Lucky there isn't a case where 1 thermostat has to control 2 systems.
The Boiler system is from the 50's, just 2 wire contact closures on
those zones. Boiler turns on and off by a simple pressure switch.
The HVAC Units do both heat and cool, and are normal 5wire. The 11
thermostats at $300+ each is a majority of the cost. Also 20 remote
thermostat probes to equalize temperature is another $700 (I.E. One
boiler zone controls all the heat for 3 vertically stacked floors.
Guess which one is the hottest.) And about 2000' of new thermostat wire
to hook it all up was the balance of the cost.
The $5600 is material only. We'd do all the installation ourselves.
On 11/26/2019 6:11 AM, David Coudron wrote:
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.
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