Improve Care&Protect boiler fault detection

The problem i encounter is easy to explain. If for example my TADO is programmed to turn my boiler on (be it automatically or manually), and for whatever reason the boiler is either Off or the mains is down, TADO doesn’t inform that the boiler isn’t on. 


In this second report I have sent, the boiler was resetting itself due to a failure, and the only way I found out that something was wrong was because after more than an hour i still wasn’t getting heat from the radiators. The display in the TADO app was registering the normal heating process. Check the graph on the server for 10/02/2021 and you can see that the process started at 16:22, and I discovered the problem at 17:31, but during this lapse of time the app shows the three waves symbols indicating that the burner is working.


The first report I sent was due to an unknown mains failure in the boiler room with the same result from my TADO. En my old wired thermostat indicated when the boiler wasn’t turning on.

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  • Please consider the following:

    If a device calls for heat but the measured temperature hasn’t increased by X degrees within X minutes then send a notification.


    The rationale behind this is that if there is no rise in temperature then there is probably a problem with the boiler. Typically this could be a pressure drop such as a leak somewhere in the system. This enhancement could give early warning of such an issue and possibly prevent serious water damage to flooring etc. Ideally this would be configurable on a per room basis to help minimise the number of false alarms.

  • Definitely agree something like this would be useful. It should be relatively easy to save a temperature when a TRV calls for heat and then x minutes later check if the heat is higher and if it's not send a notificiation that there might be an issue with the boiler

  • Great idea. May have alerted me earlier to a large leak in pipes
  • mbeltoft
    mbeltoft
    edited February 2021
    Yes this is important. I had my boiler fail in the middle of night 2 times this winter resulting in a freezing house in the morning. However Tado happily thought it was heating regardless of the temperature going down. It should be easy to see that something is wrong if the heating is full on and the temp is not going up and then send a notification.
  • Hi @Lambar & @mbeltoft,

    I "naively" thought/hoped that this would be covered by the Tado "Care & Protect" function.......but it would appear that this is not the case.
    I have had 3 or 4 occasions when my boiler had "shut down" and I am currently having to do a "reset" on my Wireless Thermostat and also my Extension Kit........and the Tado "Care & Protect" has never detected any of these issues in my system and I've not had a single notification !!!
  • I have renamed this thread, since we do have the care&protect feature but it might not always detect a boiler fault.


    How it works: If tado is calling for heating, but the temperature does not go up, it will detect a fault.


    This also means that it won't be able to detect a fault when tado is not requesting heat.


    Furthermore, there are many occasions where the temperature does go down even when tado is requesting heat (leaving a window/door open etc..) and we also do not want to have too many false positives driving our customers crazy with a lot of notifications.

  • @Jurian

    In my case the boiler had shut down in the middle of night but as it is winter the heating was on so tado was calling for heat.

    When i woke up in the morning i could see on the room stats what time the rooms started to get colder.

    tardo had registered the temp drop and sat all valves to 100% but the temp kept going down for around 4 hours until i had a chance to reset the boiler. after the reset the temp got back to normal.

    but in the about 4 hours i had the boiler fail care & protect reported everything OK.

    I would expect that it have given me an alarm after about 30 minutes after the call for heat hadn't given any rise in room temp.

  • GrayDav4276
    GrayDav4276 ✭✭✭
    edited February 2021
    Hi @Jurian,
    Your reply does not actually seem to reflect what customers are experiencing at all.
    Your response appears to display how Tado "think" that their system works......you are not listening /understanding your customers concerns.
    I agree that the App will show that a device has "no remote access"..... but you need to dig down into your App to "find out" that there is a fault......the system should be "telling us" that there is an issue by sending a "NOTIFICATION" to ensure that the customer can start to investigate what is going on.
    If Tado honestly think that this function is operating within Tado's expected design parameters......thrn you nerd to consider renaming this function 'cos
    "Care & Protect" is a total misrepresentation of this Tado function.
  • Jurian
    Jurian | Admin
    edited February 2021

    @GrayDav4276 Sorry for misunderstanding.


    In that case, I believe that there is already a topic open for your request:

    https://community.tado.com/en-gb/discussion/2515/notification-when-device-looses-connectivity#latest

  • GrayDav4276
    GrayDav4276 ✭✭✭
    edited February 2021
    @jurian,

    You "appear" to have applied a "selective" filter to my post..... I was just trying to highlight a specific fault that Tado "could" send a "NOTIFICATION" if you think that I have "confused" the original reason for the thread.....then I apologise.

    Just for your information.....the post that you suggested for me..... I have already posted into this thread....and I have also "Upvoted" this thread.

    My comments about the Tado "Care & Protect" function are still valid IMHO

    So therefore (in my opinion) there is no need for me to open another thread, as I feel that both issues are definitely interlinked.

    Tado seems to be content with "deflecting" customer concerns/issues and re-defining what Tado "wants" customers to understand what Tado is "actually" supplying to customers.
  • I have a non-WiFi connected (dumb ?) boiler. When the boiler fails to ignite for whatever reasons, it is possible to see from the history of each radiator thermostat that the temperature in each respective room is still falling whilst the thermostat ‘demand’ is on and increases as the temperature drops.

    The proposal is that the Tado app recognises that: 

    if heating ‘demand’ continues AND the temperature in the room continues to fall in one or many of the designated monitored room thermostats, then a notification is sent to the User to check the boiler.

    The point at which the notification is sent could be User configurable to avoid local variations triggering false notifications. i.e. the difference between ‘demand’ temp. & notification temp could be between 1-5deg C.

    This may take a while, possibly an hour or so to receive a notification but would be useful before the temperature of the rooms becomes more noticeably colder and for notification of heating failure when away from home.

  • I concur with this. From the graphs for all rooms, I can see the boiler failed five hours ago. Care&Protect reports that all rooms are heating at 100%, and no problems have been detected. At what point would it consider it to be a fault?

  • I had the same issue and to be honest I was expecting care&protect to detect a failed boiler that isn't heating for almost 7 hours although all smart radiator thermostats are fully open in this period.

    I understand that a room temperature may not be increasing (or going down) even the radiator thermostat is open in case an open window is causing this issue. But the algorithm should be smart enough that ALL of the rooms cannot have an open window right?

    Looks like the care&protect isn't as smart as it should be. I really wonder what type of anomalies this function catches if it can't catch this simple one.

  • GrayDav4276
    GrayDav4276 ✭✭✭
    edited May 2021
    Hi @MED,
    I'm sorry to say that Tado doesn't seem to agree with their customers expectations regarding "Care & Protect".......please see my earlier posts and also Tado's responses......I'm sorry to say that I feel we are fighting a losing battle as Tado's interpretation of where the "goal posts" are is different to our (the user/customer) perception.
  • @Jurian is tado doing an investigation on this? Looks like the care and protect algorithm isn’t working as it’s supposed to work
  • Jurian
    Jurian | Admin

    @MED I would suggest you contact our support with your specific case. Make sure you include the room name of the room that was calling for heat and include the exact dates and times.


    That way, our development team could look into your case to see if the algorithm can be optimised.

  • what about actually reading error codes?
    my boiler provides a comprehensive list of them, I will be glad to send them to you.

    Pressure drop, gas failure, ignition failure, or other stuff, why not read them and push notifications?
  • Hi @pfmc,
    I would love Tado to take you up on that suggestion........however I really don't think that Tado's "Care & Protect" feature is designed/engineered/capable of achieving this level of fault detection.
    I have never had a fault reported with the "Care & Protect" feature whether it has been a Tado device or my boiler or even an Internet connectivity issue.