Can I set separate heating and cooling temperatures?
Answered
The temperatures in Colorado vary widely, so I usually let my thermostat control both the furnace and the AC, but that worked when I could tell it a temperature range to set...when to turn on the heat and when to turn on the AC. Then, I could set a nighttime schedule to allow the house to cool through the night and come back on in the morning, or come on if it gets too cold.
As far as I can see, so far, I'm on setting a narrow sweet spot of +/- one degree. When I tried a setback in the schedule, it fired up the ac to bring the house down to 68 which defeats the purpose of both being comfortable and economical.
If this can be done, please share, otherwise, I can make a couple suggestions.
1. Let me schedule individual heat and cool temperatures in the schedule.
2. In the schedule, allow me to change the heat/cool/heat and cool setting of the thermostat. If I can change to heat only at night, I can set the temp down to 65 or so and let the house cool naturally, then set it back to heat & cool in the morning.
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Official comment
Thanks for this feature request! This is something under consideration. We will let our users know when we have more information!
Cheers,
John
Flair Customer Support
Comment actions -
I too would like to see this feature. What I did to work around it was to create a separate schedule for heating and cooling. Then you just have to switch back and forth as needed. After doing that for a while, I took the next step of setting up a script that uses the flair API and automatically switches the schedule, depending on whether the system is in heat or cool mode. I also put in a feature request to be able to attach a schedule to heat and cool mode, if you want.
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Hey All,
Flair does allow you to set a temperature range - indirectly.
When you set Mode to "Auto Heat/Cool", Flair creates implicit heating and cooling set points that are essentially 3F above and below the set point. You can read more about it here:
https://support.flair.co/hc/en-us/articles/360049600871-Mode-Switching-Explained
All the best,
Finn
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HI Chris,
For systems using an integrated smart thermostat or systems with mini spits, the home set point is compared to the average home temperature.
For systems using a non-integrated thermostat, Flair will read duct temperature to determine if a system is heating or cooling (ducts will blow super hot air when the heat is on and super cold air when the AC is on). You can write in to Support to ask how you can achieve the heating and cooling set points you desire for this type of system.
All the best,
Finn
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This plain doesn't work for my home. I live in the Denver area where the temperature can swing wildly from night to day, but the real problem is that daily there is a huge difference between the third floor and the basement. The average home temperature your software uses fails to satisfactorily set the temperature on any floor.
Most often, my upper floor is HOT and requires cooling, but the basement is cool enough to keep the average low and comfy. I need something that knows when one zone needs attention, NOT something that decides the house as a whole is OKAY.
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Hi Ivoryjohn13,
The first thing I’d recommend is use of scheduling to set rooms to inactive that aren’t in use. Flair won’t average inactive rooms, so you can eliminate the spread.
Most commonly, users will set bedrooms to inactive during the day and non-bedrooms to inactive during sleeping hours. You can tweak it a bit depending on how you use your home.
All the best,
Finn -
Thanks for the suggestion, but the inlaw apartment in the basement is always occupied, and my office is in the upper floor. I can't set either to inactive. Can you modify your software to NOT AVERAGE the home? What if I set each as a different home, can you arbitrate which home needs either cooling or heating and inform the ecobee? The vents will handle each room when they need or don't need HVAC. The whole problem is setting the ecobee to heat or cool. The ecobee is in the middle floor and so far I have it alternating between a warmer temp and cooler temp which is not a very good solution. If you could give me a setting to ignore the average temp and set the ecobee based on which room is furthest from its desired temp, my home would be comfortable.
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Ivoryjohn13 did you give the Flair system full control of managing the temperature or does Flair only control the vents and the Ecobee manages the heat/cool source?
Depending on which way you have it setup, integrated or independent you have different options available to you. Likewise, if you have Ecobee sensors in the mix too, that changes the available options.
Your specific scenario sounds like sometimes you need the heat on because the basement is too cold, but don't want to overheat the office. Sometimes you need the cooling on because the office it to hot, but don't want to over cool the basement.
I can think of a way to do that, mostly, using Flair and Ecobee independently, with Flair pucks and vents in basement and office, and Ecobeen sensors in basement and office too. Configured with no integration between Flair and Ecobee.
It's only mostly, because you'll still need to decide which room at a given time, the office or the basement is driving the heat/cool decision with the other room providing a limiting function to not be over driven.
Essentially, a schedule where at night you drive the decision off the basement and during the day you drive the decision off the office. With the opposite room limiting how far it allows a temp change. At night, the basement would dictate heat/cool/nothing while the office simply limits it's temp so it's not over heated, since the office is always hotter anyway. During the day, the office would dictate the heat/cool/nothing while the basement simply limits it's temp so it's not over cool.
Not integrating the two systems gives more options, as the decisions about limiting a room temp and turning the heat/cool on/off are divorced from each other.
If that's what it looks like, I can explain the details if you want.
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I tried integrating them, but that didn't work at all. Currently they are independent. I have an ecobee schedule that works well in the summer by dropping the temp four times a day for half an hour. I removed the flair vents from the ecobee room and use them in basement and office. I've also looked at writing my own program to control the ecobee, but I'm not an api guy and haven't gotten far with that effort. Your idea about different ecobee schedules night and day is intriguing, but I haven't found a way for it to have multiple schedules. I was considering different summer/winter/fall schedules.
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This is how I would set up your scenario.
No integration between Flair and Ecobee.
Ecobee remote sensors for the basement and office.
Ecobee comfort setting scheduled for night that only includes a sensor in basement. This will allow basement to drive heating on.
Ecobee comfort setting scheduled for day that only includes sensor in the office. This will allow office to drive cooling on.
Flair puck and vents in basement, set to a temp a degree above Ecobee heat value at night. Set to comfortable cool temp during day.Flair puck and vents in the office. Set to a temp a degree below Ecobee cool during day. Set to comfortable warm at night.
Experimenting with exact temps as the sensors may not match exact.
Including all the Ecobee sensors would have the same averaging issue. This way, the room that is the under driven is the one controlling turning on the source. The Fliar vents provide a limiting function to prevent the opposite room from being overdriven. Configured to not limit the controlling room before the Ecobee would turn off anyway.
Because they’re not integrated, one room can be a sensor while vents are active limiters in both.
I think you’ll end up with both in auto heat cool mode. Probably need a slightly different configuration when it’s all cool or heat.
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Has this been implemented yet? It’s a standard feature in the ecobee app, why the hold up in FLAIR? I don’t get it. I have different temps i set for heating and cooling and have a very wide difference between the 2. We live in Canada, so same scenario as Colorado.
Let’s go Flair team.
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I would like to add my vote for this feature. Most smart thermostat systems allow you to set upper and lower temp boundaries for heating & cooling - why not Flair? Even many analog thermostats give you 2 sliders for heating & cooling thresholds. The whole "set point +/- 3 degrees" may be simple, but is not going to work for a great many real world situations. For just about any set-point I can think of, either the -3 degree heating threshold or the +3 degree cooling threshold will be in the wrong place for my house. I'll constantly be nudging the set-point up and down either to manually trigger a cycle that is lagging more than I'd like, or to shut down a cycle that is premature. This completely defeats the point of having an automated system; I might as well go back to an analog thermostat!
I for one would like more control over where my heating & cooling set points are positioned, and I think most users would feel similarly. This doesn't seem like a very complicated thing to do; let's get this out of the backlog and into sprint planning! -
I'd like to add something... First better integration into Alexa, but with respect to set points. I'd like separate cooling and heating setpoints for each room based on heat and cool mode. Scheduling won't work as my schedule is always different, however I'd like my guest room to be set to 62 in heating mode and 82 in cooling mode (and similar different set points in different rooms.) Any additional progress?
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