Flair is confused when one system is on heat and the other is on cool
Last night it got cold enough that this morning when I got up I switched our downstairs system from cool to heat, while the upstairs system was still in cool mode.
When I logged onto the Flair portal it reported auto/cooling, and cooling mode for all rooms, after a minute or so the UI change to show auto/heating, and heating for all rooms, then another minute or so later it reported cooling again.
The UI / system seems to be limited to a single mode of operation, vs. reporting on the mode per HVAC unit.
Is this something I ned to fix in config, or does Flair not support different units that are in different modes?
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Official comment
Hi Pieter,
You can split your Flair system into two homes: one home for upstairs and one home for downstairs.
That will allow you to control them independently.
All the best,
FinnComment actions -
It seems like you have two HVAC units in your home, I don't see the merit behind using AC upstairs and heating downstairs.
I believe you would benefit from better air circulation (fan always on) during these transition months, moving the warm air around the home better.
Perhaps you don't have your return air vents in the correct location. You can often put returns with dampers in both floor and ceiling locations everywhere in your home, which will help pull hot air from the ceilings upstairs and cold air from the floor downstairs in the winter.If its necessary to run your AC and heat at the same time, to me it means there's somethings wrong with the home.
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Sure, if I do need to run cool and heat at the same time there is something weird going on, but that is not what I stated, nor the issue.
This time of year it is very common for mornings to be in the low 50's and afternoons in the high 70's.
As a result I run heat downstairs in the morning, and cool upstairs in the afternoon, and since heat rises and cool drops, the other unit typically never turns on.
Further I prefer to run in either cool or heat, not auto, so upstairs will cool not heat, and downstairs will heat not cool (until it gets cold enough or hot enough then both will be the same).
Regardless, the problem is that Flair treats all rooms as heat or cool (UI randomly switches between all red rooms or all blue rooms), when it should display all rooms associated with an HVAC in heat mode in red, and all rooms associated with an HVAC in cool as blue.
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I would find running heat downstairs in the morning, and AC upstairs in the afternoon, to be a home issue and waste of gas and power. I'd recommend better air circulation (i.e. more fan only operation).
Alternatively, you could always set your home temp to 70 and enjoy the extra (free) solar gain in the afternoons (70+). I wouldn't be complaining about free heat these days :DIf you prefer to not run in auto mode, I believe you are able to change the downstairs to heat only and the upstairs to cool only (if you have two furnaces, two thermostats), no? [settings>thermostats>system capabilities> heat only (cool only) ]
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Let's assume for a moment that my home is what it is, and that you asking me to fix my home and change my way of operation is not an option, and we focus on the issue with Flair?
The Flair UI has one element for mode, and when a home has multiple HVAC systems there is a mode per HVAC system.
So does Flair assume all units must be in the same mode (maybe that is why the UI randomly shows heat and cool based on which HVAC unit is was last reading state from), or does flair support multiple units in different modes of operation, in which case when how does the UI account for that?
If Flair does in fact not support multiple units in multiple modes, then I may need to create multiple accounts, and multiple pucks, one for each unit?
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Support wrote:
You can split your Flair system into two homes: one home for upstairs and one home for downstairs.
That will allow you to control them independently.
That seems rather unintuitive, what if my two units are on auto, and one decides to heat and one decides to cool, what does the UI do, flip flop?
What about if I have split units in each room, and each unit can be heat or cool independently, also a house per room?
If I do need to split my home per HVAC unit, do I need a separate puck, do I need to rebind the vents or can I move them between homes (I've not tried)?
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Are your thermostats integrated with Flair? Meaning is the Flair system reading the mode from the thermostats and getting different answers or is Flair just guessing based on the vent temperatures?
From the description, I'm assuming that Flair is not the set point controller. Otherwise, Flair would be overriding what the other units are set at.
If the thermostats are set up as integrated, are you leveraging any integrated features like Ecobee sensors or Fan only mode options for Ecobee, something else?
If they are integrated and that's what's creating the conflict, but you're not leveraging any integration features, you could try setting them as Unsupported Thermostats without any integration. That would prevent Flair from getting the mode directly from the Thermostats with different answers. Set Flair to Auto, even though they systems are not in Auto, and let Flair guess what the current mode is. In the morning, when downstairs heat runs and nothing upstairs runs, it will likely guess Heat since there will only be hot air in the downstairs vents and room temp in the upstairs. In the evening, it should guess cool, cold air in the upstairs vents and room temp in the downstairs ones.
If you're leveraging an integration feature, like an Ecobee sensor instead of a puck in some rooms or open vents when the fan runs, then this wouldn't work. If it's just the sensor, you could buy additional Pucks for Flair to use instead of the sensor to allow removing the integration. If it's the fan circulation, you would lose that feature. Neither of those is perfect solutions, but it might be closer to what you want.
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Hi Pieter Viljoen,
Flair allows you to have multiple HVAC systems in a single Flair home. However, all HVAC systems in a single Flair home must be in the same mode. This is by design.
If you want to have two separate HVAC systems in different modes at the same time, then you'll need to create two Flair homes.
Each Flair home will need at least one Gateway Puck. You'll need to remove the ecobee integration and the Flair devices from the one home before running Setup for the second home.
Each room with Smart Vents will need a temperature sensor - this can be a Puck, the ecobee thermostat or an ecobee room sensor. If you use non-Puck temperature sensors, please be aware that each Smart Vent will need to communicate with a Gateway Puck.
Please see this article for ensuring your Smart Vents have a good signal to a Gateway Puck:
Home Statistics: Signal Strength, Set Point, Room Temperature
All the best,
Finn
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