Moved out of our old place, leaving behind the 2nd gen Nest, thinking ‘this can be someone else’s problem now’, into a new place, which also has a 2nd gen Nest. I guess I do need to have a look at what’s out there after all…
5 Likes
Bought my Tado X a few months back when I got the email but it’s just been sitting unopened. Need to get it set up but not confident I can DIY it.
1 Like
It’s pretty easy to DIY - depending on the house wiring and boiler type!
The Tado app is very good at walking you through what to do to install it. I’d recommend doing a ‘dry run install’ through the app.
1 Like
Finally got around to it yesterday.
Really was just a case of take the wires out of the Nest Heat Link and stick them into the Tado Wireless Receiver.
Very quick and painless.
1 Like
Slightly different this, but I thought I’d ask the question in case anybody knows of a better solution.
I’m in the process of purchasing a house that doesn’t have central heating. It doesn’t have gas and currently has individual electric heaters in every room. They’re not storage heaters, they’re relatively modern but not smart. There’s no solar or battery in the property.
My plan is to get solar and battery installed, and then potentially replace some of the radiators with smart storage heaters. It says in the instruction manual for the heaters not to fit any sort of timing or smart plug device between the heater and the mains so in order to make the system smart I figure I’m going to have to replace every radiator.
I’d then use home assistant to, hopefully, control the bigger system and I’d probably fit an external (to the heater) temp/humidity sensor in each room and then control each room individually.
I have zero appetite for connecting to gas, and don’t really want to plumb in an entirely new heating system with an ASHP. Potentially longer term I might consider fitting an air to air heating system that will cool as well as heat, but that’s a few years away because there are other priorities (and money isn’t unlimited!).
Is there something I’m missing? Is there a better way to control the system? I figure that home assistant offers me the most flexibility and allows me to control each room/zone and also mix and match different systems / heaters / products etc.
Are the heaters just plugged ino the wall with 3 prong plugs or hard wired?
A lot of the problem with putting something in to control them is the large draw and a lot of plug stuff basically is a risk because of the draw.
At least with ‘traditional’ storage heaters (not sure how smart the new ones are) you wouldn’t want to stick them on a timer/smart plug because they were designed to ‘charge’ up their heat over night (when electricity was cheaper), ‘store’ it, and then slowly keep your house warm during the day.
If they’re still called storage heaters I would assume they still run on the same principle - heat up the big storage heater bricks during cheap electricity, and then give you the heat back when you need it. Maybe the ‘smart’ bit is they’re slightly more programmable - for example giving you heat at different times at weekends, compared to weekdays when you might be out at work anyway?
For anyone who’s not taken advantage of the Tado deal yet, there seems to be another sale on which stacks with the Google code, so £64+p&p again at the moment.
1 Like
My house has got little electric radiators in each room. They’re all wired into the same circuit, which is controlled by a Google Nest. It seems to work just fine as a solution so potentially that’s a model/concept you could consider?
Do you have a link you can share please?
I’ve just tried to order the tado X starter kit offer using the original link Google gave me ( and I used) - unfortunately no discount is applied at checkout, so the links appear to be one-time-use only and can’t be passed on 
A link which hasn’t been redeemed and used before 31-Oct would probably work OK
I’ve been considering switching from V3+ to X but have realised that for my boiler (Worcester Greenstar) X doesn’t support digital control (modulation) whilst V3+ does.
I actually didn’t know V3+ supported modulation for my boiler and its been wired for relay control since I bought it in 2020. Now I’m wondering whether to change the wiring. If I understand correctly, in theory modulation is more efficient than relay control. Does anyone know if I am likely to see a very big difference in efficiency if I change, or will it only be minor?
Before we got our heat pump we had Tado doing modulation on our gas boiler. It was much better than on/off relay control.
Efficiency was better, but more important was that the house was much more comfortable. Instead of the radiators coming on and blasting out heat, causing it to feel cooler when it went off even though the temperature was correct, it was more of a constant heat around the house. We never actually noticed the heating going on and off, unlike with the relay control method.
The boiler was on a lot more in modulating mode, which makes you doubt the cost, but the overall cost did go down. No longer did we have the effect that relay mode causes, where the heating goes off and then you notice the temperature dropping until it trips back on again. You definitely make bigger savings though if you don’t just blast the heat on a morning and evening, as modulation in that scenario will run the boiler at full tilt to warm the house up quickly. We switched to a constant temperature all day and costs went down despite the house being much more comfortable.
1 Like
Thanks, I’ll switch over to modulation. I do actually plan to run heating all day. Last Winter I found that was cheaper than two separate cold starts each day, even with relay control.
Thanks - definitely something worth looking into. Does Google Nest communicate with the radiators directly?
I’ve spent hours researching “smart” electric radiators, but it seems true smart is few and far between and integration with Home Assistant is almost non-existent. I’ve found, so far, a single brand that has Matter support!
No, it just controls their power supply.
The radiators all have built in thermostats but I leave those set to max (30c) and the Nest is the thing that controls the temp by switching them all on/off as required.
1 Like
Before I got a Nest Thermostat all those years ago, I looked at controlling each radiator individually.
I’ve since learned, it’s not really needed. You learn how quickly rooms heat up, so tweak them in the early stages, then we’ve not touched them since.
1 Like
I think it’s partly how I manage it for cost savings tbh - if I stay on Agile and have battery/solar, I want to take advantage of when the electric is cheap or I have it stored and have something else control the usage (including being smart enough to rinse power hours etc).
1 Like
Interesting - do you have a thermostat in every room?
I was thinking about putting a shelly between the radiator and the power supply but the manual for the radiators that are currently installed says that you shouldn’t do that 
Na, just the one nest controller in the middle of the house.
I’m in a fairly well insulated new build, so temperature fluctuations are fairly minimal. My nest is “on” all year round with the temp being set to 18c in the day and 17c overnight. My radiators are relatively underpowered (I have 6x 400w heaters) so they take a while (hours) to shift the temperature significantly but it all seems to work ok for me
1 Like