How to use A temperature sensor and Smart TRVs

Winnie

Hi! I’m a complete newbie so any help is appreciated. I live in a very cold exposed Bath Stone house with no consistent level of temperature in each room and some rooms have 2 or 3 radiators with traditional TRVs. Temperature sensors and Smart TRVs in these rooms seem a hugely costly outlay. Can the temperature sensor ‘talk’ to the boiler without needing Smart TRVs as well? If not, would I need to set up a separate zone with another wireless thermostat for a room where I have 3 radiators with existing
TRVs? Any help appreciated!!!

johnnyp78

You can use a temperature sensor but you won’t have any individual control over your radiators- when it calls for heat they will all come on. Tado coverage can be patchy in stone houses so before going all in, maybe try getting a starter kit and see how well it works. If your boiler supports it, a weather compensation kit would be a cheaper alternative.

Winnie

Thanks Johnny. It’s a 15 year old boiler so I doubt it would support a weather compensation kit. That might be worth considering though when the new hydrgen ready boilers with OpenTherm technology become available in a few years. I was thinking of just seeing how well the new thermostat in my starter kit works with a room that has 2 radiators with existing TRVs first - I don’t really want to put in 2 new additional smart Tado radiator valves and a temperature sensor just in one room that doesn’t get constant use. I’m guessing that the valves could well give very inaccurate readings in this room which was why I thought of using a temp sensor in the room instead. However, I’m not sure if you
have to have both the smart valves AND the sensor for the set up to connect with the thermostat? I thought this was all going to
be simple to set up but it obviously isn’t!!

johnnyp78

You can just use a temperature sensor and wireless receiver, but as I said all your radiators will come on. You can still use dumb trvs to regulate the temperature in different rooms.