Smart heating systems to use with existing boiler and TRV wrestling

srichards said:
All rooms have rads with TRVs, or will do, so technically they are all controlled individually ;)

I think their new smart thermostat does offer zone control as you fit one per zone.

I'm sure Tado will come out with lightwave or similar TRVs at some point.
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Rooms with TRVs only act as limiters to the temperature the room can get to, they can't call for boiler heat to a single room if it needs it. The Evohome solution can effectively make every radiator a zone as opposed to wet zone systems that typically might zone upstairs and downstairs. It's the granular control imho that is what makes it so cost effective in the medium term. We only really actively heat the Kitchen, Living Room, my Study (as required) and Bed 1. Everything else is on low, or setback temperatures until needed. It's an converted church with lots of rooms though, so our heating bills were initially around £2500k pa. We've got it down now to just under £1200 pa through various measures, but the most significant was the Evohome kit. £200 for the controller/gateway, and £50 a radiator as a ballpark. So cost me about £600, which was rapidly recouped. I was able to get a couple of boxes of the right TRVs very cheaply though and installed them all myself, replacing the ornate, but dysfunctional brass TRVs that were fitted on the Cast Iron radiators when we moved in. The Smartphone integration is now the best bit - it was a bit weak in V1.0, but since they updated it a couple of months back, I can do all the programming and control functions on my phone or iPad, and only need to touch the Colour controller display thing for installer type functions.
 
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I love those old cast iron radiators. They stay warm for ages once warmed up.

With saving roughly £1200 pa that's loads of money spare for camera kit :D
 
I only paid the first year at £2500k and thought I had to do something drastic! I'd never imagined it would be as high as that, so technically it's not a saving - I've just mitigated a loss :( Simon

P.S. The cast iron radiators are great, and we've added a couple of new reproductions to those existing. But they do take a long time to heat up, and the programmers are designed to anticipate modern radiators, so we still have to do a bit of fudge factoring in timings.

PPS. £1200 - that's a brain fart. £1800 pa.
 
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To update. I'd expected to have it installed by now but Tado support are useless. They took ages to get back to me about installation instructions. Over 3 weeks to reset the installation procedure as it crapped out on an ipad in Safari then stuck me with an impossible combination. Then they claimed I need some stupid connector box extra which I don't as it says it replaces a wired thermostat. It's just a switch. I've never known such a meal being made out of something so simple!

Started installation process again, registered bridge thingy and tado box and there are no instructions anyway. Paid for install link gives me a blank page as well. So I've wasted weeks waiting for them and they have no instructions on how to do it anyway!

They have produced instructions in the time I've whinged and posted and rechecked email... let's see if they're any good :)

It's so frustrating as it is just a couple of wires and removing a link off the boiler board. It's so damn simple but without them bothering to provide any kind of explanation of how it should be wired I cannot work out which is the right way. The boiler wiring diagram doesn't say what each connection does either. It's just marked 1, 2 & 3! It gives an example of wiring to a honeywell stat but again it's a 1, 2 & 3 not a sensible label. If you cock it up you get mains voltage where it shouldn't go so it's not as if trial and error is an option either.
 
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Finally got this damn thing installed the other day as it took extra time to book in the gas fellow. It seemed best to work it out looking at the diagram for the boiler service manual going into a standard switch and comparing which bits are on the diagram on the back of the Tado. The install instructions seemed to indicate switched live went to NO, and the Live went to COM. Gas guy was happy to swap things around as it seems it wouldn't have killed the boiler after all and the worst that would happen would be it worked backwards. When it was first wired in according to their instructions it worked backwards.

I didn't realise it worked off batteries and assumed it was continually powered and the batteries were the back up.

On the upside once it is installed and working it is BRILLIANT!

It turns off heating when I go out. Turns it on when I come home. It's meant to do it just before but I haven't seen that happen yet but I've only been out once. I need to get out more ;) It maintains the temperature during the day without being on too much or off too much. Gas usage is less than before and that is keeping the house warm all day rather than just for a few hours. It knows when to turn on in the morning to hit the required temperature for when you get up. The weather has varied and it is spot on every morning so far and that is after a couple of days. It makes use of solar effects of heating and heats less when the sun is shining. It did over shoot to begin with but it is much tighter on the temperatures and they seem to be maintained better.

Unfortunately I have discovered the pump over run causes massive electrical interference so I need to find a way of stopping that...
 
Great thread even though an old one....We had a boiler breakdown recently, and BG was touting its hive system to my wife. Upon looking into it, I couldn't see it providing anything over and above internet access compared to our existing Honeywell wireless.

The Honeywell Evohome looks like a good system to me, helps us gain further granularity to our wet zoned zoned version. I might look a bit more into that...
 
I bought a Tado system about 6mths ago - have been hugely impressed with it. I did their rental deal to start with and then bought it outright a few months later. Much better than Nest (also controls hot water) and Hive (does geo-location for multiple users based on iOS app).

Apparently they're working on a multiroom system, I like the idea of using smart TRVs for guest room etc though
 
My Tado has been pretty good until this week. The presence detection has gone mental and keeps thinking I'm out. It was decided I'd gone out about 50 times during the night. Unless one of the cats pinched my phone and went for bus rides or I've started sleep walking it's clearly an error.

The main complaint with the honeywell (apart from cost) is the noisy TRVs. They move in the middle of the night so often wake people if they're used in bedrooms.
 
Just to update this a bit.

I've had the Tado for a while and it's mostly been ok apart from having batteries go flat and it not warn you so no heating. It's supposed to email you a month before they need to be changed. The reporting feature in the app is still useless and doesn't show all the times the heating has come on. Just the first block of the day. It was working for a few months then they updated it and it's broken. The weather in the tado app is also wrong. The current outside temperature is usually wrong as they were lazy and just got min max feeds for the day it seems. I've given up trying to get them to sort that at all.

Home/Away function was not working brilliantly for ages until probably October last year. Then it started to be more sensible. Previously it would be so poor the house would be freezing cold for an hour at least when you got in even on comfort which was meant to start heating before you got in. Most of the time it would make a token effort 20 minutes before but it had let the house get so cold it was pointless.

I bought one of their smart radiator valves and it's been a disaster. The spec says the batteries are supposed to last up to 2 years It flattens batteries in a couple of months and goes crazy whirring back and forth 20 times an hour now and then for no reason. They don't seem to accept that's incorrect behaviour! It does sort out the annoying cold room apart from when the batteries go flat, again without warning, so the radiator is stone cold then the heating in the rest of the house stays on forever. You can't delete a radiator thermostat once it's been added which is dumb beyond belief.

The lack of support is getting to the point where I'm actively hoping Honeywell will do something similar to Tado but implement it properly and with decent customer support. The tado support rarely acknowledge problems and features promised ages ago haven't been implemented or if they have it's months and months later.

I'm still waiting for replacement batteries as they didn't even send the supposedly correct lithium ones with the smart thermostat in the first place. Just duracell ones that lasted 2 months. I used some cheap kodak ones I had lying around in desperation and they were dead in 2 weeks.

They were offering some updated home kit internet bridge thing but I've cancelled it. It was due to be sent out months ago and they still haven't.
 
One of the most damning updates I've read!

My Nest has been running for about a year, and touch wood, no issues, yet
 
Evo home doesn't have the weather compensation or the home/away feature so it's a bit limited.

Hopefully Tado will make more effort with sorting out issues. It generally takes a couple of times of pointing out how and why something isn't right before they get it sorted. They have tried to be a bit too clever with some of it I think and they don't always think through all the possible scenarios so they miss out some situations that occur but it behaves oddly because they haven't planned for it eg slow warming houses or being far away but taking a shorter time to return. They seem to assume everyone lives in a small house which heats up fast and they live in a city so it takes them ages to travel the last few miles home. I had an argument with one of them when they said they didn't expect it to work right when someone was more than 40 miles away from home and I rightly said that was silly and that it should be a solution that works at all distances.

The home/away feature does seem to basically work how it should now. The normal heating works really well. It's just silly things like sudden flat batteries and the stupidity of how they've done the radiator thermostat that has rather annoyed me of late.

They are the Tesla of the thermostat world with slipping schedules.
 
Evohome does have home/away. You can geofence your house easily.

As for weather compensation, not sure of the need.

Ultimately, with evohome I have individual control of every room in my house rather than one temperature setting for the whole house that you get with Tado and Nest. Nothing else comes close.
 
The smart radiator thermostats tado do allow individual room control. Evohome themeselves told me they didn't do home/away like Tado does.
 
Good to see Tado has caught up; I've had individual room control since 2012.

And home/away is done via IFTTT
 
inkiboo said:
Good to see Tado has caught up; I've had individual room control since 2012.

And home/away is done via IFTTT
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It doesn't do the predictive and calculated home away does it? Tado will start heating before you get home do that it's up to temperature before you get there and chooses an away temperature accordingly.
 
should have went for hive from bg it the best on the market and only 249 fitted or 99 if your on contract
been p***ing my pants at you slagging it then you fit a better system which is a lot
of s***e :runaway:
i love reading storys like this :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
yes I'm a bg technical repair engineer
 
I've had Hive now for about 3 years and it works fine. Smart phone app lets you set temps remotely and control hot water. Will geo locate and ask you if you want heating turned off when you leave and on when you come back. Amazon echo has "skill" so you can set temp via voice command. Purchased mine as a one off payment, now it's a monthly subscription.
 
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