Good advice about how these things can potentially affect the efficiency of your furnace. I'm a smart home enthusiast but not a heating engineer of any kind; I just went ahead and tried a few things, trial and error. In the end I got it working fairly well: 3 thermostats (office, living room and bedroom), controlled from the hub on a schedule (or from an app). Radiators in those rooms are slaved to those thermostats. And some additional rooms without their own thermostat, where turning on the light will demand heat from the furnace if the room temp is low, and open the radiators. That way we no longer heat rooms we are not in, and we're saving a ton of gas. The whole system is set up so that we no longer even touch the thermostats (physically or in the app); every room in the house is at a comfortable temperature, or it is cold (15C) when we're not in it. That is what a smart home is supposed to do: fewer buttons and controls, not more. As for the cons of smart thermostats... Besides Wifi and Bluetooth (both crappy options for home automation), you can also get Z-Wave or Zigbee smart TRVs. These are far more reliable, but they do require a hub that can talk to them (which is more expensive). And they work independently of your internet connection... some of them can work independently of your hub as well, and be driven by a (smart) thermostat directly. Batteries: the TRVs I got have rechargable ones. Every few months I get a low battery poke from my smart home system, and I just plug in a USB cable for a few hours to recharge. About your example of the cloak room: that sort of stuff can usually be programmed into the hub. If you really want, it can even be programmed into the TRV itself (the ones I have allow for a locallyl programmed schedule) My advice for anyone interested in this: be prepared to start an entire new hobby! 😁
Set up the away mode with a min temp for heating , I have the same same system and so i put into away mode during summer so the heating wont come on but the hot water will .
I have a Tado system with 12 radiators and 9 smart valves. I don't use smart valves on bathroom or cloakroom radiators. However I agree that you do have to be sensible with how you control the system - just turning one small radiator on is unlikely to work well for the reasons you describe. I tend to use the additional control provided by smart radiator valves to determine room temperatures in rooms at different times of the day. We tend to live in the kitchen during the day and move to a lounge in the evening so I adjust room temperatures to suit this behaviour. Batteries tend to last over a year when using alkaline. However I am moving to rechargeable since you can do that with Tado but I don't have much experience with these yet.
I am curious why it is worse to use smart TRVs than regular TRVs in these scenarios. Surely the same problem occurs with regular TRVs if they are set at different temperatures?
On the downstairs toilet / cloakroom. Cant you wire the smart TRV in series with whatever boiler timer / nest / hive etc you use? This way if the radiator calls for heat but you haven't a schedule for the boiler it is blocked. :) It needs boiler to be one and scheduled and the TRV to be active for a call for heat to take place,
Good video Mark. I fitted Tado smart thermostats to all my radiators bar the hallway and I've had all the issues you've mentioned. And I'm pretty sure my 12 year old Worcester Bosch combi boiler doesn't appreciate so many radiators shutting off when it's running either. Where you've removed the smart thermostats from parts of your system, have you replaced these with dumb thermostatic valves?
Good advice about how these things can potentially affect the efficiency of your furnace. I'm a smart home enthusiast but not a heating engineer of any kind; I just went ahead and tried a few things, trial and error. In the end I got it working fairly well: 3 thermostats (office, living room and bedroom), controlled from the hub on a schedule (or from an app). Radiators in those rooms are slaved to those thermostats. And some additional rooms without their own thermostat, where turning on the light will demand heat from the furnace if the room temp is low, and open the radiators. That way we no longer heat rooms we are not in, and we're saving a ton of gas. The whole system is set up so that we no longer even touch the thermostats (physically or in the app); every room in the house is at a comfortable temperature, or it is cold (15C) when we're not in it. That is what a smart home is supposed to do: fewer buttons and controls, not more.
As for the cons of smart thermostats... Besides Wifi and Bluetooth (both crappy options for home automation), you can also get Z-Wave or Zigbee smart TRVs. These are far more reliable, but they do require a hub that can talk to them (which is more expensive). And they work independently of your internet connection... some of them can work independently of your hub as well, and be driven by a (smart) thermostat directly.
Batteries: the TRVs I got have rechargable ones. Every few months I get a low battery poke from my smart home system, and I just plug in a USB cable for a few hours to recharge.
About your example of the cloak room: that sort of stuff can usually be programmed into the hub. If you really want, it can even be programmed into the TRV itself (the ones I have allow for a locallyl programmed schedule)
My advice for anyone interested in this: be prepared to start an entire new hobby!
😁
Set up the away mode with a min temp for heating , I have the same same system and so i put into away mode during summer so the heating wont come on but the hot water will .
I have a Tado system with 12 radiators and 9 smart valves. I don't use smart valves on bathroom or cloakroom radiators. However I agree that you do have to be sensible with how you control the system - just turning one small radiator on is unlikely to work well for the reasons you describe. I tend to use the additional control provided by smart radiator valves to determine room temperatures in rooms at different times of the day. We tend to live in the kitchen during the day and move to a lounge in the evening so I adjust room temperatures to suit this behaviour. Batteries tend to last over a year when using alkaline. However I am moving to rechargeable since you can do that with Tado but I don't have much experience with these yet.
I am curious why it is worse to use smart TRVs than regular TRVs in these scenarios. Surely the same problem occurs with regular TRVs if they are set at different temperatures?
On the downstairs toilet / cloakroom. Cant you wire the smart TRV in series with whatever boiler timer / nest / hive etc you use? This way if the radiator calls for heat but you haven't a schedule for the boiler it is blocked. :) It needs boiler to be one and scheduled and the TRV to be active for a call for heat to take place,
Good video Mark. I fitted Tado smart thermostats to all my radiators bar the hallway and I've had all the issues you've mentioned. And I'm pretty sure my 12 year old Worcester Bosch combi boiler doesn't appreciate so many radiators shutting off when it's running either. Where you've removed the smart thermostats from parts of your system, have you replaced these with dumb thermostatic valves?
Retrofit only on a cleaned or necessarily Power flushed system otherwise valve body may lock up leading to cold Rads and expensive drain downs
What a waste of money all this is, just manual thermostats would do all this without the expense and trouble