Ecobee and two vents in same room
Here is the Setup. One zone in my house (I have four zones/ecobees) covers 2 floors on the north side of the house. I'm trying to manage the temp in the office that is on the main floor (not second floor - thats the bedrooms). The Ecobee is upstars in the hallway (oddly outside of the rooms that get the heat/AC).
So I have:
> Ecobee on second floor with sensor disabled.
> Ecobee Room Sensor in one of the bedrooms on the second floor (each bedroom has 2 vents)
> Ecobee Room Senor in my main floor office (that has two vents)
> Two other vents on the main floor
> Flair puck in office (currently just acting as a gateway)
> Two flair vents in office
I have the flair vents linked to the office Room Sensor, but only one vent seems to ever open. Last night, the bedrooms were set to 78, and the office was seeing 73 but neither vents changed postion (one stayed open and one shut). Today the bedrooms are at 79 (the ecobee drives from the office temp during the day) and the office is 77 with a set temp of 75, but the Flair vents stay the same, 1 open and 1 closed.
The work manually, but the auto part seems to not work at all.
Need some help so I don't pack these things up and send them back.
-
I get a little lost in your description for what you're trying to accomplish, but it's probably solvable.
Is your ecobee integrated with the Flair set up, or operating independently? (Either is fine, but the setup would be different.)
Not sure why your vents are in different positions, but with our vents, I've noticed the temperate needs to be at least 2 degrees beyond the setting for the vent to move. If the office puck is set to 75, it's possible values between 73 and 77 aren't far enough away from 75 to have the vents change state. The auto setting of heat/cool probably matters too, I've only used cool so far.
It sound like you have one or two bedrooms upstairs, an office downstairs, and other hall vents downstairs all on a single zone controlled by an ecobee with 2 additional remote sensors. If you don't use any remote sensor, but drive the ecobee from itself, how is the temperate different between the bedroom(s) and the office? Which one is good and which one is to hot/cold?
What's the goal you're trying to achieve?
-
Thanks Matt.
You have it summarized well. The goal is to manage the office temps during the day and the bedrooms temps at night. In the summer, currently the office is freezing in the morning since the bedrooms have been calling for ac much of the night (hot climate in the summer). The situation is reversed in the winter but could be managed with active vents in the bedrooms in the winter. I wanted to prove out the control in the summer and then perhaps expand the Flair to the bedrooms. The Ecobee uses the remote sensor in the bedrooms at night and the office during the day.
I've spoken with customer support and I think the Flair vents are synced now, but the delay in the opening of the vents is causing some challenges (like you pointed out with the temp ranges above). For example, if during the day the AC is controlled by the office remote sensor (set up in the Ecobee) for 75 degrees, when the remote sensor says 76 degrees, the AC turns on but the Flair may wait until the temp in the room hits 77 degrees before opening the vents, so the AC is cooling the rest of the vents that are open in the system but the office (that is calling for the AC) is still not getting cooled.
Seems like my control systems are set to different levels of hysteresis or are just fighting with each other. PErhaps the Puck has something to do with this? I set it up as a gateway, but I'm still not convinced the Flairs are being controlled by the Ecobee room sensor.
-
I think I've solved part of the issue. The Puck was 'on' in the Office and acting as a temp sensor and control. I've unassociated the Puck with the room so I think now it is just a gateway and the Flair vents should be 100% operating to the Ecobee set temp. Question though, the Puck still shows a Set Temp. Is this controlling anything? If it is just acting as a gateway wouldn't it make sense to just show room temp?
-
It's still not clear if you've integrated the Ecobee and Flair systems. But, with the explanation so far, it sounds like you have two control scenarios fighting against each other, or at least operating at odds with each other.
It sounds like you set up the Ecobee to control the Office during the day, and the Bedroom during the night. Then, probably added the Flair vents afterwards to the office.
This is how I would set it up:
- Do NOT integrate the Ecobee and Flair systems. Configure Flair with the "Unsupported Thermostat" option.
- Only use the Ecobee sensor in the bedroom. Set it to whatever makes the bedroom comfortable.
- This will create a side effect that the office will be to cold in the summer and to warm in the winter, like it was prior to getting the Flair vents.
- Set the Flair puck in the office connected to the vents in the office.
- In the summer, set the Flair set point to the same or warmer than the bedroom, and in cool (or maybe Auto Heat/Cool) mode. As the bedroom cools to it's temperature, it will try to overcool the office and the vents will close to restrict the cooling once it's 2 degrees below (it's cold) the set point. Preventing overcooling. When it's 2 degrees above the set point (it's warm), the vents will open. The office is never calling for AC, relying on the bedroom to run the AC source as it warms up before the office does and cools slower.
- In the winter, set the Flair set point to the same or cooler than the bedroom, and in heat (or maybe Auto Heat/Cool) mode. As the bedroom warms to it's temperature, it will try to overheat the office and the vents will close to restrict the heating once it's 2 degrees above the set point. Preventing overheating. When it's 2 degrees below the set point, the vents will open. The office is never calling for Heat, relying on the bedroom run the heat as it cools off before the office does.
If you don't care about the bedroom temperature during the day at all, you could use an Ecobee sensor in the office during the day and set the cooling temperature to something warmer than the Flair, enough so you're sure the vents will open first, probably a 2 or 3 degrees warmer setting. Then do the reverse in the winter, setting the Ecobee sensor 2 or 3 degrees below the Flair. This would drive the AC/Heat to the office ignoring the bedroom during the day then. All the same as above so it balances overnight.
If you've integrated the Flair and Ecobee, you're creating a much more complex control pattern. With 4 sensors (Ecobee, Ecobee remotes, Flair Puck) and a more confusing control scheme where control could be regulated to Ecobee or Flair to drive the system, or some combination of both depending on the different set point controller settings in both products.
In my house, I'm essentially using this setup in 2 rooms to limit the cooling/heating to them while driving the rest of the house to a different temperature. The side effect is, if the rest of the house doesn't call for cool/heat, those rooms don't change temperature either. The set up restricts how cool/hot the room with Flair vents will go relative to the rest of the zone, but it doesn't directly drive the room.
-
Thanks Matt. This is a pretty genius solution. It makes perfect sense though the it bugs me that the tech is there to control this properly. I THINK I now have a solution, but it took configuration...all of which was not really clear via Ecobee and Flair. Here is the config
Bedroom: Room Sensor - ONLY used to control at night. No motion detection
Office: Room Sensor - ONLY used to control during the day. No motion detection
Office: Puck, but only acting as a gateway. No temp control.
Now my Ecobee schedule drives the temp in the two locations seperately, and the Flair really only needs to open/close once per day. After office hours the flair closes since the office is cooler than set temp and then opens in the AM when the Ecobee is controlling the Office temp.
Let's give this a few days and see how this goes.
-
I have an ecobee and integrate with flair no issue. I have it set to use the ecobee set point, so I’d say that is step 1. Also, I don’t know if you’ve considered it, but Flair will only keep so many vents closed at once, to prevent blocking too much airflow. Is it possible there is another room that is even warmer that it may be trying to force more air to? Not sure. In my experience if your room is above the set point of the thermostat, the vents should all open. Did you ensure within flair it is showing the right target temperature. My puck follows my ecobee set point religiously (within five minutes). They should match up.
-
Thanks Chris - The # of vents is not an issue since I have 9 but only two flairs (in the office). The system was working ok per the setup I described above, but the vents were watiing until 2F above the Ecobee setpoint to open. So that means the Ecobee, using the remote sensor for the office as it's only input, turns on the AC to cool the office, but the vents stay shut for a long time (like 2 hours) until the room heats up to 2F above the setpoint. If the vents were open the room would cool in like 10 min. I emailed support about adjusting the 2F delay (or just syncing to the ecobee 100%) and they said they could adjust the 2F point but that they recommended using a schedule and alternate temps to game the system into the vents opening at the right time. I responded that I was disappointed that we'd need to game a 'smart' system and that this should have the adjustability built in to manage these scenarios.
In desperation I went to Matt's suggestion from a week ago and have been trying that with a schedule. It's working so far but I'm disappointed the system cannot be more clever and if I would have understood this before I purchased I would not have spent the money...I could have just put books on the floor vents at night and that would have easily achieved the same thing.
-
I see you said the puck is in your office? I assume in the flair software you have it located there as well? If so, its temperature will be averaged with the ecobee sensor, so if the puck temp reading is off, it could be messing with you. Just something to check. I have a very similar situation. My puck is in my upstairs bedroom which is also my office. What’s puzzling about this for me is why either one of the vents closed in the first place. If the 2 degree swing is a thing, they shouldn’t close either unless the room gets two degrees below the set point. Maybe it’s getting really cool at night?
-
Yes, puck is in office, but I kept it simple and made it just a gateway and not a sensor. I have a remote sensor in the office and bedrooms and have the ecobee schedule so that the office is driven to temp during the day and the bedrooms at night. If I didn't block the vents in the office at night, with the AC running at nigt, the office is frigid in the AM (I start work at 6am) and the bedrooms would be less effectively managed at night. Really should be simple to control...
-
Hmmm I wasn’t aware you could do that with the puck. Mine is a gateway as well, but it’s temperature is still factored in. So the office vents are closing properly at night when the temperature in there drops, but both will not reopen during the day when the temperature increases, right?
In the flair app, does the temperature of the room shown match the temperature of the ecobee sensor?
-
Same thing in the evening...there is a 2F delay. It's well documented in the Flair info somewhere, and it's non-adjustable unless you make a special request for them to tweak yours. And yes, when the puck is linked to the Ecobee just as a gateway, the flair app shows the Ecobee remote sensor temp as the reference temp. So the AC in the office is set to 77, it hits 78, the AC turns on via ecobee, but the vents don't open until the temp hits 79...and with the cold leaking around the vents (it's a small office) it takes like 3 hours for the temp to hit 79, with the AC working the whole time. If the vents just opened when the AC called for cooing, it would be done in 10 min or less. The vents also KNOW the AC is on because they can see the lower temps hitting them...so the KNOW the AC is on and that the setpoint is below the current temp.
I think a big part of this is about battery preservation, and I understand that, though they need to just allow more sophisticated tuning and advise on the impact on the battery life.
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
12 comments