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How does tado° control Heating Zones? How can I change the Zone Controller of a room?
How does tado° control Heating Zones? How can I change the Zone Controller of a room?
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Written by tado°
Updated over a week ago

A Heating Zone refers to the piping system that carries hot water from the boiler to your rooms, and back to the boiler. This is also commonly called a heating circuit. The rooms could have radiators or underfloor heating in them.

tado° devices can communicate with each other to ensure that the heating is only turned on when it’s needed. This allows for the smart control of your heating and thus improves the efficiency of your heating system.

The tado° device that is the main controller of a Heating Zone is called the Zone Controller. This can be either a Smart Thermostat, a tado° Wireless Receiver or an Extension Kit. Other tado° devices, such as Smart Radiator Thermostats or Wireless Temperature Sensors can communicate with the Zone Controller to request heating.

Changing the Zone Controller

To change the Zone Controller for your rooms, please follow these steps in the tado° app:

  • Go to Settings > Rooms & Devices and

  • select the name of the room you want to adjust.

  • Select Zone Controller under Heating Zone and change to a different controller or leave it unassigned. This way, up to 10 rooms can communicate with one Zone Controller.

Examples of correct Zone Controller setups:

Most houses only have one Heating Zone.

Example A: there is one Wired Smart Thermostat that controls the heating of the whole house. This is the Zone Controller. Smart Radiator Thermostats are installed in all rooms to control the temperature in each room individually. To request heat, the Smart Radiator Thermostats communicate with the Smart Thermostat to turn on the boiler.

Example B: there is one Wireless Temperature Sensor. This acts as the central room thermostat and it controls the boiler through the Wireless Receiver. Here the Wireless Receiver is the Zone Controller. To request heat, the Smart Radiator Thermostats communicate with the Wireless Receiver to turn on the boiler.

Example C: a room has no Zone Controller assigned, so it is independent and won’t communicate with any Zone Controller. This setting is ideal if the room doesn’t belong to the Heating Zone controlled by the Zone Controller.

For instance, this works in houses with different Heating Zones for radiators and underfloor heating.

The Smart Radiator Thermostats do not communicate with the Smart Thermostat which is the Zone Controller of the underfloor Heating Zone only. Radiators and underfloor heating are controlled independently of each other in this example.

Select each room that shouldn’t be linked to the Zone Controller and set the Zone Controller option to NONE.

Example D: there are two or more Heating Zones, e.g. for different floors. In this example, each Smart Thermostat controls the Heating Zone for the floor it is on. The radiators are equipped with Smart Radiator Thermostats.

The rooms on each floor are assigned to the respective Zone Controller for that floor. When a Smart Radiator Thermostat on the upper floor needs heating, it informs the Smart Thermostat that controls the upstairs Heating Zone.

More information:

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