Programmable Thermostats

Our house came with a Vivint home system which for best functionality is tied into a paid subscription. Fuck that noise. So I'm starting to replace all of Vivint's equipment. First up is the thermostat. I'm thinking of a smart thermostat, but don't know if it's really required. No AC units, humidifiers etc to run. Just the furnace. Most important thing is that I can set weekday and weekend times for the furnace to run.

Any suggestions on which ones to use and any install tips?

 

Nothing to fancy. They have always had programmable thermostats before all this "smart" shit came about. Why dont you like the vivint. We have one and it's great to have really. Shows me on my phone any time any one comes around my home while I'm at work.

 

I have an Emerson Sensi. “Smart” enough for me to control from anywhere but simple enough to do its job.

But on a side note....hearing about people who don’t even have AC in their homes boggles my mind. lol. It’s still in the 90s here and the AC has been on since March lol

 

I use nest, have been for the last two years. Works fantastic, I can control it via phone, tablet, voice or manually. No probs to speak of with the exception of a software glitch here and there which a reset takes care of.

 

The Vivint one doesn't seem to want to let me program it without using the Vivint home system panel, which is passcode protected. I don't have a passcode because I'm not willing to pay Vivint $50+ per month for monitoring. I'll be setting up my own security system instead, probably using Ring.

I'd love to have central AC but it's very much a luxury expense since we only get a month or so a year on average where it'd really be needed. It doesn't get above 90F very often here and even then it's only for a couple days. This morning it's -6C (21F) and there's frost on the ground.

 

Southeast Louisiana here. AC is a must. We can live without heaters most winters haha.

 

Installed a Nest last year. It’s awesome. You can control it from anywhere with your phone.

 

Call and talk with vivint I only pay 30 a month. For the monitoring.

 

we have 2 ecobee 4's. theyre ok. the "smart" features are kind of lost on me since I work rotating shifts, it cant figure out a schedule to run. we just ended up using ours as a thermostat that we can adjust from our phones. I think you can do that with a lot of others that aren't labeled "smart". as far as install goes, it was about as simple as you can get. pull old thermostat off the wall, label where all the wires were going. our ecobees came with nice tags to stick to them. then disconnect wires from old thermostat and plug into new one. boom. stick the new one on the wall. I know going from REALLY old thermostats to new ones has a few extra steps, but that's the experience I had with mine.

 

I did. $50 was the promo rate. Welcome to Canada...

 

I have a Honeywell wifi thermostat I use for our heater. Got it for $100 and received a $75 utility rebate.

 

I use an Ecobee 4 and love it. It is especially nice if you have rooms that dont cool as well as others. You can add the small battery powered temp monitors in each room and the thermostat will average them to get the house temp instead of basing it off the temp at the thermostat.

 

Got a nest as well for the past few years and it's a must for this time of year with heat/cool (i'm sure others do this as well). Set a max temp and if exceeded the AC kicks on and set a low temp and the heat kicks on. Great for the New England fall when it's 40-85 degrees the same day. They also have an API that you can use if that's your thing to integrate it into any type of home automation system. Supports Alexa too so that's handy as well to just tell her what to set the temp to or to kick on the fan. I also use their smoke detectors and they work in conjunction with the thermostat. If smoke is detected they can run the house fan to move the smoke out and will also turn off the heater. The smoke detectors also act as occupancy sensors so your thermostat won't go into away mode if it's tucked away in a room you don't walk through often.

 

Great info everyone! Thanks alot. I'll look into the Nest for sure. Pretty neat how they work with smoke detectors.

 

It's a neat feature but it has to be their smoke/co detectors. Gets spendy depending on the size of the house but they work well and i'm happy so far.

 

I use an Ecobee. I like it because I can put some remote sensors in various rooms of the house to help average the house’s temp. Also can set the heat to only my bedroom sensor in the night to make sure my bedroom is the proper temp. Also reminds me to change the filters after specific hours of runtime, alert me if the temp drops to low in the winter (alerting me to a heat problem before it becomes a pipe freezing problem) or to high in the summer(animals), Alexa voice control, etc. overall very happy with it. Looks nice too.

 

That’s what we have too. No complaints. Simple and does the job, can control from anywhere

 

Auto thermostat It sure makes things easy.

 

I installed a nest in two homes. It is as close to plug and play as I think you can get. I love it, I can control it from anywhere. the programs actually work and it tells me the weather.

 

Meh, for just heat I can't see the benefit of smart thermostat. I use this one for my radiant heat and for $20 it'll do what you want it to.

 

Wow, Don't know how you guys do it. Been married 20 years and I am an HVAC tech and can't explain to the wife to just let it run and cycle. I am not kidding that I could replace our REQUIRED basic tstat and replace it with a switch and not much would change. If the units didn't have time delays she be killing compressors every 6 months.
.

 

One thing I like about the ecobee... It has a timer on it for compressor restart and compressor off when it's too cold outside to run the unit just power on the heat strips.

 

I have always used Honeywell WiFi Thermostats, never had any issue, I'm currently using a Honeywell T9 WiFi Thermostat , the cool thing about this thermostat is that you can add sensors to those rooms that don't get very cool/hot to get a more even cooling/heating around the house, works great and the Honeywell Home app works flawlessly.

 

Just got the Ecobee, liking it can schedule, for home, away, bet comes with extra sensor and nice app.

 

^ and check for rebates with your energy provider I got a $75 rebate.

 

What he said.

I work for a local power company and we offer rebates on digital and smart thermostats if your primary heat is electric. Worth looking into for sure.

 

Ours gas and still qualified. Also we have Heat and A/C but I think it is also well worth if you just have heat. We have a large house and with the kids at college we've shut off a lot of rooms that extra sensor is nice. The only down side to the smart thermo IMHO is it is cold as F if you have to get up and pee at night LOL

 

I use a programmable tstat. All this Nest crap is over hyped. Mine has weekday, weekend, vacation, and multiple daily settings. I have no need to be able to control my tstat from my phone or computer. Now I might see a use for someone that is not on a regular schedule.

 

Yes, some gas companies have rebates also.