Sorry!!! I know, I know, another thread on smart heating, thermostats and radiator valves.
I recently moved and the boiler is due renewing and I want to introduce smart controls. Things to consider, we have a baby, a "home office" (a bedroom with a desk in it), a second living room that gets used in the evenings only, an en suite with a wet heated towel rail. There is a desire to control each room individually. The less straight forward element is an open plan kitchen and living room, where the kitchen has a wet underfloor heating system with its own wired thermostat, and the living room has a radiator which operates with the rest of the house from a wireless thermostat. The wireless thermostat currently sits in the second living room, as that's typically the coldest room in the house.
I would like each room to have it's own thermostat/or smart thermostatic radio valve. The complication I see is the open plan kitchen/living room and its mixed heating system.
My thoughts are getting a system where the only thermostat in the house is that wired to control the underfloor heating. Every other room will have a smart TRV. Both the thermostat and each TRV should have the ability to separately call for heat from the boiler. Key will be programming each room separately, i.e. I will only heat the office weekdays 9-5, the baby's room will only need heating early evening/through the night. The towel rail will need heating just an hour each morning for showers.
Does anybody have any experience with a set up like this? Who can provide a solution? Is it Bosch's own smart system, will Tado work?
Oh, it's a combi boiler. As much as I'd love a hot water tank, and a pressurised system. There just isn't the space/scope for a tank without considerable cost and upheaval.
We have the Tado system with smart thermostats on every radiator except the towel rads, which are on an 'open valve' circuit controlled by a single wireless thermostat in the main bathroom. It works brilliantly.
We don't have UFH, so someone else will have to confirm whether that works with the Tado system, but I cant see why it wouldn't.
Did a lot of research on this having bought a house with UFH and very dumb controls.
Firstly, do you already have sufficient dumb thermostats - we didn't an needed to add some.
The only solution that can combine UFH and Radiators is Honeywell Evo home but this was working out very expensive and there were some doubts from the installer about operating the system over 4 floors (in the end we couldn't anyway).
So we ended up using Heatmiser which has been great - it does need a hub for app control which I would recomend as programing a load of thermostats is boring. It also has some great accessories - so have a sensor on the balcony/patio doors which if open turn the heating off (keeps me sane when I see the door open in winter) and a thermostat upstairs and TRVs to control the radiators on the top floor.
Heatmiser is very scalable and we could build a system that worked and zoned the UFH and it reached over 3 floors which is what we neeeded and the 4th floor although it could have probably linked - HM make boost boxes etc. it was easier to isolate the basement (which had its own boiler) and add another hub. The 2 groups work as different homes but under the same app.
Overall it was a good solution - I think if I had less floors I would have spent on the Homeywell but Heatmiser is very good.
I have almost exactly the same set up you’re describing with a wet ufh in kitchen family room, rads in rest of downstairs and upstairs. One boiler runs the lot. I have vaillant controls with two thermostats/controllers. Ther is one in ufh space and one in hall that does the rads. Both have separate temp controls and timers and can be independently manual, auto, or timed. They also go back to a weather comp sensor with individual heat curves (although I run out of knowledge here)
Seems to work well and I had it all fitted when I had wet ufh system installed. It was retro fitted to a vaillant boiler and existing rad system. It’s all wireless but has a fairly substantial wiring /switch system located next to the boiler.
Only thing I find was boiler kept cycling because it’s a 37kw boiler that is way too powerful for the ufh system. I don’t have a hot water store so when it fires up it’s essentially too powerful for the ufh system. I managed to improve it quite a bit by going in to the setting and reducing the boiler output to around 13kw. This was only an issue btw when the ufh was in and the rad weren’t. When the rads were demanding heat the system worked perfectly.
This is what I had fitted. As typing the only thing that crosses my mind is it may need a vaillant boiler to work, don’t know about that
https://www.cityplumbing.co.uk/p/vai...36822/p/478074
Hope that helps
Last edited by tz-uk73; 26th June 2023 at 16:41.
Similar to ours. We have Tado with 14 smart rad stats, same towel rail arrangement… and wet ufh in the kitchen. It doesn’t work with electric UFH as far as I was told.
Jack
Originally Posted by Maysie
The problem we had was wanting to zone the UFH circuits as one manifold was serving 4 rooms on one floor - originally the thermostats were just on/off and we had timer/programmer separate - now each room has its own programmer.
The anticipation is now much better too as it is meant to have learnt the thermal gain and come on accordingly (although still not sure this is 100% correct it is better than my guesswork !)
Thanks for the replies thus far gents, really helpful.
I've been onto Tado's service chat thingy, and they're very reluctant to commit to anything. They're asking to know exactly what valves I've got on the radiators at present and what boiler I have. I tried telling them I just want to know in principle that their system can do both my wet UFH and smart TRVs. I will order a boiler that is compatible and will change the radiator valves to ensure their smart TRVs fit.
I know they want to be 100% certain before they commit to saying their system will work, but it's a tad frustrating. Might be enough to put me off, which is a shame as their smart TRVs look the neatest and least intrusive.
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Jack, sounds like your existing system is most like mine. Could you elaborate a tad please?
Each radiator and towel rail has its own smart TRV?
What boiler do you have?
And what thermostat is controlling the wet UFH?
If I were to go with Tado I see that I'll need a wired smart thermostat for the UFH, which pairs with a wireless receiver. The receiver is connected to the boiler and switches that on when a thermostat calls for heat. Each radiator and towel rail will have a smart TRV which connects to the wireless receiver when heat is needed.
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I’ll do my best, though I’m not as clued up on this as much as others on the thread. We have a main house and joined to that is an annexe/garage, which runs off a separate gas supply and boiler - we decided to keep that separate (and dumb) for now as WiFi connectivity is key. Our main house has 1.5 foot thick walls so that causes many issues..! So just be aware of that WiFi connectivity.
So we have a smart TRV on every radiator in the main house, that’s 14. We have 2 towel rails that are in bathrooms which also have rads in them (the other bathrooms have rads only), so we left the towel rails ‘dumb’ - all the dumb rads run off a house thermostat that we keep downstairs in a room we feel matches the general temp fairly well (but it’s wireless so could go anywhere). The UFH in the kitchen has its own connection and thermostat (and a separate wireless receiver etc) we keep the thermostat in the kitchen (obviously) - we have thick stone floor slabs so we basically leave it on all winter and turn it off in the summer.
We had some issues with the initial set up but basically everything runs off one internet bridge connected to the router, which caused confusion - the engineer fitting it tried putting two bridges in.
The way you describe it working is accurate: ie how it calls for heat etc.
It’s all controlled from the app; snapshot below from part of the app to show it all in one place. They’re all off as it’s so warm. Our hot water tank has its own control within the app that we have on a couple of times a day.
Our boiler is a Vaillant system boiler with unvented cylinder.
My comments overall: the installers were a bit clueless about the overall use of the system but Tado customer service is great; mainly chat based but very responsive and helpful.
Batteries: each rad takes 2 x AA batts and in the winter I seemed to get through them quite quickly. I’ve started investing in enoloop rechargeable batteries.
Check the WiFi coverage, seems obvious but we had one that is just completely out of range (old house, thick walls etc). I complained to the company that installed it and they refunded the cost of the unit but it would be better to put it back to being dumb (no batteries).
Very happy overall.
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I have exactly this set up
Combi (however it does drive a pressurised cylinder too!)
Underfloor at the back of the house
Rads everywhere else
Don’t put any TRV on a towel rail…. The condensation will play havoc with it, plus you need to keep one rad without controls
I have Drayton wiser running off two separate zones…. I have a controller and a room stat running the underfloor and an additional controller and multiple rad valves running the rads…. Only slight faff is I have two separate accounts running the two zones
All works really well and I have complete control…. Beds heat up after 2130 etc…. In my study I just use the rad valve boost function whenever I need it, otherwise it permanently off
As above Honeywell Evohome is the one you want for a one stop shop properly designed to run the type of system you mention
We have had it for 6 years now and it’s been faultless
Thanks,
The towel rail is the only "radiator" in the en-suite. The main bathroom has only a normal radiator. Is the suggestion that neither should have a smart TRV?
I also struggle to understand why at least one radiator in the house should be dumb?
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Thanks. The main concern I have with Honeywell is a cosmetic one, the smart TRVs look quite large.
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Smart rad valves are essentially a replacement head to the TRV's on each of your rads, so you will need to keep the existing TRV valve bodies in place when you add the smart head on top. If you dont already have TRV's on the rads, then you will need to add these to all rads - except one, that one must be a permantly open valve (ie not a TRV).
You should always have at least one permanently open valve (rad) to take excess heat when the wall thermostat may be calling for heat but the smart TRV's have all closed as they think it is warm enough. It is a bit of a failsafe protection.
Like most, we picked the bathroom rads as they will nearly always have a damp towel on them somewhere or other. The downside is if/when any other smart rad thermostat calls for heat, the bathroom rads will also come on - which for us is exactly what we wanted to dry the towels.
Brilliant, thanks.
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Do you know the make of your underfloor heating. Mine is an Uponor system, and Tado says their wired thermostat will not work.
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Someone here got them working together https://community.tado.com/en-gb/dis...atibility-list
Thanks.
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