Smart thermostats: Nest or Ecobee3

@carl669 I thought I saw that somewhere before, thanks! Do you own one?

@luvche21 i do, but only one. and, we only have heating as well. i got it for free. i looked back at old bills for the winter months, prior to when i got the nest. it looks like the nest has saved me anywhere from $5-10 per month. so, free nest + $5-10/month = profit!!

@djslack what automation capabilities does the ecobee not do?

@luvche21 I didn’t look into it a year or so ago, I only wanted to solve a temperature problem. I see the new version supports homekit and alexa, so im thinking there’s not much it doesn’t do.

@cinoclav nope

@cinoclav

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@DMlivezey @luvche21 The point of my asking is there is a minor concern with ‘learning’ thermostats. For those that have pets that roam the house, if you use your thermostat’s ‘away’ setting, it may cool/heat the house to an uncomfortable temperature for your pet. Particularly if it’s not in the room where a sensor may be and the thermostat doesn’t know your pet is there.

As for me, I just bought a Lux Geo. I work days, my gf works nights so there’s typically someone home most of the time. We don’t need a thermostat to learn, I just wanted one I could control via wifi or remotely. Plus I liked the looks of it and it can run on batteries, 24v, or micro usb.

@sligett I haven’t looked much into anything but the 2 mentioned above, but will look into this one, thanks!

@curtise well, I pulled the trigger and bought 2 ecobee3’s tonight! Looking forward to setting them up! I doubt I’ll set them up until August when our house is built. After the rebate, $100 each isn’t too bad!

Any favorite ways to use it (settings, etc) that you would recommend using right off the bat?

@luvche21 Basically, it just works out of the box… I use the home , away , and sleep settings, and I also created a morningrise setting which, like my sleep setting, only cares about the sensor in my bedroom, but warms the temperature a few degrees after the cooler night to help me wake up naturally.
I turned off the Enable/Disable based on sensor occupancy, as I found it somewhat unreliable and slow to change, and instead set the ecobee schedule based on my usual patterns - so days when I am usually out a bit later, I have it set to home around 10pm, whereas other evenings I have it set to home around 7:30.
I have a modern Apple TV and the iPhone , so I use Homekit to set a geofence. Now, whenever I leave the house, my ecobee automagically is set to away mode, and when I return, it resumes my schedule. On particularly hot or cold days, I tell Siri I’m home as I’m leaving the office so that the ecobee has extra time to get the temperature back to where I want it, rather than wait till I get home to start heating/cooling.
Oh, another thing I love is that I set it to have the fan go at least 5 minutes of every hour, whether or not the heat/cool comes on. This ensures a better distribution of heat through my house, and also keeps the air cleaner.

@RedOak Microsoft?

@thismyusername good one - if anything, they might hang on to things too long. And they don’t spend nearly much money doing it as the other monolith.

@trisk That sounds really hard! …for me at least…

With the rebate, I only spent $100 each, so it didn’t end up being too much more than yours after all, which is especially appealing since I’m not sure if I could have pulled that off without learning a lot more than I already do.

@luvche21 So did you go with the Ecobees?

@djslack Yeah, shoulda mentioned that - ended up going with the ecobees. They’ll work well with the two heating/cooling zones (which was my biggest hold up.

@djslack one thing I didn’t think of right off was being able to control temperature based on bedrooms at night, that will be nice. I’ll only have 1 sensor for each, so hopefully that will be enough for now.

@luvche21 2 packs of sensors are like $60 on amazon IIRC. You can always add them on later. I think the sensors track whether someone is in the room so they know which parts of the house matter at any time.

I know it will be a little while before you get in the new place but share your thoughts once you get them working!

@luvche21 if we hadn’t gone “traditional”/“safe” (The Honeywell 9500(?)) we would have gone with the Ecobee. Chickened out due to being burned too many times by dead newish companies and the resulting dead support.

@djslack Yes, right around that price point. I’ll write something up as long as I remember (…lots going on between now and then with a new baby and moving and all, so I might very well forget).

@RedOak That was another reason why I was hesitant too, although I’ve never been burned by newer companies. Well, if they end up going under after a few years, I’ll still be able to use them as a ‘dumb’ thermostat.

@luvche21 You did get a great net deal. At that net price we would have gone Ecobee. I have to check our local utility since I believe we might be eligible for a rebate from them.

@ACraigL Looks nice, but my gas company doesn’t offer a rebate on that one