Smart heating - what set up should I have?

Jeepers_Creepers

Your two existing stats will be hard-wired and not WiFi? If so, the cables will be heading to the same place - a 'wiring centre' most likely located near the hot water cylinder or wherever the zone valves are. These cables are disconnected there, and the Tado's (or whateves') receiver is wired in instead. That bit won't be an issue.

Quite possibly your master bedroom's rad control valve is also a TRV type, although it may have had its head replaced with a cap. But, if it isn't, you'll need to have a suitable valve body fitted - a pipe-freeze or partial drain-down job. Again not a major issue.

I understand your hot water will be controlled by the Tado as well - it says works with combis and with hot tanks.

I wonder, tho', what you are trying to achieve and whether it's worth it?! Surely, if all the bedrooms are being used as bedrooms, the existing Prog Stat handles this pretty well, and individual folk can tweak their own TRVs as needed, cooler or warmer? So it would be something like the bedroom zone comes on to 19oC at 10pm, down to 16oC at 11pm, back on at yougettheidea? Or is it that some bedrooms are used all evening? If so, time the zone to be on at the required times and each person adjusts their own TRVs to suit, fully off if needed.

Basically, I'm wondering if spending £400+ and an annual 16-battery replacement schedule to obtain marginally better control is really worth it?

hoth0416

Jeepers_Creepers said:

Basically, I'm wondering if spending £400+ and an annual 16-battery replacement schedule to obtain marginally better control is really worth it? 

I think the issue we face currently is that two bedrooms are usually in need of different heating requirements. The master is a warm room and houses the wall thermostat. The other room stays fairly cool. 

Therefore - if we want the heating on in the second bedroom, it has to be on in the master which is a pain. 

It looks like Tado can solve this as it makes the wall thermostat redundant. 

The convenience of being able to control heating remotely is a bonus (not having to worry if we’ve left it on, being able to turn it on/off in different rooms from the app etc). Agree there’s a cost for the convenience though!

Jeepers_Creepers

KeithSussex said:

There will be reasons why the upstairs heating zone has a room thermostat is in the bedroom. 

Maybe that room thermostat can be relocated. Has that been looked into ?

As for smart radiator controls, anything honeywell 

If the current bedroom stat is 'wired' and 3-wire (so also has a neutral) the very simplest way to enable this would be to fit the WiFi receiver of a new Prog Stat in its place, and then you can move the control unit (actual Prog Stat) wherever you want. You'd probably want to tape over any indicator lights tho'!

But it's virtually as easy to fit a receiver for just this zone near the wiring centre where it ideally should be.

I totally get the wish behind the full Tado-like control, but it's a large outlay and will almost certainly take several years to recoup any energy savings.

FreeBear

A word of caution with any smart home automation - If the devices need to connect to the web, the minute you lose your internet connection, the devices are next to useless (manual control only if you are lucky). You are also at the mercy of the company providing cloud services and any subscription fee structure they impose.

If you go for "smart things", try to use products than can be controlled by a small computer in your own home.

rob7475

I'd also recommend Tado. I've had it in my house for around 7 years and never had an issue. Geo-fencing works flawlessly and the hardware has never failed. There are occasional short outages on the Tado servers but are getting rarer and rarer these days as they improve the technology behind it. TBH, i wouldn't notice the outages if I hadn't looked in the app as they are so short and usually in the middle of the night.

I don't have the Tado TRV's as I just don't think I'd benefit from them over standard TRV's. I think being able to zone each radiator and create schedules for each room is a bit of a gimmick but people seem to like it so fair play to them. I set my TRV's to suit each room and never touch them again. If the heating's already running to heat up half the house, having TRV's turned off in bedrooms etc. will not make much of a saving to justify cost of the initial outlay plus ongoing battery replacement etc.