Who has SRV's only on part of the system and how is it working out?
Hello, when fitting SRV's to half of the radiators or less, which rooms did you choose, why and how have you set it up to operate?
I ask as I thought that it would make sense in my house to just do upstairs for now and keep them off a lot of the time like an upstairs zone but someone I spoke to recently told me he has them only in the rooms his family use and that it's saved him loads of gas.
I'm assuming he means occupied rooms downstairs and occupied bedrooms, but on time schedules. Maybe he has turned spare bedrooms and unimportant rooms off or very low on normal TRV's. I think his SRV's may also be heating on their own demand rather than the roomstat being the master.
His system was not Tado, it was actually HIVE but if he's doing well with HIVE which is less advanced than Tado then I would think that I should be able to match or better what he's achieving with my Tado.
How have you set your SRV's up? Have you got them operating like a zone? Have you got them overriding the Tado Roomstat to create their own demand? What kind of time schedules have you set for rooms?
Sorry lots of questions but there are actually a number of different ways to use SRV's!
Thanks for your time.
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If you want to turn off the radiators in rooms you don’t use I would just use manual trvs, though unless you have sensational interior insulation all you’ll be achieving by doing this is bleeding heat from the rooms you are heating to the ones you aren’t.
All rooms with Tado srvs work as zones, though due to heat loss you’re unlikely to make much savings by setting vastly different temperatures in each one. I would recommend using the tado thermostat/temperature sensor in rooms that have them as the measuring device - it’s usually more accurate than the tado srv.1 -
@johnnyp78 I not so sure it is so distinct as that. We are both retired and in the early days of our retirement did a fairly lengthy evaluation\comparison of whole house cf single room during the day and the difference in cost was heavily in favour of the latter. I used calibrated devices to measure temps during the exercise but all my rads are rear insulated. As a result of that exercise, throughout the winter days, generally speaking, only our lounge is heated with the Kitchen diner coming on late afternoon and bedroom bathroom etc early evening.
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My approach has been to put keep the 'simple' TRVs in all ares that only need background heat (setting them low). I have tado SRVs on all upstairs rads so that they can follow their own control schedule (off for most of the day, on for bed time and when we get up). Schedules are great, so long as you have a regular routine in your life!
I use a tado thermostat in the hall, close to the door where any drop in temperature can be responded to quickly, but don't think I need it. As said above, it may be better to place one in a living room as the 'lead' for a group of SRVs. The SRVs tend to read a higher temperature than away from the heat source - something that's easy to compensate for but a remote stat would be better and provide a more convenient place to make adjustments.
I did group three rads in the same room together but wonder about the benefit. It means only one tile to watch on the app but they seem to work fine independently with the same copied schedule. Open window response may be better if grouped and user control is slightly easier, should you need it, but I think the whole group may suffer if the 'lead' SRT loses connection or has poor batteries. If run separately there is greater resilience - the others will continue to work correctly.
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I've gone the other way.
I've got a mixed system with 8 Smart TRV and 5 Drayton TRV in the bedrooms/landing etc. I've got most of the Drayton valves set around 2 which should be 15-16 deg. Yes, the dumb TRV's heat slightly during the day while the Tado is keeping it's rooms at the set temperature but I drop everything to 14deg at night and that keeps the bedrooms off. Downstairs is set to around 17deg during the day and we're at home.
It's a modulating boiler so is on quite a lot of the time, the CH max is set to 55deg but the flow is only around 35-40deg as a result of the modulation.
We're in a 1920's 4 bed detached with solid walls downstairs (upstairs has been externally insulated) but we've dropped from 23000 to 16000kwh since Tado and reducing temps. 30% of my heating demand is in one downstairs room which has solid walls and north facing........
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Good info all, thanks.
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We live in an 1800's old stone wall house and have 14 SRV's across 11 rooms and have left 3 bathrooms without SRV's.
It's enabled granular control of heating - bedrooms off during the day, living areas on during the day, low overnight.
Similar to @mindstorm we had one room that could never get to temperature (north facing, minimal insulation, 3 x outside walls) that was chewing up in excess of 30% of our total heat demand. I've made that room independent (along with a couple of others) now so it doesn't call for heat but will warm whenever other rooms are calling for heat.
Couple of things I've noticed which has helped.
1) shut doors for rooms not used during the day (bedrooms) - stops heat loss
2) time rooms to come on/off together where possible (bedrooms for example)
I believe tado saves us money on oil, however it's not without it's problems for us. Mainly SRV range issues and not opening valves up fully on our rads.
Would I buy it again? No, I'd choose another manufacturer.
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