Looking For Advice On Thermostat With Remote Sensor

[Leeboy20]

My thermostat is mounted in the kitchen , and all the cooking that gets done throws it off 3-4 degrees sometime . Without cuttin holes and running the wires to a new location . I’m wondering if anyone has discovered a good thermostat with a decent remote sensor I could place in a different room ? Some of the ones on amazon I saw , got terrible reviews.

 

[LMS]

Nest does this well. I put a nest thermostat on my shop and it had to be close to my heater and was throwing everything off. I added a remote sensor across the room and all is good. $40 I think, and getting it hooked in could not have been simpler. Battery operated, and I think they last a long time.

 

[Leeboy20]

Right on , thank you very much for the reply

 

[acmikee]

Honeywell makes several models with wireless and wired remotes.

 

[m32825]

Honeywell makes several models with wireless and wired remotes.

+1

We've got a couple Honeywell thermostats paired via Redlink to remote thermostats. You can tell the thermostat to run the program from the local reading or the remote. They work great!

-- Carl

 

[Fasthotrod]

I have an Ecobee 3 and dig it.

The main thermostat is in the hallway of the house without a lot of activity in that area. The temps in the hallway were on point, but the rest of the house? Not even close... so that's when I installed the Ecobee and some remote (battery powered) temperature sensors.

I have one in the living room, one in the office, and one in a couple of bedrooms. The main thermostat looks at them all and does an average of the temperatures, which seems to help.

I was also able to use the temp data to adjust the dampers to help get a better overall heat/cooling spread for the areas. To top it off, I have the Ecobee run the fan to circulate the air in the house once an hour whether it's heating/cooling or not. The result is a better overall temperature spread in the house.

The temp sensors are equipped with a motion sensor to be able to tell if there is someone in the room or not... that way it can 'follow' you around the house for the settings it uses. Those sensors also show up in my smart home automation network (Smarthings) and can be used to trigger other things like lights turning on/off, etc... It's pretty slick!

Hope this helps.

Mark

 

[mike93lx]

i have a nest with a remote as well and it works great. i can switch between them easily, if needed.

on a hydronic system, a Nest is not very useful though, other than to be a wifi enables thermostat. all of the energy savings ******** just causes the house to be way colder than desired, so i shut it all off and run it like any other programmable.

if i hadn't gotten it so cheap through my utility, i would have been pretty pissed.

 

[SGKent]

actually that is a product that may not be out yet. Meaning what is needed is a control unit that mounts near the AC/furnace to make it simple to wire it to the system, and the remotes work on wi-fi throughout the house. They could even plug into a wall socket so they don't need batteries changed. The control unit really doesn't even need to know what the temp is as long as it gets the signal from the remotes, and a smart phone can control it from anywhere in the house if the main control unit is out of the normal path of the owner. All the units I have seen are designed by people who think central thermostat because it has always been done that way ... . But reality is that as long as the module that turns the HVAC system on and off can be wired to, or built into the furnace, all that matters is that the remotes tell it what the temperature is where they are - and the owner can control it / program it via some interface.

 

[99LeCouch]

Ecobee 3 or 4 thermostats can do that natively. They come with one remote sensor, and more are easy to add.

I have an Ecobee 3 with a single remote sensor. In conjunction with opening and closing the vents based on season, it works very well for keeping my split level house comfortable.

 

[bwringer]

We had a new heat pump installed in February, and they installed an Ecobee 5. It came with one remote sensor we put in the bedroom. You can get more sensors for about $40 each if you have a larger house.

It's one of those devices that "just works" -- it sort of figures out your usual schedule over time, or you can tweak and twiddle if you prefer. We like having a temperature readout, and it also senses humidity.

So far, everything has been seamless. The Ecobee works great, the app works fine, etc. It's an Alexa voice-enabled device, which is a feature you may or may not consider a positive. I have not set up the voice activated stuff and probably won't.

At first, it was a little too aggressive in seeking savings, letting the house drop to 64 degrees at night from an "occupied" setpoint of 70 degrees. I mean, yeah, saving energy and money is nice but that was a little extreme for us and I changed the settings.

 

[Bert_]

What's on the other side of the wall? Could you just pop the wire out the other side and put the thermostat there.

I like technology and all but sometimes I really like simple. Stuff that just works is worth a lot.

 

[rkstr]

+1 Ecobee 4 with sensor.

 

[Denwood]

I have installed about a dozen Ecobee 3 and 3 “lite”. They were the first smart stat to do remote sensors and do them well. Zero issues. Highly recommend.

The sensors can be included or excluded from each of your comfort settings..so for example you can exclude the stat from biasing temps during your home times, but have the stat sensor average in during Sleep or Away modes. If you add a few sensors, the stat will display and use the average, provided the sensors are included in each mode. Stick with the standard Home, Away, and Sleep modes to keep things simple. You can then decide which sensors are ignored (or not) for each mode.

The sensors also work well with automation as long as you are using them for temp and not presence setting. They detect presence quickly but delay absence by 20-30 minutes. This keeps the stat from constantly switching to away modes.

Ecobees do require a C wire..but sorting this correctly ameliorates all the Nest issues that arise from “power stealing” which can cause wierd issues with newer furnace control boards.

 

[LS6 Tommy]

I wouldn't install a nest in an enemy's house. Ecobee is a better design all around, but you don't need either for what you want to do. You only need a new Honeywell stat with a remote sensor.

Tommy

 

[LMS]

I wouldn't install a nest in an enemy's house.
Tommy

'cuz why?

 

[LS6 Tommy]

I didn't like either of them at first, but I like ecobee better because I've had enough people have me rip nests out to put in ecobees. People can't figure them out, they're not super reliable and they offer a lot less for about the same money. The nest is a "learning" stat, people get tired of changing settings until it "learns" what your preferences are. This will happen with every change of season. You can turn that off, but I find most people can't figure out how and forget where the manual is after a few weeks. The ecobee can be programmed like a regular stat with a steady schedule, but can use a remote temperature/motion sensor, so you can turn any room in your house into the "remote" zone to be maintained. Nest just started doing that and it only senses temperature. Both offer voice control, but nest does not have a built in speaker like ecobee, so you'll need a home kit of some sort to use voice control. Ecobee also works with a much wider variety of platforms.
Nest says it doesn't "need" a C wire, but uses something called "power stealing" which causes issues with some HVAC unit control boards. The ecobee has a "power extender kit" included just in case you don't have a C wire.
If you're into energy monitoring, ecobee has far better data reporting, a year and a half at a time. Nest gives you about 2 weeks and there's nowhere near as much detail.

Tommy

 

[Denwood]

Ecobee also has an extra set of "dry" contacts (not on their lite versions) which can be used to control HRV, attic fans etc. My brother has his connected to his newer HRV so that the furnace fan and HRV are called together on schedule.

It is a solid product..and I have a high sensitivity to flaky tech

 

[CKS1955]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HLNNR6I/?tag=atomicindus08-20


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005Y0VTB0/?tag=atomicindus08-20

Jay

 

[themiller]

'cuz why?

User error.

Love my Nest. Don't ever touch the actual thermostat - do it all through the app.

 

[LMS]

So the nest in my shop crapped out after a few months - looks like battery is bad. I spent hour or so today with nest support (and the person was pretty good). They are sending me a replacement.

The one in my house has been flawless for years, but feeling like less of a fanboy right now....

 

[LS6 Tommy]

So the nest in my shop crapped out after a few months - looks like battery is bad. I spent hour or so today with nest support (and the person was pretty good). They are sending me a replacement.

The one in my house has been flawless for years, but feeling like less of a fanboy right now....

I wouldn't rip on the brand just because of a battery failure.

Tommy

 

[Denwood]

For a Wi-Fi enabled thermostat, it’s better to use one with a dedicated c wire. “Powerstealing” thermostats like Nest can cause issues with control boards by rapidly cycling power on/off to charge their batteries. The other issue is that a battery failure disables the stat. That’s another reason I use the Ecobees in commercial settings....

 

[DaveIdaho]

Hey you guys who use the ecobee- question to ya - does it allow for setting up without the “learning” mode? I want it to operate like a basic stat, I like the look and want the ability to use remotely via iPhone app.

Be using them for multi zone radiant system.

Thanks in advance [emoji848]