Best way to utilise Tado - efficiency

Dragonsoop999

Hi. I live in a terrace house with an attic conversation which I use as my home office Monday to Friday. At the moment I have the system to turn off the intire heating system other than the radiator in my attic room. At around 5pm the system then turns off the attic room radiator and the living room is turned on. The kitchen and bedroom only heats up for a small amount of time in the morning and at night. With regard to the living room, on cold days like this the temp is dropping to around 12 degrees, would it be more efficient to have the room heated to a lower temp throughout the day and then at 5pm heat it to the 20 degrees that is required?
Thanks
Dan

rafm5

@Dragonsoop999 Have a look here - https://community.tado.com/en-gb/discussion/comment/32755#Comment_32755

paul0000

I think this depends on the type of house you live in. Modern houses are much better with insulation and modern boilers.

We live in an old stone farmhouse (good loft insulation) and mostly good double glazing, but stone walls with no insulation (apart from cladding outside). We tried an experiment, last winter and this winter (so far). Last year, like you, we heated only the rooms that we used in the day - mainly my home office, and then boosted the temp in other rooms into the evening and morning as needed based on schedules.

This year we set a minimum temp on each TRV to keep the house at 17c and then increase in kitchen, lounge bedrooms in the mornings and evenings when they are used.

Tado, actually really helps with this with the schedule function and not wasting heat by shutting off rad's when they reach operating temperature. If we finish up in the kitchen earlier than normal we can manually reduce the temp and raise in the lounge.

It's a little "finger in the air" but we're not noticing an increase in oil usage compared to last year, and the house is at a much more pleasant temperature day and night. Damp and condensation is also reduced in the house.

This is a win win for us!

(my only complaint, as I am vocal on, is that we experience random TRV drop outs and unplanned cold rooms = very unhappy family)

Dragonsoop999

Thank paul000. I would say my house is pretty badly insulated with regard to the roof (it gets unbearably hot in the attic in summer) bit given its a terrace does benefit from having heat from both neighbors. I've set the TRVs to 15 during the day, like you said it will help against damp and mould. Although the way energy prices are going I'll probably nnot be able to tell if it's made a difference to the efficiency or not!

paul0000

Yeah, it's a tricky one and doesn't directly relate to tado.

In our previous house (<20 year old newish build) heating the whole house was not a (financial/cost) issue. We used nest and it did a great job of managing our needs.

Moving to a property built in the 1800s with solid stone walls, no DPC was a different experience. I did read up a lot and there are divided opinions on a minimum temperature constantly vs heat when needed. I'm still feeling that the minimum temperature in the house is working well for us without a noticeable cost increase.

It does seem a waste to heat rooms you aren't using - but we found keeping doors closed helps stop heat loss and more importantly condensation and damp at bay (I'll add we have a couple of dehumidifiers which are also helping with this).

Our boiler engineer is on the fence with this .. he agrees the boiler works much harder to heat a house from cold, vs constant "top ups", but I think it's an individual decision which is best both from a finance and comfort perspective.

gygabyte

Find a sweet spot in the house where there is a consistent temperature that tado can infer as the temperature of the house. Typical a central point with no drafts. Have just one smart thermostat controlling the boiler and other rooms with no zone controller assigned. Make sure your radiators are well balanced so that they warm up more or less at the same time.. keep a setback temperature overnight.

paul0000

Interesting idea! Unfortunately for me no good. I have a south/north facing house and can see a difference of +/- 8c in rooms depending on time of day and location in the house. I'm more worried about the extremities which include our kitchen, office and a couple of bedrooms.