Home heating automation

deezell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123053942#Comment_123053942

Do you have a motorised zone valve for HW heating, and are you useing a seperate schedule fir HW, or is hw heated asca resulif CH activity. Be aware that OT operation of a boiler is generally optimal for a continuous flow CH loop, without a connection to a HW cylinder. HW would be provided by a direct heating in a combination boiler during a HW call, the boiler switches modes. It's also possible to have a dual boiler which has seperate flow and return for CH and HW, with higher temperature flow for HW heating, which can supply a cylinder, again with the boiler heating one or the other. If your system is S-plan, with two seperate motorised valve zones for CH and HW, it is not possible with the Tado V3 to supply a digital OT signal to modulate and closely controls boiler temperature while also opening valves. The current tado receiver (extension kits) come in two flavours, CH only with a choice of on/off relayvor OT connection, or the dual relay CH and HW version which has no OT terminals. The v1 dud have theseas well as two relays, but iirc, when configured for OT, the relays were disabled as zoneless CH only system was assumed, the HW control in the app could only be used to effect temperature and pre heat status of a combi boiler.

The lips

I do have a motorised valve for HW control, it is currently closed by manually closing a wired honeywell thermostat. I can run a wire from hotpress to boiler area.

deezell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123054080#Comment_123054080

I presume this a cylinder thermostat? Does this trigger firing of the boiler, independent of the Tado CH call, or does CH beed to be active for HW to heat. Do you have HW timing ncontrol in the Tado app

The lips

Currently the valve is independent of the boiler, open and close only.

The tado has hot water control capability but the wiring is not ran yet.

I would like to replace it with a cylinder thermostatic valve.

deezell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123056837#Comment_123056837

That would work, but woukd require som plumbing work to install the valve on the HW flow coil. As you always have a motorised valve, this prevent overheating of HW if it is controlled by a cylinder mounted thermostat switch, a €15 device. Is this the Honeywell thermostat you mentioned? Is it strapped to the cylinder?

Dozz

Hi all. I'm hoping someone can help me here. We had a power outage for 2 days after the storm. When power was restored my Tado system is acting up. I have 2 controllers (1 for Living Areas, battery powered and 1 for bedrooms, wired) and neither we're calling to the boiler.

I deleted both and tried to reinstall and it looks like both we're calling for heat in the Living area zone.

I have since deleted the bedroom one for now and it seems to have resolved the issue in the Living Area. Only problem now is that I can't heat the bedrooms.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

deezell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123101756#Comment_123101756

Each Zone (Room) in the 'Rooms and Devicess' menu should show the serial no of their respective thermostat. These will be listed as the temperature 'Measuring Device' for that room, and further down the page is the Zone Controller, which is the actual wired device that opens the Zone valve, of which you have two if you have two seperate CH zones. The bedroom stat is wired, so it should list itself as the Zone Controller. The Living room stat should list the receiver or ext kit, as its not directly wired to it's Zone valve. It looks like both your stats are listing the Living room receiver as their Zone Controller, hence both turn on the Living room Zone valve. In a zoned system the stats don't connect to the boiler, just the valves, and the valves have electric relays which are wired jointly to fire the boiler when either Zine valve us activated. Have a look at the settings. You should be seeing a page like this for the beds Zone, same device in both fields

The lips

Did you try down power or reset your boiler?

Any time I had an issue I reset the boiler and it gave the tado priority once again.

deezell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123102014#Comment_123102014

UUnfortunately He went at the Tado configuration, which wouldn't have changed due to a power cut. Boiler is back working but Beds stat is calling the living room zone valve, so this misconfiguration needs to be undone.

Dozz

@deezell I knew you would have an answer for me 😁

Thank you for that. Changed the settings as you suggested but unfortunately it hasn't resolved the bedroom issue however I am sure your solution is 100% correct.

When I now change the temp on the bedroom controller (wired) I can hear the "click" where it should be opening the valve, but unfortunately this isn't happen.

Now think it may be the valve controller itself.

Appreciate your help. You give an amazing amount of information out on this forum and I am sure everyone would agree, we would be lost without you.

Cheers

deezell

I should add that after a prolonged shut down, the Tado will restart to very cold temperature measurements, as a result of no heating. It will interpret these as 'Open Window' on the app, and shut down the zones from firing the boiler until you open the app and cancel the open window detection panel. I'm heading into Day 4 of no power, so I'm using a generator, but only intermittently in daytime, and only when at home. Because of this my Tado, and the entire house, has 4 or 5 power cuts per day, and I'm getting this warning after a heating free night the next morning, or after several hours away from the house while the generator is off. I dread to think how I'd cope without the genny.

Dozz

@deezell I don't see the actual controller listed for zone control.

See photos attached

deezell

The ext kit device serial BO... shouldn't be in the same room as the beds stat. Only it's own device should be available for selection. Move it to the living room Zone. I'm concerned that you think you heard the bedroom stat internal relay click. If this is wired. Then it should actuate the beds Zone valve, open it to flow and the zone valve will then fire the boiler.

deezell

As an emergency measure if your living room stat is firing and heating, you can manually open and latch the beds zone valve si the beds will heat with the living room calls. Maybe tomorrow start from scratch and delete, reboot, then add each device to its room in the right order. The ext kit should be paired only with the wireless stat, I assume that's the living room,and it's not wired.

Dozz

@deezell how do I move the ex kit device to the living room?

deezell

In rooms and devices, if you tap on s device you can see which room is located in, and can be moved to in the menu on thst page. There may be a different case for the extension kit, it has to be paired with the stat it serves as a receiver for. I recall someone years ago having difficulty isolating an extra wired stat from the wireless stat,/ext kit as zone controller, something to do with it being designated as the main stat in a single stat system. He ended up getting tado support to shift the devices into their correct configs. Perhaps start with just the wired stat, and just one room, beds , and get it opening and closing the bedroom valve. I'll have a reread of the extension kit installation, I don't have one to play around with, but it can't act as a wireless receiver relay for only a single stat, but that stat can be the zine controller for say many TRVs.

Dozz

@deezell unfortunately no option to move the extension kit device as you described.

Will get into Tado support tomorrow.

Thanks for the help again.

deezell

The extension kit is paired to a thermostat, it shouldng be paired to the wired one or acting as it's Zone Controller. Probably easier to let Tado do it.

deezell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123102414#Comment_123102414

So like a dog with a bone, I couldn't let go of this problem without getting to the bottom of it. As I needed to retire my pre Tado zone controller, which I still used only for HW timing, but has a habit of needing tedious resetting after power cuts, and in order to move my HW to Tado, I needed to buy myself an Extension kit. As I fancied upgrading my V2 bridge to the homekit capable V3+, and as I also wanted a temperature sensor stat to create a virtual 2nd CH zone, the simple solution was a complete wireless starter kit, €109 for the three parts. What a bargain.

As I already had a wired stat for one zone CH, the ext kit would effectively give me two CH zones, if I ever got around to the plumbing. What I did realise was I could now recreate your issue, and see could I successfully end up with two zone relays controlled by their individual stats, the wired one and the new wireless sensor via the extension kit CH relay. I could then allocate my TRV's either stat relay as its zone as a proof. That was the theory. In practice, the reconfiguration ended up exactly like your setup. All devices defaulted to the extension kit CH relay, I couldn't see or choose the wired stat relay as the zone controller anymore, and the wired stat was acting both as a trigger for it's own relay, thus correctly firing the boiler, it was also triggering the extension kit CH relay. So one stat was turning on both zones. The wireless stat only triggered the ext kit CH zone, but now my TRV's were only triggering the ext kit CH relay, when before they had properly called the boiler via the wired relay. So a right mess. When I deleted the extension kit, there was no visible zone controller device at all, and no means of assigning the TRV's to the only existing boiler relay in the system.

Herself was deeply suspicious when turning up a TRV temperature manually didn't result on a boiler firing and I had to simultaneously ensure the wired stat was also active for the TRV's to heat. I finally figured that adding the extension kit reconfigured all devices to it's CH relay as Zone Controller, including the wired stat, which fortunately also continued to close its own relay. Resorting to the professional installer manual from 2020, which only decribed single CH wired or wireless configuration, I finally figured out what the initial installation or a support requested installation would do. It required manual programming of both stats by their front screen interface, to eventually configure the new wireless kit as a CH zone and HW zone, then the wired stat as its own zone, and a choice of firing either for the TRV's. Definitely it would be easier to get onto support and let them do it, as it can't be done via the app. Nor does the app help in that configuration changes made via the thermostat screens don't seem to appear in the app devices configuration until you close and reopen the app to refresh the changes. Here's a few images of what is required, a right slog to correct, and definitely best left to the support heads to do remotely if your sytem gets messed up. The key was to configure the wired stat as HC01. (heating circuit 1) without HW or Ext kit connection, and the wireless stat as HC02, and turn on HW and Ext kit. This gives both stats the status of zone controllers, and you can then choose.

Tado installallation guide pgs 11-15

Tado_102022_E-ST01IB01-INSTALLER_MANUAL_RELAY-TA-UK-03.pdf

Dozz

@deezell Thanks for that info. I got on to Tado support and they were able to set my wired thermostat as the zone controller but unfortunately this didnt solve my problem.

I am now thinking that it could be the motor on the zone valve that is knackered, so have a sparks coming out to test it next week and replace if necessary.

Cheers for the help again 👍🏼

deezell

That or the water valve is sticking. You can see and hear the actuator moving if you look at the valves while turning the zone on the app up and down. If the two zone valves are side by side and the control cables have an unpluggable connector, it's an easy test of the electrics to swap them and see if the known live working zone moves both, or one doesn't budge or else neither move from a dead zone cable. The latter would imply a control voltage problem rather than the motors sticking, but the actuator motors do go open circuit, I've had to replace one in a less than two year old house for family, builder used fairly cheap generics. A cable swap confirmed the electrics were fine, both zone voltages present at their plugs, but the upstairs valve didn't move. You can manually open it with the actuator manual lever and latch it open, until the sparks has a look. Good luck.

funnyname

Can anyone recommend a replacement for this that will start me on my journey to automating our home heating and comfort of the house? Also re the automation is home assistant the best to use?

The current time calls the oil boiler in two windows, generally we fire it on for 2 hours in the morning and 2 in the evening.

deezell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123125829#Comment_123125829

I'm assuming there is no wall thermostat associated with this to control the temperature, or any switch to implement HW heating without CH. Do you have a HW cylinder?

The Quickest, simplest, best and least expensive solutions right now in order is the Tado wireless starter kit, the Hive active or mini single channel, or the Drayton Kit 1. Installation is simple, the wired receiver just drops in, in place of the Sunvic, and the associated wireless thermostat can be located in an area that you would like to act as your reference temperature measuring location, so living room or living space, or often down the front hall. The Tado is currently only €109 for the three part kit. Receiver, wireless wall thermostat, and the small Internet hub which plugs directly into your router, and communicates wirelessly with the stat and receiver. The app on your phones is all you will need, but it can also be picked up and controlled by Alexa. Google Home, Apple homekit etc. Tado have a newer version of their system known as Tado X, which places the system in the Thread/Matter home automation space, which may be of some benefit in the long term future for HA enthusiasts.

https://www.screwfix.ie/p/tado-v3-wireless-heating-hot-water-smart-thermostat-starter-kit-white/141kt

https://www.screwfix.ie/p/hive-mini-wireless-heating-smart-thermostat-white-grey/150pv

https://www.screwfix.ie/p/drayton-wiser-wireless-heating-internet-enabled-one-channel-smart-thermostat-kit-anthracite/758ka

funnyname

Cheers

We have a bit of a donkey of a system, an analogue timer to turn on the oil boiler to heat water in a large tank. DWH hot water and water for heating comes from the tank. So generally time the boiler and heating to come on for two hours in the morning and then hit boost if extra water is needed for showers etc later in the day.

Probably update with a heat pump at some stage but for now I just want to automate firing of the boiler.

There's two manifolds for the heating which are controlled by a plugged in timer so I was thinking of replacing those with a smart plug. I could control the lot with home assistant so just really only looking for smart switch (to replace the sunvic control), 2 smart plugs (not sure of the brand, bought a while ago but never used) and two smart thermostats (one upstairs, one downstairs, I'll leave the DHW for now) and run it all with something like Home Assistant.

Is that possible rather than buying a proprietary system?

deezell

So that's a big reveal alright. In summary you have;

1 A thermal store aka buffer tank from which CH flow is taken directly from the stored heated water, and HW to the taps is taken on demand from the heat exchanger coil in the tank.

2. CH hot flow is pumped from two manifolds to upstairs and downstairs, currently controlled by a single plug timer.

3. You imply that the upstairs and downstairs can be independently pumped as you suggest two smart plugs and two thermostats Are there two CH independent pumps, or a pump and motorised zone valves?

A thermal store/buffer tank might seem like a complex inversion of the traditional cylinder, where the tank volume only stores consumable HW, and heating flow for CH come direct from a boiler, but in reality, the control inputs are very similar. HW does not require an independent boiler demand, as it is heated 'on the fly' passing through the buffer tank heat exchanger. The two CH zone thermostats will operate whatever pumps or valves currently draw down the stored hot flow in the buffer to the up and downstairs radiator zones (I'm assuming radiators, unless you want to spring underfloor heating on me?). Neither the CH zones or the HW will be required to call the boiler, smartly or otherwise, but drawdown of heat from the buffer can call the boiler simply by the intervention of a simple buffer tank thermostat. This thermostat can be governed by a smart app timed schedule, as it currently is by the Sunvic, if it's considered more efficient to heat the buffer unevenly over a day, rather than allow it to recharge on demand after a draw down from HW or CH.

What will fulfill all your control demands, from a smart app interface, and thus available to Home assistant, is the very same three zone smart thermostat system normally used in a valve controlled Splan system, with the two smart thermostat relays controlling the time and temperature schedules of the CH zones, while the seemingly redundant HW smart timer relay can be redeployed to replace the current Sunvic timer, which calls the boiler to top up the buffer tank. I'd highly recommend a buffer tank thermostat to interrupt the tank timer when the tank contents reach a working HW temperature, and I suspect such a mechanical thermostat is already installed. Such a thermostat will allow the tank to vary the duration of the timed call, depending in the HW and CH demands. Once the smart stat heating schedules are set up, and sufficient boiler time is allowed to cover the boiler demand, there will be little need to change the tank timer schedule, as it will adjust automatically to the demand. All of the CH and boiler/tank schedules will be available on the app, and if required adjustments can be made by app or HA.

Any of the smart systems I've suggested can provide this control. The Tado sytem already has a HW timer relay in addition to the smart thermostat relay, so an additional wired thermostat will be required to give the extra CH zone control. Similarly, the Hive system can be extended to 3 zones and the Drayton Kit 3 has an all in one three zone receiver. You will not need any odd brand smart plugs to achieve full smart control, there is sufficient versatility in the zone relays and a mechanical thermostat on the tank to fully automate your system, with the full benefit of smart adjustment such as home and away modes. Take a while to digest this, and if you wish you can post a few images of your sytem, tank, pumos, manifolds etc.

what recession?

Hi everyone

I am coming to the end of a refurb, which included installing a new gas heating system. It's an Ideal Logic Max system boiler (not combi) with a HW cylinder in the hot press and three zones (upstairs, downstairs and hot water).

I am meant to pick heating controls this week and, naively, did not consider it much at all until this week when I delved deep into this thread..!

If it matters, the electricians have put wiring in for a wired thermostat on the wall upstairs and downstairs for each of the heating zones so I don't necessarily need a wireless option. There are bedrooms that are only used rarely so I like the idea of smart TRVs so that those rooms could be controlled separately to a lower heat.

It would be great to hear thoughts that you might have on what is the best system? My reading throughout this thread seemed to be Tado / Drayton Wiser, but on balance there seemed to be a few people switching from Wiser to Tado which led me to believe Tado is probably the better product.

Unless I'm mistaken, Tado seems to require a wired ethernet/internet connection, which I don't have beside the boiler, but it seems from this thread that a Netgear extender plug or similar would sort that.

Cheers all

deezell

The boiler is fired by a combination of any of the three zone valves, which contain electrical relays. These motorised valves in turn are operated by their respective thermostats. If the electricians run wires from the CH zone valves to suitable up and downstairs locations, you can use wired Tado thermostats. You can control the heating of the HW cylinder just by connecting a cylinder thermostat to its zone valve, but you can also apply a timer to this if you wish. Timing on modern highly insulated HW cylinders does not achieve any great savings, as the losses from these are trivial. If you wish to time HW, you will need the Tado wireless starter kit, which has a receiver which provides a timed output for HW and also a wired output from one wireless CH thermostat, so only one additional wired Tado thermostat is required for a 3 zone setup.

All communication from the Internet app to the wired and wireless thermostats, the wireless receiver/HW relay (known as the extension kit), and any radiator smart TRVs you may fit, comes from the Tado bridge, a small ethernet connected device which comes with the wired or wireless starter kit. This does not have to connect to or communicate with the boiler, only with the tado devices connected to the zone valves. It has good range generally, and will work well from say a hall or living room based ethernet connection, and in a three storey house I installed for family, I've had no issues with a top floor bedroom stat communicating with a ground floor living room located bridge.

If you're considering smart TRVs, make sure your radiators have at least mechanical TRVs fitted now, so no plumbing will be required, just a swap from the mechanical to the smart TRV control heads.

Tado wireless starter kit with wireless stat, extension kit and bridge is a steal at €109.95 from Screwfix, the additional wired thermostat on it it's own is €114.95

TRV 4 pack is well priced at €215 for 4 premium model, €190 for 4 eco. ~ €50 each which is well below normal pricing of €79+.

what recession?

Thank you @deezell for your help, really appreciated.

Do you recommend the Tado V3? I'm in half minds between Tado V3 or Tado X as the latter seems to be new and in my mind I wonder if newer equals less chance of obsolescence in the coming 10+ years, but maybe not.

Also when you mention about having a timer on the HW cylinder, realistically I just need to be able to programme the hot water to come on every morning for X minutes and then on demand - will the Tado V3 or X allow for that basic functionality by default or do I need the wireless starter kit one specifically? I see Screwfix have the "Tado X Wireless Heating & Hot Water Boiler Programmer & Smart Thermostat Starter Kit White" for €209.95, seems to be only £133 on Amazon UK which would be better assuming the UK models are compatible here?

Cheers again for all the help.

deezell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123158259#Comment_123158259

Models here are the same for UK. That's a good price for the X wireless starter kit, the architecture is the same as V3, wireless thermostat sensor, receiver with HW relay and CH relay, and Tado X bridge. Similarly, you can add an extra Tado X wired thermostat for the second CH zone, and Tado X TRVs. Tado X use next generation smart protocols, so are incompatible wirh V3 on the same instance of the Tado App.

Go for X by all means, £133 for the starter Kit, £99 for the wired add on Stat, about €290 with irl vat and exchange, plus delivery, if you shop around. The TRVs are quite attractive, and have a pluggable battery unit which can be charged on a phone style charger, and you can keep an extra battery pack on hand to changeover among a number of TRVs. The X TRVs are coming in around €75. It's anyone's guess how long v3 will be manufactured, but app support should extend well into the future, as the same app seems to be the base for both systems, mutually exclusive.

WildCardDoW

I'll offer my opinion on using both:

The removable battery aspect is a huge improvement over the V3. The design for mounting is much better as well IMO.

Matter / Thread at least offers some platform redundancy.

Also please check Amazon.de before purchasing, you can get a TRV for €50 and if purchasing multiple the delivery cost (~€10) is barely a factor.

You can get a wired stat for €99 on there but the starter kit is a higher price so get that from Amazon UK.

However I don't think X will integrate as well as V3 with heating a cylinder so that would be "outside" the app.

UK one does include it (so definitely get that!) maybe just the EU one doesn't.

I am unclear if you need a bridge if you have the wireless receiver, assume so for the TRVs.