Smart Thermostats house reset

iAcesHigh

Firstly, let me apologise if I completely misunderstood how heating systems work but the more I read about options available I'm less and less sure if what I thought was a great plan is actually even achievable :) Let me explain what my goal is and what is causing my confusion.

We just moved into a 20 year old house which has 8 standard radiators + 2 towel radiators in bathrooms which are brand new (we've put them in 2 months ago). We have siemens thermostat downstairs (see Siemens.jpg attached) that allows us to independently turn on/off water heating and central heating. On top of that, we have 2 Imit thermostats (see Imit.jpg attached) that are placed in the most awkward places - in the corner of a ground floor hallway controlling ground floor heating and in the corner of a master bedroom controlling first floor and attic room.

My goal is to be able to maintain certain temperature in each room independently of other rooms and turn the heating/water on/off remotely and that's where I saw Tado could come as a solution.

When I started reading about it my first feeling was that this would be simple: All I needed to do is to put Tado X Smart Thermostat on each radiator (10 in total), set temperature on each (22 for living area, 20 in bedrooms and 18 for attic room and storage room), change Siemens main thermostat for Tado one and schedule boiler to be on 8-20 each day (as I never want heating one during the night) and that was it. I thought this will mean that boiler is going to turn on when any of the radiators asks for heat because temperature went below requested one and there is no real value in changing wall thermometers (Imit) because I might as well put them at 25 degrees so radiators can ask for heat whenever, but that wouldn't mean that boiler is always on because if none of the radiators is asking for heat surely what that thermostat says is "irrelevant".

But after doing quite a bit of reading I have two main concerns now:

1. Is the above statement even the way heating system works and would boiler really be off if hallway/main bedroom Imit thermostat was at 25 while other smart TRVs are at 22 in rooms in which temperature is lets say 23 (higher than TRV and lower than wall thermostat)? Basically, will the fact that wall thermostat is asking for heat and yet NONE of radiators are open mean boiler is on or off?
2. It seems it is not suggested to use Tado in bathroom - if that's the case this means I would need to have them constantly on killing the whole idea of savings as the boiler would then essentially always be on, no matter what the answer to no 1 above is…

Sorry if I overly complicated it but I do hope somebody can advise not he above or share how they use their Tado/similar solution in practice.

Siemens.jpg

Imit.jpg

Alkers

What you're planning is definitely possible but I haven't used tado personally .

You can then set the weekly schedule for each room seperately - there's no point heating your bedrooms all day if there's no one in them for example. Also the 20 / 22 temperatures you're suggesting seem very high!

You don't need smart trvs in the communal rooms like hallway, landing and bathroom, as realistically you want these to be heated when ANY room is beaing heated. Normal trv set appropriately will achieve that

There is a huge long thread about hearing in this forum, have a read of that.

emaherx

Yes you can achieve what you want but you do need boiler control as well as zone/TRV control or your boiler will always be on dry cycling (heating the water in the circuit without heating any rooms)

I have a very similar house setup as you have described, when I sorted mine I couldn't find a good solution for stats/ valves and boiler at different ends of the house so I built my own. I went with basic WiFi stats and smart switches and used Home Assistant to control everything, it was straight forward to setup if any stat calls for heat then the boiler is on, if none are calling for heat boiler is off. For scheduling I never turn off the heating, just have HA turn up or down the stats, I consider 16 degrees to be off, which means if it is -8 outside like it is now the boiler will turn on a little early in the morning and the house never gets real cold but most of the year will not turn on at night at all.

These days there are better off the shelf solutions, but in my opinion it will not be any of the 'Smart Thermostat' brands like Tado/Nest/Hive etc. You need complete heating system controls and I think you'd be better looking at they likes of Drayton. But since I have no experience directly of these I'd advise asking your question in the very large Heating Automation thread that is always very active with these questions.

If you decide to do any kind of DIY solution like mine, make sure your heating controls still work manually in case of any loss of communication in your home network.