Partial Integration with an Automated Home - Strategy Question
Sorry this is long winded but I wanted to give as complete picture as Possible. This may be towards the end of my home automation journey and I want to make sure I get it right (the vents).
My temperature sensors are NOT ecobee, although I do have the Nest Learning Thermostat and one Flair vent (three more on order) integrated with Home Assistant as well as Flair connected to Nest directly (in the cloud of course). I have forced air heating and colling, only one zone.
I have a huge number of other things also talking to home assistant and my home is pretty much full automated (except for the vents).
I love the way that Flair works on it's own, however, I want it to be driven also by whether or not a room is occupied. If I leave it on auto but set rooms as active or inactive when a person is present (through the API) - I am able to do that I believe - but I can also tell vents to open or close - but when does the vent change back from my closing it to the flair auto programmng (or do they change back immediately - how would that still work)? Or is it better to just ignore vents open and close and just set the rooms active or inactive?
I have a dog which gets scared from the sound of the vent opening or closing in the middle of the night when he is trying to sleep in the kitchen. How to best handle that scenario? Just keep that room inactive all night, that would make the vent close and stay closed?
Any other guidance? Am I 'barking" up the wrong tree (just kidding) or is this the correct approach, or - ?
Thank you
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For my house with one zone, I found that basing room temperature changes on whether a room is occupied or not is not efficient. It takes a while for the system to adjust the temperature for that room, and by the time it adjusts, the person has often left the room. Instead, I have set schedules through the flair app that generally follows the usage of the rooms with vents and the rest of the house in general. For the 15 months since I installed the system, I have been very happy with how it has worked out. But you sound like you can figure out a more elegant way to make it work based on actual occupancy.
My wife and dogs were both bothered by the sound of the flair vents at first and all of them barked at me about it. My wife was there first to stop barking, and the dogs followed shortly. We rarely notice the vent sounds now.
Making them inactive would probably help.
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Hi Chuck, I like the way you carried on the canine play on words...
Hopefully the doggie will get used to it. When I was talking about the occupancy, that is a very good point regarding someone in a room for a very short time. I just don't want the scenario where the wife is feeling cold and cranks up the heat, only to see a vent stay closed in the room in which she is sitting for whatever reason. Until I have more installed I cannot really verify such scenarios anyway.
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Yes. Actually getting it installed will help getting it figured out. Our system is successful not because we have been able to get every room at the exact temp desired at any given time, but because we get the most important rooms at any given time to a comfortable temp, while removing the extremes from the "problem" rooms that previously were almost always too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. I also locked down the system to keep people from messing up the equilibrium we have found. But there have been zero complaints about it being locked down, because the rooms are all at an acceptable range. As you consider how to set your schedules, remember that because of how the system works (primarily due to back-pressure prevention limitations), it is extremely difficult (maybe impossible) to adjust the temperature temporarily in a room without also affecting other parts of the house. For us, everyone is now more comfortable, there are no more thermostat battles, and we largely don't think about it anymore. And those are all wins.
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Hi Kruse,
When using the API to control Smart Vents, and you program a Vent to open, that will take priority over occupancy.
If you’re not using the API and just relying on the app occupancy, here is the priority of behavior:
https://support.flair.co/hc/en-us/articles/360039845332-Flair-Priority
As Chuck mentioned, occupancy is efficient if you’re going to stay in rooms for long periods of time, like bedrooms at night.
See the Prioritizing Rooms section of this Scheduling article to see an ideal way to use Inactive rooms:
https://support.flair.co/hc/en-us/articles/360004526031-Scheduling
All the best,
Finn
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