Smart Thermostat

The Sandbox Software/Technology
1

Is it worth it to get a “Smart Thermostat”?

I have a programmable thermostat right now &, imo, it’s going to do the job not just “good” but “good enough”. Sure, a ST might do a bit of a better job, but will I recoup the price I pay in savings & utility?

If your answer is “Oh, you betcha’ you will. Young man, you march right on down to Home Depot and you pick yourself up one right this very minute!” then, how about you also give me a recommendation on which one to buy? Here are my fabulous choices where I can use my $75 rebate coupon:

choices

Brand,Name,Model
Alarm.com,B36-T10,2325102
Alarm.com,ADC-T3000,2333422
Alarm.com,ADC-T40K-HD,2388600
American Standard,ACONT824AS52DB,2337840
Braeburn,7320,2321952
Braeburn,7205,2321953
Braeburn,7300,2321954
Braeburn,7305,2323268
Bryant,T6-WEM01-A,2295128
Carrier,TP-WEM01-A,2295129
Ecobee,EB-STATE3***-##,2295125
Ecobee,EB-STATE3LT***-##,2295127
Ecobee,EB-STATE4***-##,2295130
Ecobee,EB-STATE5*,2334863
Ecobee,EB-STATE6*,2393822
Ecobee,EB-STATE6L*,2393823
EcoFactor,simple S100 B,2295064
Emerson,Sensi 1F87U-42WF,2328478
Emerson,Sensi 1F95U-42WF,2328479
Emerson,Sensi 1F87U-42WFC,2406336
Emerson,ST55,2406365
Emerson Sensi,Sensi 1F95U-42WFB,2340774
Emerson Sensi,ST75,2340775
Emerson Sensi,ST75W,2340776
Emerson Sensi,ST75S,2380652
Emerson Sensi,ST75SU,2380653
Emerson Sensi,1F95U-42WFS,2380654
Emerson Sensi,ST76W,2398136
Google Nest,T3###,2350650
Google Nest,T4###,2350653
Google Nest,GA0####-,2369005
Greenlite,G2,2346553
Greenlite,AIRZ,2354245
Honeywell,TH8321R*,2318832
Honeywell,RCHT910WF***,2333888
Honeywell,THXWF***,2333898
Honeywell,TH8321WF****,2344252
Honeywell,TH9320WF****,2344253
Honeywell,THX9421R****,2344254
Honeywell,TH6320WF2***,2344267
Honeywell,RCHT8610WF****,2344268
Honeywell,T6 Pro Wi-Fi,2344269
Honeywell,TH8732WFH****,2344270
Honeywell,RTH9580WF****,2344428
Honeywell,S6ED3R,2384689
Honeywell,RTH6580,2338680
Honeywell,RTH9585WF****,2342332
Honeywell,TH8110R****,2342333
Honeywell,TH8320R****,2344250
Honeywell,TH8321R***,2344251
IEC,E055-71520325,2360104
IEC,E055-71520330,2360105
Lennox,iComfort M30,2365403
Pro1,L47-696,2383694
Pro1,L48-188,2396765
Pro1,T701i,2396766
Pro1,L50-991,2396767
Pro1,T721i,2396768
Pro1,T855iSH,2383692
Pro1,CT855iSH,2383693
PROSTAT,PRS7325WF,2326497
Trane,TCONT824AS52DB,2336674
Venstar,T4###,2356695
Venstar,T8###,2357614
Venstar,T2###,2328690
Venstar,T7###,2328691
Venstar,T3###,2356694
Vine,TJ-225B,2405361
Vive,TP-S-701i,2404153
Vive,TP-S-721i,2404154
Vive,TP-S-855iCRH,2404155
Zen Thermostat,ZEN-02,2358670
Zen Thermostat,ZEN-01,2358671

I read this article from the wsj & their top pick was the Ecobee EB-STATE6-01 for ~$240. The Google Nest T3017US was the runner up for ~$199.

I could order it from there or go pick one up at Home Depot. At the store, they also have a $130 version which I think I’ll regret but the price is right-er.

FWIW, we have iphones & an amazon prime account. (The prime account will continue as long as we get that sweet student discount…at least four more years.)

Your thoughts/advice?

P.S., am I going to kill myself installing this thing?

2

We used to have a smart thermostat, our electric company gave us a free one, so it was lower grade, but I honestly loved it because I could change the settings from my phone (in bed!) and that alone made it worthwhile. My husband installed it. He’s a handy fellow, but no electrician by any means.

Our state made it illegal for our electric company to do whatever they were doing with the data (I think we technically gave them permission to reduce our air conditioning usage in grid overload situations), so the thermostat stopped working with our smart phone, since the thermostat was linked to another electricity-reading device, and it became just another thermostat.

I’d like to get another one. It was nice to have when it was free, but like you, I’m not going to pay a couple hundred dollars for one just to be able to use it through my phone.

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3

That analysis is not worth the time, assuming your time is worth some money. Save it for $1000+ purchases with long-time use, or ones that are easier to estimate.

Not sure what your “utility” is here. Turn it (your current one) off when you leave. Turn it on when you return.
Is the disutility of having to wear a sweater for an hour (or nothing, in the summer) that much of a cost?
A Smart one will allow you to talk to it, mayhaps, or use your phone instead. And, allow China to monitor it with Jewish Space Lasers. Think about that and do your own research!

4

Hence, this thread.

5

I’ve looked into them, but they come with three wires and my current (heh) thermostat has only two wires. Not sure where the third one is or where it goes.

6

I read something about a C wire and how if you don’t have it, it takes longer for the thing to charge or something.

7

I think the third one is for air conditioning. IIRC. I’ve installed three wire thermostats in two wire systems before, pretty sure.

And right there is why I don’t have a smart thermostat, or a smart anything. Immediately someone else has access to my data and electronics inside my house. People do bad things with this, and others just go out of business leaving you with a non-fucntional brick.

I’m installing a home security system in the next few weeks, and similiarly, it’ll be hosted in my house, not in the cloud or on someone else’s computer. We will have an app, but the apps on our phone connect to the computer in my house, not on someone else’s computer. For all those reasons.

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8

I have a Honeywell T5 (actually 2 of them since dual zone). It does what I want it to do - allow easy programming and the ability to turn things on/off from a smart phone anywhere. It has a “smarter” geofencing feature that I don’t use as it doesn’t make sense to tie functionality to a single person in household.

It is nice to be able to control things once you leave the house, especially useful when going out of town and you forget to adjust things before you leave.

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9

We have low end Nest thermostats. They’re great for us. Automatically adjusts when we’re away from the house (based on phone location) to save on energy expense. Can control remotely via app too.

Nest had an easy to follow diagnostic to see if your current system has wiring compatible with the Nest.

Pro tip: If you install yourself, be sure to turn off power to both the AC and the heat at the breaker/fuse box before installing. No real shock hazard afaik but you might blow a fuse in the HVAC system if you don’t kill all the power to it before installing. I failed to do so and turned a 30 minute task into a multi-hour project trying to figure out what had gone wrong (I’d flipped the AC breaker but not the heat breaker). A quick trip to the auto parts store for replacement fuses fixed the problem.

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10

This was my problem when I looked into them. Don’t they require you to be 5 miles away before they turn themselves down?

My office is less than 5 miles from the house, so I think a Nest would increase my usage / expense if it refused to decrease the heat / AC while I was at work.

11

When we replaced our central AC unit a few years ago, we went with a smart thermostat.

We made the change at that time because I wanted to go with an Ecobee, and I figured I’d leave the question of whether or not I needed a C wire added to the professionals. (I did, and they took care of it.)

The Ecobee died a couple of months ago, and a simple replacement didn’t work, so I downgraded to a Nest. In retrospect, I should have checked whether the Ecobee’s mount had shorted out.

Ignoring the great thermostat fiasco of 2022, I liked the Ecobee more than the Nest.

Having a smart thermostat is arguably overkill for my household needs. That being said, the two things I really liked about the Ecobee was the ability to schedule vacation programs in advance (e.g. "from 10am on 15 February until 6pm on 19 February, use these alternate settings that will save energy, but I would find uncomfortable if I were in the house), and the ability to prevent the A/C from being commanded on when the outdoor temperature is below a certain point. (My wife always complains about being too hot but refuses to allow the windows to be opened due to noise and arachnophobia. In the days of dumb thermostats, she’d freeze the compressor a few times every year.)

The Ecobee required programming, although it wasn’t too onerous to do.

The Nest is somewhat different. While you can program it, it attempts to learn your schedule and it will auto-create a schedule for you. Whereas the Ecobee was easy to work with from the thermostat itself, I find it easier to adjust the Nest from an app. Also, Nest apparently has some seasonal logic, where it will invite you to let it try to train you on more economical settings.

Instead of pre-programming vacation periods, Nest can attempt to guess when the house is empty based on motion sensing and smartphone app location sensing; if it thinks no one is home, it can drop to “away” programming. I’m not certain how well the detection-by-smartphone works yet (I suspect you need all geo-tracked users to occasionally use the app, so the app retains location-detection permission on their phones), and I’ll probably be annoyed that the A/C or heat doesn’t kick on until I get home from a trip. But those are first world problems.

Ecobee requires a C wire. Nest claims that it doesn’t, but comments in the Nest subreddit suggest that several people have issues keeping the Nest powered without the C wire.

Both Ecobee and Nest have the ability to interface with some utility companies, opening the door to possible discounts in return for granting them permission to limit or disable your HVAC in times of high power demand. That is not a feature I’m interested in using (see my earlier comment about my wife always believing it’s too hot in the house).

Both devices also support optional add-on sensors that pair with the thermostat and open the door to letting the thermostat react to temperatures in other rooms. The Ecobee is somewhat more flexible in that regard, supporting pre-programming which sensors are read at different times of day. This comes in handy when (for example) you have a bedroom that runs warmer/cooler than the room where the thermostat is installed, or if your thermostat is too close to your TV and your always-hot wife doesn’t consider the implications when reading the thermostat.

Is all this worth it? That depends. Because of my wife’s temperature preferences, etc. I require the “smart” aspect to guard against equipment damage. Beyond that…it’s nice to be able to command the thermostat via voice assistant or play with the settings from your phone. Being able to put the thermostat into “away” or “vacation” mode either automatically or via programming is also nice. Whether it’s nice enough to justify the expense of a new thermostat and the hassle of installation is a matter of personal preference.

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12

China goes to war with US. Everyone’s smart thermostat has a chinese chip in them. China turns off every thermostat to 0 and bricks them. Now all of the northern US has no heat…for days. Or they brick your furnace.
Probably not going to happen, but there’s a million different catastrophe’s that can happen when you’re thermostat is on a public network. And anyone who’s been alive in the last 5 years, including actuaries, should be well aware that these unlikely but catastrophic events not only can happen, but do happen.
It’s hard to minimize the risk of stuff in your house being connected to the internet. We really only have the choice of dismissing it, or eliminating it. I eliminate it by taking it off the network. I suspect most people don’t even make the decision, they don’t even think it through. All benefits, and ignore the drawbacks.

Anyone else remember when the entire internet went offline for like a week? What was that, like 20 years ago? The AO was online though (I got lucky with that one).

13

Wow… no, I don’t remember that! But you’re making me feel better about having a “dumb” house.

14

I think it was only in Canada, or parts therein.

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15

I have a basement and a gas fireplace, so I can mitigate the risk of my thermostats turning into bricks.

I think I have the old $20 manual thermostats in a drawer somewhere in case the new ones stop working.

16

The thermostat I have says I can set a radius for the geofencing feature. I think it would be better just to schedule a temp setting during work hours if you want the temp to be fully adjusted by the time you get home.

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17

Nope, it was the whole eastern seaboard of the US. the whole power grid is interconnected, it went down and took us all offline.
Fortunately where I am we were only down for like a dozen hours. But there were spots in the US offline for a week, and lots of places offline for many days.

And again when Hurricane Katrina went through - I remember blogs from some wild man in New Orleans keeping his servers online as the floodwater came up in his building.

Maybe hasn’t happened on the west coast yet. But, fires, earthquakes, etc.

18

Nest makes the installation really easy. Instructions really clear.

And it really elevates your space.

19

I wish more people would start using VLANs with their home networks. I have separate virtual networks for (Windows/Mac/Android/iOS devices receiving regular updates) vs (Internet-connected gadgets) vs (Networked gadgets that don’t need to talk outside) vs (Guests’ devices), and firewalls set between the networks as appropriate.

It doesn’t completely eliminate the threat of a hostile party abusing security weaknesses with my gadgets, but it should contain the damage.

And hell, if someone decided to play games with my thermostat, I know how to turn heat and AC on/off manually. It’s not as convenient as telling Alexa to do it…but it can be done.

No. I remember when 9/11 caused havoc in network routing, and I remember the big outage in Canada in the last couple of years. I do remember major internet providers having a few days of issues, but (knock wood) that hasn’t affected me…and I prepare for the possibility of a provider-specific issue by being able to switch between wired and cellular.

My household gadgets would survive an internet outage; they’d just mostly become dumb during the outage.

The risk of outside parties playing with my gadgets, however… While the threats can be contained somewhat, it boils down to whether you’re willing to accept the security risk as a cost of the convenience, and that’s something that each household has to decide for themselves.

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20

Google did a great job with their installation instructions for Nest.

Ecobee’s instructions aren’t bad either, but they aren’t as good as Google’s (and suffer from the C wire requirement).

However, I think Ecobee is a nicer-looking device and has a better interface than Nest.

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