apart from the bathroom radiator including the wireless thermostat.....
From the app all the radiators with a tado TRV turn off on the app etc but the standard radiator in the bathroom without tado stays hot?

Any ideas of what I should do? Do I just leave it on all day turned low on the lockshields?

If you've set trvs etc to control boiler it should turn off completely if none call for heat