Will this setup work? Only using TRVs

orangupingu

Hi everyone,

I’m new to smart heating control and advice would be greatly appreciated.

People who I share a house with don’t want anything smart installed to control the boiler. 

The TRVs have been removed off each radiator in the house, so when the heating is turned on every radiator is on max, and the thermostat is set to come on at quite high temperatures and is set to max water temperature. We have 3 radiators upstairs and one downstairs that are compatible with smart TRVs.

If I didn’t install the Tado boiler controller and instead used the already installed wireless boiler controller to handle the heating via the schedules that are already programmed in, and only installed Tado TRVs on each radiator, would I be able to manually shut off the Tado TRVs installed on the 3 upstairs radiators using my phone so that only the one radiator downstairs stays on (on max) (essentially the other people in the house wouldn’t notice that the radiators in the rooms upstairs weren’t on when they were sat in the living room)?

We waste so much energy heating upstairs when it’s only needed for an hour in the morning, but we have the radiator on in the living room for a lot longer on cold evenings.

Thanks!

johnnyp78

This would work but you wouldn’t save much energy if the boiler remained on - that’s what’s consuming the energy, not the radiators.

wateroakley

I’d not necessarily agree with Johnny on the limited energy saving The boiler heats the water, costs ££, and delivers energy to the heating system radiators. The rads dissipate the energy into upstairs, the rooms heat up and no one notices the energy ££ wasted. Turning the rads off with smart Tado TRVs (set as independent?) will definitely save energy and ££. How much ££ saving is the $1000 question. Going back to a shared house a long time ago, where everything was ‘on’ all the time, the bills were ££££.

If you can persuade the others to replace that big dial thermostat with a smart stat and trvs in their own rooms there is £££ to save without compromising their comfort.

johnnyp78

I think we’re more or less in agreement - you will save energy but I’m not convinced it will be a huge amount. The real savings with Tado (imo) come from geolocation and allowing it to control the boiler - if the boiler’s just left on without Tado controlling it to heat one radiator I think there would be minimal savings. Willing to be proved wrong though.