Installing a smart thermostat

Leard91

I'm interested in purchasing a smart thermostat for my boiler, specifically the TADO V3+ Wireless Heating & Hot Water Smart Thermostat. The boiler is a Worcester Greenstar 28i Junior. How easy can I expect to find installing this? Tado claim that it's easy to install and that they provide you with the instructions. However, I also recognise that the boiler is fairly old, and might not be compatible. What would installation actually involve?

DullGreyGuy

It depends what you have got in place and how you want it to work in the future. 

We have Nest's offering, a control unit gets attached to the boiler (so gas safe engineer required). We couldn't find the transformer that powered the old thermostat to check if it could power the nest one and so decided to put it on the console table in the hall and power it by a plug. 

Unless you have a someone to do the gas safe bit for you then double check the cost of buying it with fitting included, for us it was cheaper than buying it separately and then paying a gas engineer. 

flo22

When I bought the Wiser one I emailed Wiser and they responded with what the wiring should be for my boiler

FreeBear

Leard91 said:

I'm interested in purchasing a smart thermostat for my boiler, specifically the TADO V3+ Wireless Heating & Hot Water Smart Thermostat. The boiler is a Worcester Greenstar 28i Junior. How easy can I expect to find installing this? Tado claim that it's easy to install and that they provide you with the instructions. However, I also recognise that the boiler is fairly old, and might not be compatible. What would installation actually involve?

A quick snout at the installation manual says it will work with switched 240VAC, potential free switching as well as Opentherm, eBus, EMS Bus, and others. So the Tado should work fine with your current boiler and pretty much anything else you may want to install in the future.

Just get your Gas Safe engineer to hook up the receiver box next time he/she does a service. And no, it is not something that you can do yourself as it requires the removal of the outer casing.

MikeJXE

I decided to get a smart thermostat a couple of weeks ago

Looking at the prices I decided to go with Hive mini

Battery operated thermostat, a hub connected to the router and my son (gas registered) fitted the receiver to the boiler, it took him about half hour.

I have not set up a schedule as I'm in most of the day

Alexa controls it all by voice I don't need to press buttons, I just say Alexa set the heating to 20 or 15 and thats what she does, so simple. 

However I went out early today for about 4 hours and it was cold so decided to turn the heating up before I got home, no problems

ThisIsWeird

The Tado, being opentherm and other-capable, will be future-proofed. FreeBear says it'll also do simple on/off switching (like the Hive), so should work fine with your current boiler, but can be retained when you replace it. Stats like the Hive will be more limited - good chance a new boiler will be more advanced than it...
As for wiring it, it depends how competent you are. I disagree with those who suggest it requires a GasSafe - more than likely it won't. If you don't delve into the combustion area, and you certainly do not need to on my GlowWorm, then no GS needed. Let's face it, often a sparky is required for this job, and very few will be GS.

adam06_2

I fitted a hive one myself. It has a receiver device that you had to wire into your boiler. Just dug out the manual for the boiler and that combined with the hive manual and some YouTube research helped me wire it up. 
Yes i had to take the cover off the boiler to get to the electrics.... But I didn't go near the gas bit... 

Apparently if the cover requires removing multiple screws, then its possible used for combustion, so shouldn't be opened, but if it's one screw or clips or slides off, then it's probably fine, but best to check warnings in your boiler manual first

ThisIsWeird

Pretty clear that the main front cover does not need to be removed at all.

Press in and release the control cover, and it'll pop down. The control panel behind is held by a single screw along its top. Undo, and the whole control panel will hinge downwards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=sHRNJgr_TBA

Leard91

ThisIsWeird said:

Pretty clear that the main front cover does not need to be removed at all.

Press in and release the control cover, and it'll pop down. The control panel behind is held by a single screw along its top. Undo, and the whole control panel will hinge downwards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=sHRNJgr_TBA

Having looked and tried to find out how to do this, I don't think I can access the electrical panel without taking the main cover off. In the image from the manual, you can see the main cover isn't on.

chris_n

The instructions for removing the cover are contained in that screenshot. Doesn’t require gas safe, just turn the power to it off first.

markin

No1 "remove main cover" The entire install manual is for the Gas safe installer.