We have been running Ecobee for over four years at our place. We have a fairly complicated setup due to a Geo Thermal heating system, forced air and in floor heat, and two zones in the house. We also have a third, independent fan coil HVAC unit in the garage that heats and cools the garage. What we have found over the years is that the thermostats are very easy to set up as mentioned earlier in this thread. However, the real challenge is the wiring compatibility between your HVAC control equipment and the thermostat. Commercial may be different, but I think it is basically the same as residential and if each thermostat controls a unique piece of HVAC, things are likely going to be pretty simple. However, if each thermostat controls a zone on a shared piece of HVAC, or two or three thermostats control a single HVAC, you need to make sure you know what thermostat wiring your zone controller equipment is looking for. Also, the zone controller can control things like heat stages if you have more than one stage (Geo is very well know for this, but other heat pump HVAC equipment also have more than one stage) or whether you want the thermostat to control stages. Most smart thermostats like Ecobee and Nest are fully capable of controlling stages. Once you know that you have the correct wiring compatibility (for example we eventually switched our zone controller because it wanted the old mechanical thermostat with separate O and B wiring configuration), configuring the Ecobee is pretty simple. You will want to set a master thermostat so that you don’t have one thermo in heat mode and one in cooling mode, they will just fight each other. This is quite straight forward when using most zone controllers, you simply hook the one you want to be the master mode thermo to the correct connectors on the zone controller. If each thermo is controlling unique and separate HVAC equipment, this would have to be done through the Ecobee or Nest account, (IE configured in the thermo itself).
No matter what, take pictures of how things are hooked up before starting, and don’t throw anything away until well after you are convinced it is working well. In fact, I would recommend going through a heating and cooling season before getting rid of anything depending on where you are at. Also, most HVAC professionals will know one or two automation platforms, but won’t want to get involved with ones they aren’t familiar with. They can waste way too much time figuring out the nuances of some small problems. Assume that if you start this project, you will be on your own, but I wouldn’t let that steer you away from trying. Simple things like a volt meter to test which wire is energized on heat and cool calls from the thermo go a long way into figuring out how things are working. Once you deal with the wiring, it works very well and you can get a some great reporting from the thermostat for things like how long did the thermo call for heat before the call was satisfied, how long did it run in each stage, how long did it run compared to outside temps, etc. Let me know if you want more specifics, I ended up getting much deeper in the weeds than I expected on this when putting in the Geo Thermal, but glad that I spent the time as it works really well. Regards, David Coudron From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Jason McKemie Sent: Monday, November 25, 2019 11:41 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Building automation The basic setup with nest is just logging the devices into your account. Most of the automation is done automatically, obviously there is configuration you can change, but it isn't necessary for operation. On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 11:12 PM CBB - Jay Fuller <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Learn more...i guess lol Sent from my smartphone ----- Reply message ----- From: "Jason McKemie" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: [AFMUG] Building automation Date: Mon, Nov 25, 2019 10:08 PM What are you wanting to do? It's dead simple with nest. On Monday, November 25, 2019, CBB - Jay Fuller <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Any good YouTube videos to get started on home automation with nest? Sent from my smartphone ----- Reply message ----- From: "Darin Steffl" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: [AFMUG] Building automation Date: Mon, Nov 25, 2019 8:32 PM I'm a Nest fan but haven't used ecobee. Google owns nest and ecobee would be the one to be acquired between these two. Also, $5600 seems very high for 11 thermostats. Are there more parts to it that I'm missing? On Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 7:56 PM Nate Burke <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: One of the young whippersnappers at an organization I work with is all gung-ho on replacing all 11 thermostats in the building (Boiler with multiple zones, and multiple RTU's) with ecobee thermostats that can be remotely controlled and scheduled. Total price for everything is running about $5600 (parts only) He's worked with ecobee before, so he really likes it. Has anyone worked with ecobee before? Are there similar systems to compare it to? The Goal is to allow the office to control/schedule the thermostats based on room usage. We found one room that was set to 90 over the weekend last week. I'm concerned that ecobee would be bought, merged into someone else, and you suddenly have nice wall mounted thermostats that can't be remotely managed anymore because the cloud went away. -- AF mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
-- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
