Hey guys... been gone for a while but re stacked the woodshed the other day and thought of y'all 
So here is the deal... We have been doing a bunch more updates around the house and I got to reading some about smart thermostats and it got me to thinking. So far I haven't jumped on the smart home craze at all but I think I could see a use for a smart T-stat.
The situation: House is single zone gas steam heat. Plus the woodstove.
And of course the T-stat (an older Honeywell 7day programmable) is in the stove room
The heat is not all that even to begin with (in spite of a lot of re balancing of the radiators, insulating mains and updating the main vents ) and when the stove is lit its even worse of course, the far rooms and second floor can run 5-10 degrees colder. Sometimes I will solve that by shutting down the radiator in the stove room when its lit and manually forcing the heat on for 30min to even it out.
Reading about smart thermostats I am thinking that something like the Ecobee3, with its remote sensors and intelligent motioning, integration with weather forecasts... may help this. Im thinking with sensors in the rooms that run colder it may learn to average and automatically modulate the central heat to supplement the stove better and keep things more even. This would be a big help with WAF of the stove which has always been low around here because she doesn't like the wide temp variation.
Im also thinking it could cut costs along the way by better managing setback when we are out etc.. And do cool things like set the heat low (55) while on vacation and remotely turn it back on before we get home.
Down the road I also think that with its ability to tie into smart home platforms and use things like IFTTT rules I could rig something up with smart outlets and implement central control of our old school window AC units - something we cant do at all today. That would be a BIG win to be able to schedule AC with setbacks, etc
Anyway just thinking out loud right now. Looking for some real world experiences......
So here is the deal... We have been doing a bunch more updates around the house and I got to reading some about smart thermostats and it got me to thinking. So far I haven't jumped on the smart home craze at all but I think I could see a use for a smart T-stat.
The situation: House is single zone gas steam heat. Plus the woodstove.
And of course the T-stat (an older Honeywell 7day programmable) is in the stove room
The heat is not all that even to begin with (in spite of a lot of re balancing of the radiators, insulating mains and updating the main vents ) and when the stove is lit its even worse of course, the far rooms and second floor can run 5-10 degrees colder. Sometimes I will solve that by shutting down the radiator in the stove room when its lit and manually forcing the heat on for 30min to even it out.
Reading about smart thermostats I am thinking that something like the Ecobee3, with its remote sensors and intelligent motioning, integration with weather forecasts... may help this. Im thinking with sensors in the rooms that run colder it may learn to average and automatically modulate the central heat to supplement the stove better and keep things more even. This would be a big help with WAF of the stove which has always been low around here because she doesn't like the wide temp variation.
Im also thinking it could cut costs along the way by better managing setback when we are out etc.. And do cool things like set the heat low (55) while on vacation and remotely turn it back on before we get home.
Down the road I also think that with its ability to tie into smart home platforms and use things like IFTTT rules I could rig something up with smart outlets and implement central control of our old school window AC units - something we cant do at all today. That would be a BIG win to be able to schedule AC with setbacks, etc
Anyway just thinking out loud right now. Looking for some real world experiences......
