Cannot get thermostat to set itself to set point to heat a room
I have a dual HVAC system in my home (one upstairs, one downstairs). Flair is only set up upstairs (pucks and vents in every room). The main upstairs hallway has the smart thermostat Flair uses to control temp in the individual rooms. My issue is that I cannot get Flair to set the hallway thermostat to a temperature which will turn on heat in a room that needs it. For instance, I have a room at 66 I want heated to 70 - however, the temperature of the hallway is 71, and Flair has put a set point on that thermostat to 67 in response to my request to heat the room that is 66. Obviously setting the thermostat to 67 when it's reading 71 at the thermostat itself will not turn on the heat. How do I get Flair to set the temp high enough on the main thermostat just to get it to kick on to heat the room I need heated?
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Unfortunately, Flair averages the delta between set point and current temperature across the household, or at least in rooms set to ‘active’. If your Flair is setting the thermostat to 67 when it reads 71, then you likely have an average of 4deg warmer across the board. You’ll have to set some rooms as ‘away’ or modify room set points so the average difference is greater.
Flair has yet to implement any room ‘balancing’ or recirculating features.
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Too bad about this. We currently have two rooms in the house setup. The master bedroom and the kids room.
During the day we scheduled the bedrooms temperature to be low (60 f).
We would like to warm the kids room when the baby naps. She doesn't always nap on schedule.
Tried to warm the kids room today to 68f, by increasing the temperature in the app. It failed because the app set the ecobee thermostat point temperature to be roughly the average of the target temperature of the two rooms (65 f). Since the master bedroom temperature was higher than the target (64 f), the heating didn't work and the kids room stayed cold.
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In general it seems to me like the current implementation of the ecobee integration does only the following:
The heating is only turned on when the average measured rooms temperature is lower that the average target temperature of the rooms. This is due to the averaging done by both Flair and ecobee.
This is very disappointing, since it is basically
not significantly better than what you would get in an ecobee setup with no Flair vents (by setting the thermostat temperature to the average rooms target temperature). -
Do you have Ecobee sensors too or just the Flair pucks?
All of these systems with a single heat source and rooms requesting different temperatures suffer from the same problem. In our house, the solution is to NOT integrate them. Pick the room that lags the most, the last to heat or cool. Put an Ecobee sensor in that room and set the Ecobee to use ONLY that room to drive the temperature. Then, using vents and pucks in the other rooms that lead on the temp change, set them to a temp that closes the vent when it gets to temp first. This keeps them from over heating/cooling then.
In my solution, it does mean every room cannot just pick a random temperature. One room, the one that lags, is driving if the source is on or not. But, every room can set it's own limit temperature, when it closes itself off to avoid overshooting the temperature goal. This means the lagging room sets the hottest/coldest the source is going to run based on. Rooms can limit at any value prior to getting to that limit. If the room really leads, it can even set a hotter/colder value, since it'll overshoot before the lagging room gets there.
The Ecobee controlling it's own set point and remote sensors, it's easy enough to set just one sensor to drive a comfort setting, even if it's not the main unit.
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That's a great idea Matt.
It does make setting up the schedule much more complicated, but this is what I did:1) I let ecobee control the "set point".
2) For each interval I set ecobee to only use the sensor in the "hot" room (the room with the highest target temperature). That way the heating will work if (and only if) that room's temperature is below the desired temperature.
3) I set the Flair schedule to the desired heat in each room.I hope this will get the room temperature close to what I want. But it is far from bug proof. For example if the "hot" room is better insulated, the "cold" room might get very cold before the heating is triggered. Because the heating can only triggered by the "hot" room sensor.
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It definitely requires knowing which room is the lagging room and always gets to temperature last.
The lagging room and the room you want to be the hottest may not be the same. For instance, in our house a room closer to the furnace always gets to temperature first. Even if we want that room to be the hottest, it will get there first before the other rooms reach even a lower temperature. I would not link the Ecobee to that room. But, the Flair in that room will close off it's vents whenever it reaches its set temperature. Which, if it wants the hottest temperature, may not ever close or will only close when the lagging room is getting closer to even a lower temperature.
Wildly different temperatures aren't going to work well, but 5 or so degrees is very possible.
Even if the lagging room is set to 5 degrees lower than a room that gets to temp first, it should keep the heat on long enough for the leading room to get hotter. The hotter room would just never close it's vent. If it wanted 10 degrees warmer, that's probably tougher unless its really leading ahead of the lagging room by a lot. That probably means you had poor airflow balancing to begin with.
In our house, the main air trunk is on one side and travels across the entire width of the house, from left to right. This means the rooms on the left always reach a temperature faster than the rooms on the right. I set the Ecobee to use a sensor in a room on the right that's always last to reach any temperature. The Flair vents in the left rooms close whenever they reach their desired goal, above or below the right room goal. Just not to far above the right rooms.
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It worked extremely bad. Not 100% what happened. But I think ecobee tried to preheat the master bedroom half an hour before schedule. Since Flair was on schedule the kids room vent were open, it was turned into a suana, and they woke up.
Decided that the Flair product and integration with ecobee is not mature enough for our needs. Will try to initiate a return.
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I think you need to think through what you're trying to do and achieve. Maybe open a support ticket with Flair for some direct personal help on the goals and configuration to reach it. There's not enough information here on how many vents, pucks, Ecobee sensors you have to know what happened.
The number of possible options with Flair and Ecobee and combinations of vents, pucks, remote sensors supports all kinds of strange and crazy scenarios. Which also means the exact goals and steps need to be thought out closely, as it's easy to configure options that don't do what you want. The problem space of turning a home with a single zone into multiple zones without redesigning the entire system isn't a simple one. Plus, the Flair system supports that along with lots of other options too.
That the kids room turned to a sauna means either it didn't limit at all based on it's settings, or it's not the one with the Flair vent but the bedroom is, or something else of the information is missing. It sounds like you also set the hottest room to drive the system, not the lagging room. Those are NOT the same thing.
The configuration options are non trivial between the two systems, which one is the brains, and what you're trying to achieve between "room limiting", "room driving temp", and "balance" or "distinctly different temperatures". ALL of them are possible in different ways. Which also means, there's more way to set up the system and get results you don't want than the ones you do want if it isn't mapped out first.
Not in your case, but there's posts all the time from people who want to make Flair the brains, but then turn on Ecobee Away settings, making it the brain in conflict to the Flair settings. Then wondering why it doesn't work when they've told the system conflicting directions.
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