open vent order or precedence..
Is there a way to order the vents that open to relieve back pressure when needed...
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Official comment
The vents automatically do this in auto mode. Not sure what exactly you are looking for beyond what we already do but if you have something super specific, it might be worth sending a note to the support team.
Cheers,Dan
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The system will prioritize generally by whether rooms are active/inactive first (inactive are most likely to get opened to relieve pressure - think of inactive as a "don't care" that can be used as a dump zone) and then by the differences between the setpoints and the actual temps. Rooms that are active and already plenty cool during AC season are likely to stay closed while rooms that are active but close to or even slightly over their setpoint are going to open first. I highly recommend making use of active/inactive via the scheduling system for prioritizing rooms.
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Any update on this flair, I have the same issue. My sons room gets dangerously too hot, too cold, and too humid because your system sees his room as inactive while he sleeps. I'd rather the common areas open for BP relief since it will be less noticeable both when the room is inactive or active.
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Interesting - can you help me understand why the rooms you want managed are marked as inactive? Is this intentional or unintentional (that's my understanding right now). If you are using motion data from ecobee or Honeywell remote sensors to drive active/inactive, my suggestion is to leave that in place but also set a schedule with setpoints applied to rooms you want to stay active. So in CJ's case, I'd suggest setting a scheduled event for your Son's room for the hours you care about. Any time not explicitly scheduled in a room will defer to the motion driven active/inactive or whatever hold behaviour you are using if you don't have motion sensors.
Does that help/address the issue? Perhaps I misinterpreted? -
Active/Inactive is set by ecobee. Every room has a schedule 100% of the time. So when it needs back pressure relief, it HAS to open up vents regardless if it is active or not since no more than 1/3 of the vents can be closed at a time. So my basement does not have smart vents but every room in my house has a ecobee temp sensor. I am in "heating mode" The temp in the basement is low enough to bring the average household temp below the setpoint of my thermostat. The main floor is already at or above setpoint since it gets all the sunlight. The heater kicks on and back pressure relief is activated on whatever vents it randomly chooses and then over heats my sons room and I have absolutely zero control. Unless I put the entire system is manual. This is also exacerbated when my circulation fan kicks on and since my kid's room's vent is open it over humidifies his room making it feel like swamp and not puts his health in danger because between the heat and humidity he cannot sweat off the heat as effectively.
This could all be fixed if your engineers would add a feature that people have been asking for for years and let us set a priority for back pressure relief, or designate certain vents that will always be used for BP relief, or being able to set a certain number of vents to be omitted from BP relief base on total number vents. Or, to allow, by our own discretion and risk, the ability to disable BP relief.
I know my situation is not unique and this is very frustrating. The whole reason I got Flair vents was to control my sons room because of the ducting, he gets the most air by a large margin. And ironically, it worked great with just the one vent, but once I decided to add 15 more and expand my system to 16 vents and 3 pucks, the system no longer works as originally intended and I have even less control.
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CJ - This is a total hack, but would probably solve your immediate issue for the kids room. Create a second house and move the kids vents and puck to that second house. Do NOT integrate that with any thermostat, you can just set it to have an unsupported thermostat. Set this new house so it has 3 times the vents as the kids room. This disconnected setup will not let you use the enhanced circulation for this room. But, it will keep the vent closed all the time when the room doesn't need temp change and only open it when it does need temp change. The room will also never call for temp change, but it probably never has to anyway. The kid's "house" would be totally independent from the rest of the house. Reduce the number of vents in the real hose by the actual count from the kids room, since they will not be part of the real house count anymore.
Then you can figure out whatever else over time for the rest, but the immediate issue would be solved.
You said you have 16 flair vents plus some that are not Flair. From the support article, Flair will never close more than 1/3 of the total vents in a system. Any chance you actually have 48 vents throughout the house but set it to just the 16 that are Flair? The number of vents set in the app as part of the Thermostat settings is the total number not just the Flair vents. If you really have 48 vents, none of them would ever need to open for pressure reasons.
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Hi CJ,
Can you help clarify these:Active/Inactive is set by ecobee. Every room has a schedule 100% of the time.
You mean in the ecobee you have every room scheduled or in Flair you have every room scheduled? Or do you mean you have the ecobee remote sensors driving active/inactive for each room. I'm asking because of the comment above:
your system sees his room as inactive while he sleeps.
There are many config. options for the system but if I'm understanding you correctly - that no movement in your sons room is causing a room to be flagged inactive on the flair side - then my suggestion is to use the Flair scheduling tool to apply an active setpoint for that room.
All of that said, we do have an alternate back pressure algorithm that you could try if you'd like that avoids using rooms marked as Inactive as dump zones, the issue I have recommending that is that if you have a room you care about a lot, it should in the Active state, suggesting there is a non-optimal config rather than a back pressure algorithm issue. OR, perhaps when you said 'inactive' earlier on the thread, you didn't mean Inactive in the Flair app. -
There is a remote sensor in every room from ecobee, ecobee shows the room active/inactive on their display. All rooms in Flair are set to active. And all bedrooms have a setpoint in the schedule at all time and most of the common rooms do to but sometimes they are just left to take the thermostat setpoint.
Ecobee sees it as inactive with no movement, I am not sure what affect this has with flair, I have never seen the Active/Inactive toggle change on its own. So maybe flair is seeing it as active all the time. But there is a setpoint 24/7 for my sons room.
My sons room is always active (inside the flair app) and always has a setpoint.
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OK, thanks for the clarification.
Ecobee sees it as inactive with no movement, I am not sure what affect this has with flair,
It depends on this setting: https://flair.co/blogs/news/flair-syncs-ecobee-motion-data. If enabled, the Flair room's active/inactive status is driven by ecobee's motion sensors but if disabled, the active/inactive and setpoint is driven by this: https://support.flair.co/hc/en-us/articles/360039845332-Flair-Priority.
Since you said this:
I have never seen the Active/Inactive toggle change on its own. So maybe flair is seeing it as active all the time. But there is a setpoint 24/7 for my sons room.
My sons room is always active (inside the flair app) and always has a setpoint.
I'm assuming that the ecobee motion sync'ing is disabled, so in this case, scheduling the room active is not the solution. We are going to take a quick look at the system on our end and see if there is anything else we should recommend. A BP blacklist is something we may consider building out if we can't find a satisfying solution with some of the options we have already.
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Yep, just checked, its disabled. I also upped the vent number to 40 in the app for now. I know its a risk, but there is About 10 vents smart and dumb combined that are almost never closed, when heating is enabled.
I think a BP relief blacklist would be a great thing, as well as having a black list of vents for when enhanced recirculation mode is enabled.
I am guessing, like me, a lot of people have issues with specific rooms. And having a few vents would help those rooms. But if you expand, you all of a sudden have less control with those problem rooms because flair decides what to do to protect the HVAC system but with one flair vent you arent really risking much
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I had the same problem with which vents would open or close due to the back pressure protection. What I did in my house is to set certain flair pucks to a higher temp when my system is on cooling and lower temp when its on heating. Now it just works perfect and maintains the desired temp in the rooms.
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