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]>
<mailto:[email protected]> *On Behalf Of * Jason McKemie
*Sent:* Monday, November 25, 2019 11:41 PM
*To:* AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]>
<mailto:[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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