Will Tado work for our house?
Hi we are doing a renovation and putting NuHeat underfloor heating in the majority of downstairs but some of the rooms will only have radiators. Upstairs will all be radiators with 5 bedrooms and two offices. The boiler is a Potterton Promax System 32kw with additional pressurised hot water tank and a very simple on off timer clock. The house is approx 20m long with the boiler at one end and the only thermostat at the opposite on a double height landing (seems an odd choice of location).
The underfloor will have a smart hub with an app or we can link to Apple or Google home. We were thinking that Tado would be a complimentary system to control the boiler for water and radiators ideally with at least some of the radiators on smart thermostats (it is great that you can get the refurbished systems).
Unfortunately Tado haven’t been particularly helpful in their response to queries so far and obviously you can’t actually speak to anyone (which is ringing some alarm bells). Before we write Tado off anyone any suggestions if it could work for us - we think we can use the wires for the current thermostat to connect the receiver to the boiler and hot water but closer to the centre of the house and then choose a location for the wireless temp sensor . We were thinking of a wireless v3 package with extra radiator thermostats.
We also watched the Heat Geek video on smart thermostats which suggests that the performance of Tado has reduced in that it no longer has bus control so can’t modulate the boiler. They also have stopped producing the wireless extension kit.
Any thoughts suggestions welcome as we are frankly quite out of our depth!
Comments
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Tado devices are low power and consequently the wireless range is not too good, A distance of 20m may be too much, but it depends on thickness of walls and materials used. Your UFH will likely have a wiring centre and you may need to wire the Tado system to this, rather than directly to the boiler. There's usually one connection point dedicated to controlling a radiator zone.
Yes, the UK variant of the wireless receiver does not support a digital bus interface, but the wired thermostats still have both relay and bus interfaces. Digital bus thermostats are able to adjust the water temperature flowing from the boiler, which in turn alters the heat output from the radiators. This makes it easier to keep the room temperature close to the set point temperature. Digital interfaces work best with a single zone. In a multi zone system altering the flow temperature is likely to be a compromise as each zone will have differing heat requirements. Also, when there's a call for hot water from the cylinder the temperature adjustment is suspended because you need the flow temperature to be above 65C to heat the cylinder. In short, I think your multi-zone system with a hot water cylinder will work fine with simple relay control.
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