Extent of compatibility
Hi. I looked into this in the spring and it is now becoming imminently important and I want to get into some details. I remember that there are often some limitations on how compatible a tado setup is with different boiler brands and types. I have a simple tado system with a wireless thermostat and the programmer with hot water control in the airing cupboard wired to the boiler in the utility room downstairs.
Our current Vaillant boiler has died, and we are looking at either a Viessmann Vitodens 050-W or a Vaillant Ecofit plus 620. Possibly also a Worcester Bosch Greenstar 4000 18. According to the tado chat, my system is compatible with all three boilers, but I would lose modulation with the Worcester Bosch, hence the "possibly" for that one. I would be looking for weather adjustment in each case. What I am concerned about is whether the "compatibility" means that all the functions of the boilers are fully accessible via tado or whether I am losing out on anything. I can't find any information on that.
If anyone has any information in that area, I would be very grateful.
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My last experience in my last home with a boiler that had is own weather sensors is that it was better to have the house running on its boiler sensors, ie the room stats would fire the boiler but the boiler would then decide itself how to throttle the amount of fuel being used as well as the trigger delays. When we added the additional room stats it improved the system but I left the boiler handling in full control of its weather response.0
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Thanks, that is the conclusion I have come to. It means I probably wouldn't have bought tado for the new boiler, but we have it anyway and needed to buy a new programmer at the time anyway.
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Hello @languageservicesco
Until community members see / answer your question, you can also forward these same queries to the agent that performed your compatibility check. They'll be happy to help you.0 -
That's basically the question I asked the agent but didn't get any confirmation other than they are "compatible".
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Hello @languageservicesco
I had a look at your chat. I think the agent missed this question amidst checking compatibility. You can re-iterate it again.0 -
OK, so having trawled through this forum, I think I now know the following, but it would be great if someone could confirm it.
With any of these boilers, tado works simply as an on/off switch as far as boiler operation goes. I set up the boiler with weather compensation and just let it get on with things. Night setbacks are set in the boiler as well. I can use my existing wireless thermostat to switch the boiler off if the room it is in gets too hot, but otherwise everything can run on the heating curve. Is water heating likewise run by the boiler or controlled by tado? I'm not sure about that one.
Tado is then also useful for remote control, holiday adjustments, etc. Geofencing has never been useful for us and seems even less useful with WC. I might at some point get a tado TRV or two for rooms that might only want heating differently on rare occasions.
As far as I can tell, these boilers are pretty good at working efficiently without outside interference, so the lack of granular control from tado is no great problem. Correct?
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@LANGUAGESERICESCO
My experience? Found the most efficient combination was (1) to leave the boiler to respond to its own weather sensors if it could have them and allow it to throttle itself (2) to have Tado rad stats everywhere I could, instead of one mighty zone valve to rule them all (3) Fit pumps with delta curves (ie smart pumps capable of throttling themselves up or down as radiators opened and closed (4) Eventually replaced the motorised valves with relays controlling the pumps directly - which means thinking about the wiring carefully, but it removed many weird things that happen when motorised valves approach end of life and reduced leaks.
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@languageservicesco Our experience? We use Tado in relay mode with two zone valves (S-Plan). The Baxi boiler (no weather sensors and 13 years old) does it's own thing with modulating and throttling back. It took three months to work out what worked well for us. We let Tado do it's own thing, manage the room TRV timings/temperature to suit our diaries, and try to avoid heating the house when we're out for the day by rigorously using geo-fencing.
The chart below shows 2.5 years of gas consumption with Tado, compared to the previous four years of consumption at the same outside temperature (mean CET). The ROI was less than 12 months at 2024 energy prices. No promises that everyone can achieve similar results.
Good luck with whichever boiler you go for.
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This graph is very interesting. I assume the blue line is the base line against which the other percentages are calculated. The June peak on the yellow line is interesting and it would probably have followed the blue line without that. Did you move to Australia or did you host a group of teenagers using the shower all the time over the summer?
What I think the posts from @policywonk and @wateroakley suggest is that if you set things up sensibly you can get good results either by letting a modern boiler just do its thing or letting tado do its stuff., even on an older boiler. It is almost unheard of that there is nobody at home, so geofencing is not really a big deal for us, so I think it mainly comes down to making sure the boiler is running as efficiently as possible, either through its own settings or those for tado. Either way, the choice of boiler is looking less to do about compatibility with tado and more to do with other factors. The heating engineer is coming next week, so let's see what he/she has to say.
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FWIW and if anyone finds this thread helpful, the heating engineer basically agreed about just letting the boiler do its thing and use tado as an expensive switch.
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@languageservicesco Good to hear that the professional agrees to let the boiler do it's thing.
Yes, the upper horizontal blue line is the 100% baseline for 2018-21. The HW cools in the tank when a Grundfos HW automatic circulation pump kicks in. January 2024 we fitted a 'boiling water' tap on the kitchen sink, so 'washing up' doesn't need 'hot' HW during the day. Fortunately, there is a leccy shower available when it's 5am and I've got the Tado schedule wrong.
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"Fortunately, there is a leccy shower available when it's 5am and I've got the Tado schedule wrong." 😂
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