Will this work for a 2 heat and 1 water zone system?

djk1000

Hi, I have an "incompatible" controller according to Tado. It has separate zones for heating downstairs, upstairs and hot water. I'd like to do the following and I would appreciate advice and feedback?

Two wired smart thermostats to replace the room thermostats on each zone, then a wireless receiver to replace the existing controller and do the hot water.

Finally, the bit I'm not sure of, can I hardwire/bridge the two heating zones where the controller will be removed and then rely on the thermostats only? Is there any other approach to 3 zone that doesn't involve my old controller being set to always on?

If it matters, the controller is Sangamo Choice PR3n

Thanks

johnnyp78

If you use two wired thermostats and a wireless receiver you won’t need your old controller at all. The two thermostats go to the zone valves and the wireless receiver goes to the boiler.

You may need to rewire, depending on how things are wired to your existing three channel programmer.

If the programmer was left in place you would leave it set to always on so Tado could control the heating and it would control the hot water.

Hunter

The minimum you could do it would be a wireless and a wired. 3 channels for 3 zone valves. You would need a wiring centre. I have two heats and water from hive (I also need a temp sensor as the wiring is in the cylinder room and a wired thermostat alone would not measure useful temps).

djk1000

@johnnyp78 i wanted to avoid rewiring! I was hoping I could just bypass the controller by directly powering the 2 heat zones and then the wired thermostats would do the switching on and off.

johnnyp78

If you don’t want Tado to control your hot water you should be able to just install the wired thermostats and leave the existing programmer to always on.

Hunter

No expert but does it not go a bit like this: you will need to bridge one of the thermostats, taking the temp and timing of that zone back to the controller, replace the controller with the wireless starter kit, The wireless temp sensor that comes with the starter kit then replaces your current thermo in that zone. The hot water also does into the wireless receiver, the wires should be in your programmer. The second zone probably best handled by bridging the programmer wires from the programmer such that the second zone is always on awaiting thermostat input, then replace the external thermostat with the wired thermo stat that takes over timing and temp? All these thermo stats do are connect two wires together, surprise support say its not supported assuming its relay, but as i say no sparky.

djk1000

Thanks Hunter, I think I'm going to do a variation on this as I have two wired thermostats, they'll do the switching for each zone. I'll bridge zone 1 and zone two to live on the wireless receiver so it's just acting as a bus for heating and then use the wireless receiver as intended for the hot water switching.

I think the above will work once I have Tado TRV's on all the rads, then from what I've read Tado support can help with associating downstairs TRV's with the downstairs wired thermostat and same for upstairs.

This has the hot water controlled by wireless receiver, the two wired thermos can do the call for heat to the boiler and the TRV's are asking the wired thermos to make the call when needed.

That's the theory anyway and I think it's been done successfully this way before. Does that make sense or am I missing something?

Thanks

johnnyp78

You shouldn’t need Tado support to set the zones, just install one wired thermostat and the wireless receiver as zone controllers and make them zone controllers for the correct rooms.

It’s my understanding that you shouldn’t need to bridge the thermostats to the wireless receiver either, one should be wired to the zone valve, the other will act as a wireless slave to the wireless receiver, which is wired to the other zone valve.

Ultimately it’s the wireless receiver that will call for heat as that’s what’s wired directly to the boiler.

Hunter

I would say mine is more conventional :). So the zone valve will be driven when the wired thermostat from each zone is closed. Does seem that you have some extra kit, perhaps you can sell the extra wired? I am using abrand new unmounted trv as a temperature measurement, happy to trade😀