App config for multi-story home

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Taylor

• August 10, 2021 01:11

Hi All,

I'm getting my home set up currently and have reached the point where I will start configuring everything in the app to try and level things out. I have an ecobee on my main floor and the puck upstairs along with some ecobee smart sensors. Currently I only have flair vents on the main floor as the upstairs gets far too hot in the summer. I figure if these are able to keep the upstairs cooler in the summer, I'll also add flair vents upstairs to keep the downstairs warmer in the winter.

So the current system looks like this:

Single zone HVAC

Main level - ecobee thermostat, 5 flair vents (soon to be 6 once the 6x14 comes back in stock), and 3 regular vents. This floor is basically one big room as it's a pretty open floor plan. The temperature reported at the ecobee is usually within 1-3 degrees of any location on this level.

Upper level - Flair Puck, 3 ecobee smart sensors, 7 regular vents. This floor has 4 rooms and 2 bathrooms. Smart sensors are in 3 of those rooms (master bedroom, my office and my girlfriend's office), the 4th is a spare bedroom that rarely gets used and stays closed most of the time to keep the cats out.

 

So at this point I'm trying to wrap my head around how best to set this up in the app to accomplish my original goal of keeping the upstairs cooler. I've found a few other threads that are after a similar goal, but either utilize flair vents on both floors, or have the luxury of multiple zones.

I think my best option is to set a schedule so that all the downstairs vents are inactive during the morning/afternoon hours, and leave the ecobee and its sensors to manage the temperature setpoints throughout the day. But, it anyone has any other suggestions I'm open to hearing them.

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  Flair Customer Support

  • August 10, 2021 20:04

  Hi Taylor,

  I see you want to cool the upstairs by redirecting cool air from the main level to the bedrooms at night. You have the right idea of putting the Smart Vents downstairs. I'd place the Puck downstairs too because all the Smart Vents need to connect to it using RF (radio frequency) signals. Putting it upstairs might be too far out of range for all the Smart Vents. Flair can use the temperature from the ecobee remote sensors you have in the bedrooms to know when to close the downstairs Smart Vents.

  Since you have an open floor plan and no Smart Vents upstairs, we can create two "rooms" in Flair: Upstairs and Downstairs. You'll assign all the bedroom ecobee remote sensors to the Upstairs room, and all the Smart Vents and the Puck to the Downstairs room. (When you get Smart Vents for the bedrooms to handle winter heating needs, you can break out the Upstairs "room" into individual rooms to get better control over room temperature.)

  We want to prioritize airflow to the bedrooms at night when you're using them the most. For this, we recommend a Flair schedule that sets Downstairs to Inactive during sleeping hours sets the Upstairs Inactive during the day.

  

  There's another setting that Flair uses to control where the home temperature comes from. The "Set Point Controller" (found in Home Settings->System Settings) can be set to "Thermostat" to read the temperature you set on the ecobee. You can create a comfort setting on the ecobee that uses the remote sensors in the bedrooms at night. This will keep the AC on long enough for the Smart Vents to open and redirect cool air to the bedrooms.

  If you have more questions about the operation of your system, please direct them to https://www.flair.co/contact so our Support Team can respond more quickly to your questions.

  All the best,

  Finn

   

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  Matt

  • August 13, 2021 13:25

  There's lots of ways you can set this up.  Depending on if you want the Ecobee or Flair to make decisions about when to run the HVAC.

  If I was doing this, I would move the Puck downstairs so it's in the same "room" as the vents.  I would plug it in and just put it on a table/counter somewhere in the large open space, so it's closest to the most vents in this space.  I would NOT integrate the Ecobee and Flair systems at all.  Just have them function independently.

  For the Ecobee, I would set a schedule and which sensors to use for that schedule based on which sensors you want included in it's averaging math.

  For Flair, I would define 2 rooms, one with the unconnected Thermostat and one for the "room" with all the vents in it.  Set a schedule for the temperature you want that room to be at in Flair.  Flair will then open close the vents to get to this temperature, but since it's not integrated with the Ecobee it will not be able to turn the HVAC on or off.

  Not being able to control the HVAC will not matter, since the other rooms are really driving the Ecobee to run or not.  They're always behind the big room in changing temp.  The Flair puck will open and close the vents as the big room gets there first to cut it off, or when it needs some air.

   

  I'm using the system exactly like this in my house, only it's the basement that's the room with all the vents and get's cold first then closes.  I have some bedrooms set up this way too.  My Ecobee and sensor are mostly based on the one room that's always last to cool or heat.  That lagging room drives the HVAC status and the Flair opens or cuts off the areas that get to temp first.  On the plus side, when the kid sets their bedroom puck to 60, it doesn't drive the HVAC.  It just never closes that vent when cooling.  It also doesn't include in the heating average either then, just stays closed all winter in that bedroom.

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