A Heating Zone refers to the piping system that carries hot water from the boiler/heat pump to your rooms and back. This is also commonly called a heating circuit. The rooms could have radiators or underfloor heating in them.
If you have multiple rooms and heating circuits, you can heat more efficiently and have a higher level of smart control over your heating by designating one device to be a Zone Controller and defining which rooms it should respond to.
Smart Thermostat X devices are typically Zone Controllers. By assigning other rooms to this zone, other devices like the Smart Radiator Thermostat X and the Wireless Temperature Sensor X communicate with the Zone Controller. They work together to make sure that heating is available in all rooms that call for it via radiators and underfloor heating.
Changing the Zone Controller
When you install a Smart Thermostat X, it will be available as a Zone Controller. By default, no rooms are assigned to your Zone Controller. To assign or change the Zone Controller for your rooms, please follow these steps in the tado° app:
Go to Settings > Rooms & Devices
Select the name of the room you want to adjust.
Under Heating Zone, select Zone Controller and change to a different controller or select No Zone Controller (independant).
Examples of correct Zone Controller setups:
Most houses only have one Heating Zone.
Example A: there is one Wired Smart Thermostat X that controls the heating of the whole house. This is the Zone Controller. Smart Radiator Thermostats X are installed in all rooms to control the temperature in each room individually. To request heat, the Smart Radiator Thermostat X communicates with the Smart Thermostat X to turn on the boiler or heat pump.
Example B: 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 Thermostat X does not communicate with the Smart Thermostat X, 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 No Zone Controller (independant).
Example C: there are two or more Heating Zones, e.g. for different floors. In this example, each Smart Thermostat X controls the Heating Zone for the floor it is on. The radiators are equipped with Smart Radiator Thermostats X.
The rooms on each floor are assigned to the respective Zone Controller for that floor. When a Smart Radiator Thermostat X on the upper floor needs heating, it informs the Smart Thermostat X that controls the upstairs Heating Zone.