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Necessary equipment & set up for multiple UFH zones, rads, hot water (& ideally A/C)?

stfarrell
stfarrell
in General Questions & Topics

Hi,

I am doing a large house renovation with new underfloor heating and trying to figure out how much of my ideal configuration is possible with Tado. Any guidance or feedback appreciated.


Here is what I am aiming for:

  1. UFH: 8 zones of wet UFH over 2 floors (multiple different rooms and I don't want to heat all of them at once). My understanding is that these could be controlled with smart wired thermostats for each zone wired to a wiring centre (potentially will need 2 wiring centres). The wiring centre would control pumps and zone actuators in on/off mode.
  2. Can the boiler then be controlled in OpenTherm modulating mode by an additional extension kit or wireless smart thermostat? (Our current boiler is not OpenTherm-compatible but I would look to replace it). If OpenTherm is not possible, I think the wiring centre could instead fire the boiler in on/off mode whenever any of the zones call for heat but we would lose whatever the benefit of modulating the boiler is.
  3. Radiators: A small circuit to feed 2x panel radiators that I do not think will be used much, and 2x dual-fuel towel radiators in bathrooms. These would be run on a timed cycle in winter.
  4. I'm not sure it is worth putting smart TRVs on the panel radiators to call for heat since they won't be used much and if they don't call for heat the towel rads would still need it - it may be cheaper/better to just have 'dumb' TRVs on the panel rads set low and turn them up manually when required.
  5. Also not sure if it would be better to separate the panel rads and towel radiators into 2 circuits to avoid hot water circulating in pipework unnecessarily when the panel rads are not required or heating towel rads when they are not required.
  6. Can the Tado extension kit or wireless smart thermostat directly linked to the boiler control a radiator circuit (or two) and fire the boiler on a timed schedule in addition to controlling the boiler for the UFH as above?
  7. Hot water unvented cylinder linked to boiler:
  8. Can this circuit from the boiler be controlled by the Tado extension kit/wireless smart thermostat in addition to the other zones/circuits above?  If not, can we have second unit?
  9. Would it need to go through the wiring centre to activate a diverter valve in addition to firing the boiler?
  10. I presume the temp in the cylinder is controlled by a thermostat in the cylinder - how does it get wired in order to be able to shut off the circuit and boiler when the cylinder is up to temp?
  11. Non-Tado, but how can I do some sort of smart control of the electric immersion heating for the HW? - e.g. have a timed programme to heat overnight using Octopus Go off-peak rate if that turns out to be cheaper than gas? (I'm not necessarily looking to do this dynamically based on electricity and gas tariffs - just to be able to edit the schedule for the immersion or boost the hot water from a smartphone or web rather than physically doing it on a controller in the utility room)
  12. A/C / Air-to-air heat pumps:
  13. Some rooms will have air-to-air heat pumps as well as UFH or panel radiators.
  14. Is it possible either with Tado or a higher-level home automation set up such as IFTTT, Home Assistant, HomeKit, SmartThings, etc. to coordinate these so that:
    1. The air-to-air heat pumps don't go into cooling mode when the heating is on?
    2. Wet heating and air-to-air heat pumps work in combination - e.g. rely on UFH heating in the morning but in the evening if the temperature is only slightly below target and there is charge in our electric storage battery, we just "top-up" with the air-to-air heat pump? (part of the rationale being that it doesn't make sense to run the UFH heating for several hours to get the thermal mass of the floor up to temperature in the evening before we go to bed and don't need that room to be warm)
  15. Boiler flow temps: The house is old (c. 1850) and semi-detached with solid walls and it is not possible to insulate it particularly well. Any views on what flow temps would make sense?
  16. I think the UFH system design assumes 55 degrees C but I suspect it could actually be run a bit lower and it would just take longer to heat the rooms - but this may still be OK given it would largely happen overnight in order to meet a target temperature in the morning and the air-to-air heat pumps could play a role as well.
  17. I imagine we will still have a blending valve for the UFH heating but could I run the radiator circuit at say 55 degrees most of the time?  As mentioned, I don't think the panel rads will be needed much (don't spend much time in those rooms) so 55 degrees might be OK for them.  It's more whether that is enough for the towel rads in winter, and whether that makes things difficult for any other part of the system.
  18. The DHW circuit would presumably need to be a bit higher - how would this be controlled with the set up above?
  19. Modulation: Is modulating the boiler likely to make much difference with this configuration?  Maybe reducing wear and tear more than affecting efficiency?
  20. Future air-to-water heat pump: It doesn't seem to make financial sense currently for us to put in an air-to-water heat pump plus there are difficulties in siting the outdoor units, but if we want to do this in the future, is there anything we should do in this setup now?


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