EcoBee - Experience with Hot Water Systems

[mobiledynamics]

Thinking about giving the EcoBee a go.

On the Nest - with a hot water boiler, it tends to run the pump for longer than needed to get the room to temp as it the cycle time for how long it fires up the water is much shorter and it spurts. Compared to a old school mechanical thermostat, where it just fires it up full tilt boogey and runs the pump until the room temp is reached.

Anyone with a Ecobee and hot boiler setup. How has you experience been.
I mean literally, the Nest may take 1Hr+ longer to bring the room to temp as does not engage the boiler as much as I preferred and just runs the pump far too long to get the room to temp

 

[fitter30]

Take a look at this forum

ecobee thermostat with weil mclain boiler

I'm looking to install an ecobee to replace my old thermostat.

forum.heatinghelp.com

 

[rlitman]

...On the Nest - with a hot water boiler, it tends to run the pump for longer than needed to get the room to temp as it the cycle time for how long it fires up the water is much shorter and it spurts. Compared to a old school mechanical thermostat, where it just fires it up full tilt boogey and runs the pump until the room temp is reached...

Huh? Isn't the nest just controlling the boiler by connecting R(h) and W?

The thermostat either opens the zone valve, who's limit switch turns on the circulator, or directly controls the circulator relay while calling for heat at the same time. Water temperature is controlled by the aquastat, which the Nest or Ecobee or whatever has no knowledge of.

 

[David Paul]

I’ve been very happy with my EcoBee and McLain boiler. Just the simple set up as outlined in the EcoBee manual. Very precise heat control. I did have to run a “C” wire which was easy enough for my set up with the boiler in the basement, EcoBee on the first floor. Added a second EcoBee to the bedroom zone when the utility company offered them for $20.

 

[chinboys]

I have three EcoBee units each with at least one satellite or two for my mixed hydronic system of Runtel radiators, cabinet force air hot water heaters\ and in-floor Pex for my home.
I am driving two different Caleffi zone valve controllers (master-slave) with a mixture of Nest and EcoBee thermostats.
Either the slave or master zone valve controllers will drive my high-efficiency Triangle Tube DHW and boiler when heat is called for.

I don't see any difference in time for either EcoBee or Nest thermostats to communicate with their respective zone valves to get the hot water flowing.
I do see a time difference when heating with a radiator versus that of in floor PEX (I don't feed more than 115 F water to my wooden floors) versus feed 180 F to my radiators.

 

[Denwood]

My commercial building had nine Ecobee stats, four of them on radiant loops, and 5 of them on air handlers. 4500 square foot foot print, 9000 total to heat with the 2nd floor.

Ecobee (if set up correctly) will vary the set up and set back times depending on the learned recovery times in your building, vs the outside temp. I'd highly recommend setting up the stat using https://beestat.io/ which has much better reporting tools than Ecobee itself. It takes some time for the stat to learn the recovery times, but it does work quite nicely. Keep in mind that in our climate (Zone 7A, winter lows in the -30C range) aggressive night time setbacks make sense, particularly with a commercial space where occupancy is zero at night. The Triangle tube system was set to 125F or so the air handlers and around 80F to the floor as I recall.

I ended up using the air handlers to bump daytime temps (vs slab heat) as it was more efficient, particularly with regard to late day temp bumps from the slab and solar gain. Keeping the slab temps down a bit helped to moderate the late day temp bump with staff activity and sun entering the building. It was a very well insulated building, about R40 in the walls with an inner furred radiant air space assembly.

If you set one up, give it a few weeks to sort things out and use the beestat.io web reports to keep an eye on the runtime etc. I really liked the Ecobee for the low temp alerts if say someone leaves a loading bay door open in -20C or similar

This was our loading bay with door seals that needed replacing. This area is radiant only as it is the loading bay area (with no setbacks, just a lower set point) but the Ecobee reports show quite a dramatic change in heat demand with just replacing the door seals on the large overhead main door:

Garage door seals - $$$ flying from your wallet?

This is a repost of one of my thread posts, however I figure it's worth some discussion here in the heating/cooling area. I learned something this week about the value of garage door seals. The space in question is at my commercial site, but the garage door there is typical (albeit) larger to...

www.garagejournal.com

From that thread:

 

[dogdog]

Huh? Isn't the nest just controlling the boiler by connecting R(h) and W?

The thermostat either opens the zone valve, who's limit switch turns on the circulator, or directly controls the circulator relay while calling for heat at the same time. Water temperature is controlled by the aquastat, which the Nest or Ecobee or whatever has no knowledge of.

I am pretty sure the Honeywell have a secret menu that lets you set the profile of the thermostat behavior on different type of heating systems. Pretty sure the eco bee have that as well. Not 100% sure about the nest

 

[rlitman]

...Ecobee (if set up correctly) will vary the set up and set back times depending on the learned recovery times in your building, vs the outside temp. I'd highly recommend setting up the stat using https://beestat.io/ which has much better reporting tools than Ecobee itself...

Way cool. Thanks! I'm downloading a self-hosted version now since that seems to be supported (for those masochists like me who are inclined to this stuff).

Self-Hosting

This guide can be used to set up a self-hosted version of beestat either for privacy or for the purpose of contributing to the project.

beestat.notion.site