We’ve all been there, the energy crisis is blooming, the house is a bit chilly and we wonder just how much it’ll cost to knock the heating up a degree or two. We don’t really want to heat the whole house though, just the room we’re in. We’ve all been here too, on our way home after a weekend away, suddenly we remember we’ve turned the heating off and are about to enter a freezing cold house. If only there was a solution. Well there is, ta-dah as if by magic it’s tado°
What Is tado°?
tado° is a smart heating thermostat, a multi-faceted system designed to help maintain the perfect temperature at home whilst saving time and energy through its hardware and app. Uniquely tado° is also designed to be installed into nearly any existing home heating system without the need for an engineer. Yes! You can (and should) be able to install everything yourself, saving yet more money.
What tado° Equipment Do I Need?
All of their products are designed to work with most current home heating systems, so what you need, depends on the system you have. The most basic option is to get a wired or wireless thermostat starter kit. The wired version can replace any ‘dumb’ thermostat which is already in your home (and you can install it yourself). Their website gives you an easy guide for what you need, based on what you already have.
Alongside their smart wall-mounted or wireless thermostats tado° also has radiator thermostats which can make your radiator smarter than ever before. Okay, not quite I’m going on Only Connect smart, but smart in the heating sense.
Will tado° work with my home heating system?
Yep, pretty much. My house had two wall mounted wired thermostats, one controlling upstairs and one controlling downstairs, what I’ve learnt is called a zone system. Alongside this we had radiators in each room, a combo-boiler with a control unit and a hot water cylinder. Following the advice from the tado° website, I found that I needed the Wireless Thermostat Starter Kit which contained the device to plug into your router to control everything, a thermostat and wireless control which communicated with the boiler turning it on and off when heating was needed.
Additionally, I got an extra wired thermostat for the second zone to replace the second one I had which controlled upstairs. I also got a set of smart thermostat radiator valves to turn our home office into a heating zone of its own so that we don’t waste money heating it on days when no one is working in it. Officially tado° will work with almost all heating systems. So that means, Combi system and heat-only boilers, conventional and condensing boilers, hydronic underfloor systems, air source and ground source heat pumps (heating only), zoned systems (one tado° Smart Thermostat per zone) and switched live systems.
How Does tado° Save Me Money
After having used the system all over the winter, I’m amazed at the savings it’s generated. It’s only a small amount each day compared to my old set-up, but it quickly adds up. Their app is easy to use and the Geofencing option worked wonders, reminding us when we weren’t at home to turn the heating off, and pre-heating the house as we were on our way home. Other clever features include open window detection, smart schedule, multi-room heating, allowing you a huge amount of control of what and when to heat your house.
What We Thought Of tado°
Thermostats are never going to be the sexiest thing around and yet I found myself raving to friends, family, and now you, dear internet reader about the benefits of the tado° system. The installation, which I’ll talk about in a second, was surprisingly easy and the app was simple to use. The main thing is how much control it gives you, it lets me heat the bits of the house I wanted to when I needed it, saving time and energy to do it. It put me in charge of my boiler, radiators, temperatures and timings. I got to learn my family’s habits and heated the house around us, offering genuinely useful suggestions.
Our home office isn’t used every day, but we were heating it every day. By adding the tado° Smart Radiator Thermostat, I could control that room on the app so that if we were using it, it’d be warm, and if we weren’t then it’d stay cool. I am technically minded, apps, and computers they’re all easy to use. However, for anything related to DIY I always get someone in. I just can’t do it. So when tado° said I could install the system myself, I assumed I’d try, fail, and call someone to do it properly. I was very wrong.
Installation started by downloading their app, scanning a QR code on the product I was installing (Wireless Thermostat) and telling the app the system it was replacing. It then gave easy, step-by-step instructions on how to remove the old unit and install the new one. It gives you stickers to label the cables which are already in place and tells you exactly where to put them in the new unit. A screwdriver and fifteen minutes later I was done. I genuinely couldn’t believe how easy and straightforward it was. Knowing what I’m like, I installed each part of my set-up on a different day, just in case I screwed anything up, but I didn’t and it’s been effortless to run since I installed everything.
The sleek white boxes on the wall have an Apple-esq sheen to them, and a little tap of the hidden button displays the basic information you need such as the current temp and allows you to raise and lower it, but really, you don’t need to touch the wall mounter thermostat and can do everything by the app. Once you’ve set the schedules up and the smart software you don’t need to do anything, the system just perfectly runs itself.
Our Alexa automatically spotted the new installation meaning a simple voice command can boost the heating, or turn it off. The app was intuitive and allowed me to quickly copy and paste schedules and make changes on the fly. This quite simply is clever tech, which just works the way it should work. The sort of thing you can install and forget about, but know you’ve made the right choice, a wonderful example of German engineering.
To purchase tado° or to read more about their products see online.
