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Ecobee Planning New Smart Thermostat With Built-In Air Quality Sensor
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Lots of homes have 2 thermostats. Larger homes with 2 floors should always have separate systems and separate thermostats. 2 furnaces, 2 AC units, 2 thermostats, etc. Doesn't mean they always do, but they SHOULD. Otherwise, you often end up with huge differences in temps between floors - particularly in the Summer in a warmer climate.
I've been in 2 story houses where the upstairs was 8-10 degrees warmer vs. the downstairs. Someone is going to be uncomfortable in that situation! Either you keep the upstairs comfortable and the downstairs freezing cold or the downstairs is comfortable and the upstairs is roasting. Having 2 systems can largely mitigate this issue.
I used to have nest. What I loved about it is that any guest could instantly use it. There was no learning curve. Just turn it to adjust temperature, just like the old mercury donut thermostats. Ecobees on the other hand are like an android phone, usable but requires some learning. And the temperature adjustment slider is finicky, unpredictable, and unintuitive.
I don't really mind the plastic housing because, frankly, almost the entire market is of a similar kind of material build quality.
I think their design decisions w/r/t the front face really demands a laminated color e-ink display. It would pull off the look they're attempting and feel more premium in the process without a superficial material change.
I agree the slider is finicky but the interface is instantly recognizable as to what to do. However the app is slick.
I like my Nest. It works, (although it was recalled due to a faulty modem chip and was replaced free of charge) and is dependable. No reason or need to buy a replacement product.
Two things:
Using the term "A/C fan" is disingenuous because it implies the same power use as running the actual air conditioning unit. It does not. The blower fan draws maybe 200 watts, probably less in modern units. The air is circulated through the filter but not actively cooled in this mode.
Additionally, not all power use "lowers air quality further." Where I live, the majority of my power supply is from nuclear, which burns clean (yes there's an argument to be made about waste, but modern reactor designs largely solve this problem, so instead of having the waste storage discussion we should be having the approve modern reactor permit discussion). The grid is getting cleaner by the day, so over time this will become a moot point. It's basically the whole "electric cars just move pollution" argument; they don't, because the grid doesn't pollute as much as individual vehicles do, and the grid is constantly getting cleaner.
We can't let perfect be the enemy of good. Running your blower fan to filter your household air isn't perfect, but it has more pros than cons, even in our current energy economy.
It's disingenuous to claim my comment about the A/C fan was disingenuous. Most who own a central A/C understand how the fan can be run independently of the compressor, and in fact this article specifically discusses running the A/C fan so your claim is wildly unfounded.
The more power people use the more that must be generated. Worse still, once demand exceeds the current generation capacity of a region a new plant must be built.
Your electric cars just move pollution is yet another wild non sequitur which has no relation to what I said or my intent.
It's clear you're responding to some imaginary composite of some argument from other people rather than the actual content of my post.
Ecobee 3 (no mic) for 4-5 years now. Small display, but HomeKit works great. SoCal area. The room sensors are key. I essentially turn off the sensor on the actual unit and only use the room sensors to keep the air at 78. The only thing you can’t do is turn on/off the furnace fan via HomeKit and/or Siri. But I have it to run 40 minutes every hour to move fresh air through the house.
Nest makes it very difficult to precisely AUTOMATICALLY control the device. It's supposed to "learn" what you want, but like most of that sort of AI, it's more maddening than useful.
Ecobee doesn't try to be AI, so it allows you to very precisely say what you want it do. You can use it in two ways.
- If you want to live purely within the Ecobee world, you start by setting up various "Settings" which are things like Home, Away, Sleeping, Exercise, and so on. Each setting is a temperature range and whether or not to force the fan on. (So, eg, I created Exercise as a setting that switches on the fan, and leaves it running even when the temp is in the correct range).
Then you set a time during which to run each Setting, so eg Sleeping from 10pm to 8am, Exercise from 7:30pm to 9pm.
I've found it's not a big deal if the times aren't that accurate, since mostly the temperatures ranges are somewhat similar. So Exercise runs for 90 minutes and somewhere in that time I'll do 30 min of exercise.
The Ecobee uses various sensors to see if a person is present in the house and if not will switch to Away mode.
- Alternatively/In Addition you can connect it to HomeKit and create HomeKit Automations. The main one I use is that when I leave the house it immediately switches to Away (instead of the delayed switchover if it's using its sensors to conclude no-one is around) and when I return it immediately switches back to an appropriate temperature range.
Both Ecobee and Nest come with sensors that detect human presence and temperature. The idea is that if you are in room A which is a few degrees cooler than room B, then the thermostat will try to ensure that room A is in the correct temperature range, regardless of how that affects room B. This can't work miracles, but it is VERY useful if you have the thermostat in say a cold basement, while the rest of the house is much hotter in summer. Ecobee comes with I think one or two sensors built in the pack, for Nest you have to buy a sensor, none comes with the system.
Maybe Nest works well for people who don't understand automation and who constantly keep changing the temp setting on their thermostat? All I can say is that I hate the Nest experience in my friend's houses, whereas the way I have been able to automate Ecobee is DAMN sweet. The house just automatically does what I want it to do, all the time, with no manual involvement after the initial set up. There was a period about two years ago where Ecobee's connection to HomeKit was somewhat dodgy and would fail about once a week, but that seems to have been robustly fixed and I've had no such issues for over a year now.
Apart from the eco-rant, this is not as great an idea as you might imagine. For obvious energy saving reasons (you don't want to be constantly pulling in cold air into a warm house or vice versa) the AC fan does more of "move the air inside around" than swap it without outside air. This removes particulates, it doesn't help much with VOCs. Depends on which you care about.
Some houses (it is now mandatory in the current CA building code but I don't know when it started) have a separate fan that DOES aggressively exchange air with the outside, to extract VOCs and CO2.
If you want to automate your house as suggested above, a better idea is to connect a Smart Switch (I use an Eve Switch) to this whole-house extractor fan, and use HomeKit to automate that based on whatever air quality (or CO2 or whatever) sensor you wish to use, or just run it for an hour or so every night at a fixed time.
It's also unclear that sneering at air quality management is helpful. I'm old enough now that I've seen quite a few people pass away, and something that becomes clear after a while is just how damn fragile lungs are. Old people seem to be able to bounce back from falls or heart/liver/kidney issues, but once they have lung problems it feels like it's game over. Part of avoiding that is avoiding particulates, and to that end filtering the air (via AC+good filter, or via a Winix box or two) seems just common sense. A Winix box uses <5W so honestly, why not just run it 24/7?
(This is a different issue from VOCs which are more a cancer thing than a lung damage thing.)
Long time Nest user (since they first were available). Had the Gen 1 and upgraded to Gen 3 which is their best full featured thermostat. I dumped the Nest however due to no longer being able to connect with legacy devices and apps that were supported by the works with nest program. Google want's to control the universe to only work with Google devices. I always did admire the Ecobee because it had the ability to fine tune the thermostat's setting to provide additional comfort to your home. Nest's really cannot be adjusted to fit your comfort level short of setting the temperatures only. Ecobee has lots of little tweaks in it that can really make a difference. I've had people tell me that my home is much more comfortable since I have installed the Ecobee even though the HVAC systems haven't been replaced.
One important note not reflected in the story is that the Ecobee Smart Thermostat with Voice Control and this new but not officially announced offering, have a quad processor rather than the dual processor that all the other Ecobee's have. I can't verify but I guessing the quad processor models probably have additional memory available to them. That's an important hardware feature for long term viability of your thermostat with future enhancements. Ecobee will be focusing on that platform in the days ahead. Buying the Ecobee 3 or 4 model is really not a good investment.
Ebay is a good source for new Ecobee Smart Thermostats at discounted prices. There are a lot of Smart Pro units available and Ecobee will warrant them as long as you buy new units. I have the Smart Pro and it is labeled to be sold and installed by HVAC professionals. If you have an HVAC professional install it, you get a 5 year warranty rather than a 3 year warranty. Also the Pro model contains a feature that allows a professional to input their dealership identifier code. This allows them to remotely access your thermostat to allow them to tweak the thermostat without making a home visit and diagnose other thermostat issues. I installed this thermostat in my home but did not activate the dealer function. Installation of the Pro model is exactly the same as the Smart Thermostat with Voice Control, you just ignore the dealer information and dealer code modification areas of the set up. I bought this for under $150 new in August 21 and have had no issues with it.
Oh and just as an aside, I could care less about the voice control side of the thermostat. I have Echo Dot's all over my house and I can use them rather than have the thermostat do that job. I just ignored the setup instructions for the Alexa interface and left that feature functionally dead. My Echo's can control the thermostat just fine.
One important note not reflected in the story is that the Ecobee Smart Thermostat with Voice Control and this new but not officially announced offering, have a quad processor rather than the dual processor that all the other Ecobee's have. I can't verify but I guessing the quad processor models probably have additional memory available to them. That's an important hardware feature for long term viability of your thermostat with future enhancements. Ecobee will be focusing on that platform in the days ahead. Buying the Ecobee 3 or 4 model is really not a good investment.
Ebay is a good source for new Ecobee Smart Thermostats at discounted prices. There are a lot of Smart Pro units available and Ecobee will warrant them as long as you buy new units. I have the Smart Pro and it is labeled to be sold and installed by HVAC professionals. If you have an HVAC professional install it, you get a 5 year warranty rather than a 3 year warranty. Also the Pro model contains a feature that allows a professional to input their dealership identifier code. This allows them to remotely access your thermostat to allow them to tweak the thermostat without making a home visit and diagnose other thermostat issues. I installed this thermostat in my home but did not activate the dealer function. Installation of the Pro model is exactly the same as the Smart Thermostat with Voice Control, you just ignore the dealer information and dealer code modification areas of the set up. I bought this for under $150 new in August 21 and have had no issues with it.
Oh and just as an aside, I could care less about the voice control side of the thermostat. I have Echo Dot's all over my house and I can use them rather than have the thermostat do that job. I just ignored the setup instructions for the Alexa interface and left that feature functionally dead. My Echo's can control the thermostat just fine.
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