tado Smart Thermostat X – Starter Kit Wired Room Thermostat & Bridge X, Control via App & Smart Speaker (Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant), DIY Installation, Not Compatible with tado V3+

We have a Glow-worm Ultracom 38 cxi combi boiler with a Drayton electro-mechanical 2 wire wall thermostat that we wanted to replace with the tado smart thermostat.The thermostat was getting end of life and would often need the contacts cleaned before switching the normally open (NO) 24 VDC heating control from the boiler. The other issue was the lack of intelligent heating control whereby the house was either cool or hot with frequent intervention needed to increase and decrease the thermostat set point.Most new thermostats on the market, smart or otherwise, could improve the control situation but after installing Alexa we wanted to add heating to the list of house devices that we now control. We also thought that having the ability to monitor and control the home environment over the Internet might be useful.Research began on two commonly known products and they both looked fantastic. The problem with the UK models is that there didn’t seem to be a 'wired' switching thermostat model (where the thermostat itself did the switching) available and a wireless receiver had to be installed at the boiler. I thought it pointless to install a wireless receiver and start altering boiler wiring when we already had wires installed to the existing thermostat. Hot water did not need controlling.It was a relief to discover that tado could replace an existing wired thermostat and in our case switch the 24 VDC circuit using the common-NO wiring configuration.The Tado was ordered and arrived quickly. Although being an electrician by trade I followed the Tado instructions that started at the Tado setup web page; I didn’t want to be the one causing a boiler meltdown in the middle of winter by getting things wrong.The start of the install involved creating an account then registering the smart thermostat and the Internet Bridge that plugged into the Ethernet port of the router. Recognition and configuration of tado components was slick without problem. The installation then asks your thermostat and boiler make/model/setup. It was good to see that the Drayton and Glow-worm Ultracom 38 cxi was included in the list. The Ultracom 38 cxi is listed as Ultracom --- cxi as it includes all three (24, 30 and 38) cxi models.The boiler unit was powered off and the instructions gave the wiring diagram which was as expected in my case having metered out the wires beforehand. The wires were labelled using the stickers provided.Mounting of the new thermostat was easy in my case as the existing screw holes from the Drayton matched the tado smart thermostat. The unit could be mounted without any more holes being put in the wall although I did have to chase the cable hole a little. I am not sure if the tado would benefit from a built in level like some of the other models have although this was not an issue as we have a few levels about the house and can resort to the mobile app level if needed.Tado thermostat common and NO were used for the boiler heating switching control with the earth wire being terminated into a spare isolation terminal. After replacing the wiring cover then clipping on the smart thermostat, we were ready to power on the boiler.After manually altering the heating using the manual controls on the smart thermostat and checking the boiler operated in a similar way as the old thermostat, it was time to install the app. We have both android and apple devices in the household and the app installed and worked well on both.We switched off the heating schedule function built into the boiler. There were instructions with the tado but we left the old boiler schedule as is and switched off the boiler 'Central Heating Timed Mode'. This was done by pushing the mode button on the boiler until only the 'Central Heating Function' and 'Domestic Hot Water Function' icons were displayed in the boiler LCD display.The tado app heating schedule gave us what we could not get from the boiler timed mode and that is work week/weekend programming. An individual day programme was also available. We now have frost protection which we never had if the boiler schedule or control had the boiler heating off.The app works well over the Internet when away from home and we have had no issue with performance. For some of the colder days it was good to switch on the heating a bit early before leaving work as the inside temperature had dropped with the heating off. We could change the off time to a minimum threshold to alleviate this maybe in the future.The saving in the heating bill will come from the fact that we seldom overshoot with excessive heating of the house. Having intelligence built into the control, the smart thermostat will alter the heating as the room temperature reaches the set point. The analytics that come with the app show when the boiler was switched on and off over time so you can see your burn rate versus temperature and humidity.One tip if using the schedule is to change the 'Settings' -> 'Heating' 'Manual Control on tado device' from 'Until ended by user' to 'Until next automatic change' otherwise a change in temperature by the user will override the schedule 'next time' until you cancel manually.Alexa was easy to setup and with Alex Show and the Alex Dot in another room inherited the setup. A voice command to check the inside temperature brings up a digital thermostat on the Alex Show screen where the temperature can be altered using the touchscreen interface. Setting heating up/down or to a specific temperature is easy with voice control.We get all of the functionality mentioned and more without spending a penny on subscriptions. We don’t want the features the subscription entitles us to so this is not an issue.The tado smart thermostat gets five stars as it has surpassed my expectations from installation to operation. It also provided the wired thermostat replacement with the flexibility to add a boiler extension kit if the heating control is more complex and/or the water heating is to be controlled. If we want to build on the system to make it multi-room with additional smart thermostats and/or smart radiator thermostats then these options are available.

The Tado thermostat is a really good way to control your central heating, there are several useful features and all can be controlled using your smart phone, for example you can set the system to reduce the temperature when your away from home and bring it back to normal just before you arrive home, all done automatically by using the GPS on your phone. From the app one can also check your daily usage and cost.The system is fully programmable to suit your lifestyle. I think this is a great product, it’s easy to install and I highly recommend it.

Easy to install. So far no issues with connectivity

I bought this + 11 TRVs for a medium sized Edwardian terraced house split over 3 floors. The internet bridge is located centrally in the understair cupboard near the ceiling on the ground floor - so far no problems with connectivity to the furthest away radiators despite them pushing the 8m limit and there being interior walls in the path. Self installation was a doddle - Tado had instructions specifically to swap the wiring for my existing wired thermostat brand. One of the TRVs didn’t work out of the box but fortunately a batteries out hard reset seems to have fixed it. My household will definitely claw back the installation cost over time - probably 2-3 years - that said I don’t think this is a ‘fit and forget’ solution - ideally you need to put time in using the App for the first few weeks and work out how your rooms ‘behave’ (the data on this in the App is great) and then adapt and iterate until you’ve got a balance between efficiency and comfort. The best feature for us has been able to set heating schedules on a per room basis that reflects occupancy i.e. work / school etc. I can let kids bedrooms cool down during the school day but raise the thermostat in time for their return home. If they go out for the day I can set a temporary lower temp target until they get home. This is what I mean about you needing to be prepared to get a little OCD with it initially to make the most of it. You’ll know if that’s you or not :-) Other feature that I’ve used is setting an ITTT trigger on low temp breach in a couple of rooms where people have a habit of leaving doors and windows wide open whilst the heating pumps away. I can respond to that and either shut them or cancel the heat in that room for a few hours. The only issue I’ve had is with large rooms served by more than one radiator - using either TRV as the sole thermostat for the room doesn’t really work well as the local hot spot created around them as soon as the radiator kicks in very quickly raises the temp above the room target and cancels the demand for heat - taking sometimes 15-30 minutes to drop below it again even though the room itself is still cold. I’m getting away with this in early autumn when it’s not too cold yet but once we hit winter there is no way I’m going to keep those big rooms warm if the heat is only being served for 1/3 of the time that it should be. My expectation is that I’m going to have to buy a couple of stand alone wireless thermostats and put one in each large room so that the TRV thermostats are no longer driving the heat demand. At current prices that’s another 2 x £90 which will take the cost of the whole Tado install to over £1000 which is a lot of money and why I’m probably being a bit OCD with the App to make sure I claw it back through much more precise control of the system.UPDATE 2-3 months in as winter has descended.Ended up buying another 3 wireless temperature sensors to pair with TRVs - you can’t really regulate room temperature properly with a TRV alone so I recommend people factor this into total upfront cost accordingly. They can be picked up used for about £65 if you look hard enough. Other than the whole setup costing more than I had planned, it’s been a revelation in terms of how much more efficiently you can heat individual rooms based on individual schedules - kids rooms can be left unheated on school days, I can turn off the heat in my study from the train into work etc. Current estimate is heating bills will be down by about a third and the rooms that actually need the heat are more comfortable. So it’s win/win but don’t forget to factor in those wireless temperature sensors to compliment your TRVs.