What heating schedule do you use
What time periods and target temperatures do you use?
I have had some PMs with a member who has achieved some impressive savings since introducing tado and using different schedules. He has real smart meter data going back a few years which documented these. Additionally the savings appeared mainly due to changes in use, and interpretation of information rather than relying on tado systems to achieve them.
I am very interested in what heating schedules people find suits them. I completely understand that everyone's needs, requirements and circumstances are completely different. Nevertheless there may be some overlaps or some learning.
I have moved towards using periodic heating intervals rather than low and continuous. I am able to monitor use accurately as I have hourly, daily, weekly, monthly usage data via the Bright device. I am aware of all the information, debate and views on this. So I am really more interested in what people find suits them in the real world, rather than academic debate on the best strategy.
My situation is perhaps not typical. A three floor house, with multiple devices including 13 rooms each with SRV and separate wireless sensor, as well as 3 heat exchangers and ground floor wet UFH. My current strategy which appears to be reducing consumption (biased/affected by the UFH characteristics) is 3 or 4 one to three hour intervals for those rooms requiring heating.
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@drmattb since Feb 2022 with Tado, we set heating temperatures and timed, as needed for each room. North wing heated am and pm. South wing heated in the evening. Bedrooms briefly heated early am and.late pm. A lot of geofencing. Roughly 18-19 deg C. That is different to static heating at 21 deg C room stat from 2011-2021 with a condensing boiler, room stat and dumb trvs. Overall the annualised saving is 45%. It’s taken 15 months of fiddling with settings to get that level of saving. HTH.
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Used tado since launch (2013, I think), with a Viessmann modcon with weather comp. The most comfortable and no less efficient setting for us is continuous, around 19C and let the boiler do its thing. I tried intermittent but that requires the boiler to run at a higher flow temp, so the less time heating was cancelled out by the lower boiler efficiency. As you say, every set up is different.
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I'm just into my third year with Tado and I've experimented with various heating schedules from off overnight to small setbacks of 1 C or 2C or 3C or 4C to no setback at all.
Heating is always on all day as the house is almost always occupied, so the question regarding heating schedule is confined to nighttime. In terms of energy consumption and cost I think there is little to choose between the options. Right now I'm favouring running daytime temps 24x7, just like @DM932187 .
No doubt there is a slightly higher cost, but it really seems not to be much, and the house and occupants are better off for it. IMHO. The boiler runs cooler and more efficiently, albeit for longer, and there is less thermal stress, no cold spots, no draughts, little or condensation.
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Thought process from a Heat Geek....
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Three story house with 10 rooms, condensing gas boiler, 13 radiators and 8 TRVs (no need for connected TRVs in the bathrooms and the hallway serve as bypass). From my experience when i first installed tado last year i've noticed that playing around with schedules, lowering temperatures when i wasn't there etc... was kind of useless. The gas usage was the same if not higher than just setting everything to 19° and let it do its thing.
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All very interesting and thank you for the information. Seems 19C is the most common temperature target. Although I have a modern well insulated house, the boiler is basic and doesnt even allow flow temp regulation. During the summer I experimented with HW timings and found considerably increased gas use if on constantly or even twice per day rather than once early am (all showers in am). I found this hard to fathom as it is an unvented pressurised cylinder and I would have thought the ambient heat losses were low.
Using the Bright app allows me to see boiler activity down to half hour intervals and at least before it got super cold recently, I lowered consumption by using intervals.
Completely appreciate everyone's setup (and requirements) are different. I recall the Heat Geek advice which was basically "it depends". I am mindful of not allowing rooms which are next to occupied rooms not to get too cold.
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