Multi-system setup advice

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Steve Midgley

Hello,

I have a relatively complex heating/cooling setup, and I'm hoping for advice/support on whether and how I could use Flair in my situation:

Setup:

  1. Central forced air heating in one part of my house (4 vents, upstairs) - this is installed and working
  2. Fujitsu minisplit a/c and heating system (4 independent wall units, downstairs) - this is not yet installed

Right now I have an Ecobee with one remote sensor controlling the Central forced air heater, and that works fine. I'm interested in the Flair smart vents to more evenly spread heat around.

I plan to install one Ecobee per wall unit to control the Fujitsu wall units (so each room will have independent cooling/heating, as this seems much more energy efficient). I think Flair pucks can be used to bridge these Ecobees with the wall units (and the pucks seem more functional and cheaper than a Fujitsu OEM thermostat bridge).

I think that I need the following, and I'd welcome input to figure out if I understand how Flair system works:

  • 4 Flair Smart Vents to work with my forced air heating system.
  • 1 Flair Puck to control the smart vents and bridge them that Ecobee
  • 4 Flair pucks to control the Minisplit wall units and bridge to each Ecobee

I've read in some discussions that it's necessary to have an additional Flair bridge puck but I'm not clear how that would work in my situation. Does anyone have any guidance or advice making my setup work?

Thank you,

Steve

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    Chrissie

    Hi Steve,

    Some good news - for your 4 Fujitsus, you don't need anything other than the 4 Pucks - no need for the additional ecobees and adapters.  To restate:

    For your 4 vents - you could simply drop in the smart vents and make sure that you have a temp sensor for each room with the vents (the temp sensor could be any of Puck (configured as a gateway), Puck (configured as a sensor), ecobee remote sensors, or the ecobee itself.

    For each Fujitsu 'head' (indoor unit), you'll want a Puck.  

    So long as one Puck is plugged in somewhere and set as a gateway (doesn't matter which) it will all work and should be fairly straight forward to set up in the app.

    The only reason you'd need an additional Puck was if you wanted to make every single Puck thats in the living space totally wireless.  For instance, it sounds like you will have 4-6 Pucks for your home - if you wanted to have all 4-6 Pucks running on batteries, you could, optionally, get an additional Puck, plug it in and set it up as a gateway, stuff it in a closet, and thus everything in the living space would be wireless.  If you don't mind one of the Pucks you actually need being plugged in, then no extra Puck needed.

    Hope that helps!

    Cheers,
    Dan

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    Steve Midgley

    Thank you Dan! I understand more now. One puck must be plugged in, and the rest can be wireless. If the one that is plugged in can act as a bridge/gateway, then the rest can just rely on that one. For a multi-zone minisplit, I need one Puck per zone. For the vents, I need some way to tell each vent what the temperature is nearby. So I can put ecobee temp sensors around the house and "align" each vent to the appropriate sensor (presumably this is accomplished using your app), the vents can do the rest.

    Feel free to correct the above, otherwise, I'll proceed and see how it goes! Thanks again for the fast response. Your product seems really helpful for my situation.

    Steve

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    Chrissie
    • Edited

    Steve Midgley - can confirm that you have it exactly right - have fun!  If you end up with setup questions/config questions during/post install, be sure to reach out to the support team!

    Cheers,
    Dan

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