Hey y’all it’s Rose and today we’re going to be taking a look at Ecobee3 generation
dos.
As you can tell, I’m not at home today.
I’m actually in Florida at a friend’s condo, completing an installation that I started
two months ago.
And there was a delay in the installation because setting up ecobee and getting it installed
was a real BEEP.
Basically, when I took down the old thermostat, the whole in the drywall was so big that there
was no way to anchor the screws and I don't know how to repair drywall so I had to bring
my dad down to help me get it hooked up and get everything repaired.
And after several trials and tribulations, we finally have it installed and it is working!
There are several features that make Ecobee a good choice for a vacation rental.
For starters, you can set a password to protect the thermostat’s settings.
That way, renters can’t bounce in and override your schedule and other high-level settings.
Second, you can set heat and cool point ranges.
Your renters won't be able to come in and turn down the temperature to 65 degrees before
heading out to the beach for the day.
On this thermostat, I’ve set the thresholds so that they can’t set the AC below 68 degrees
nor can they set the heat above 80.
As an added precaution, I’ve also added a SmartThings Multi-Sensor.
SmartThings is one of many smart home devices that can work with ecobee.
And I’ve added this sensor to monitor the back door.
My friend’s had a lot of problems with renters running the air with these doors open which
isn’t good for her HVAC system.
I’ve created a flow in Stringify to help with this problem.
The flow says that if the back door is open for more than 3 minutes, ecobee will shut
itself off and send an email.
I have a second flow setup to turn the AC back on when the door is closed.
And speaking of working with other devices, it also comes with one sensor.
Sensors detect a room’s occupancy and they also help measure temperature to make Ecobee
even more intelligent.
That way you're not just getting a reading from a hallway where nobody is, you can put
them in a bedroom and Ecobee will know if the temperature is right in the bedroom, if
the bedroom is occupied.
That way you're getting the right temperature in the right room.
Another feature I like for vacation rentals is the ability to set a hold action.
While you can set your schedule and enforce that with a passcode, you might want to allow
your renters to adjust the temperature according to their preference.
You can set a hold action to decide how these types of situations are handled.
For example, when they change the temperature you can decide if their desired temperature
should stay for a couple hours, 4 hours, until the next scheduled activity, or until they
manually change it again.
Or you can let your guest decide what should happen next right from the thermostat face
– which is how I’ve set this thermostat to behave.
While those are my favorite features specific to vacation homeowners, ecobee also has all
the basics, you can create a schedule, you can override your schedule, you can set your
desired temperature, you can monitor humidity levels.
And in fact, this is pretty handy in Florida.
As you can see here it's 60% humidity inside right now, my desired indoor temperature is
78 degrees, but ecobee has automatically lowered the indoor temperature to 75 to help lower
the indoor humidity.
And if you aren't in front of a computer it's no big deal because all of these features
you can control from the mobile app.
To be clear, you can control the basics from the mobile app.
One of the downsides of using this thermostat to manage a remote home is that you can’t
do everything from the web portal and you can do even less from the mobile app.
There are definitely advanced settings that can only be controlled from the thermostat
itself.
However, from the app you can make temperature adjustments, schedule adjustments, or you
can even put the thermostat into vacation mode when your property isn’t rented.
While we’ve only skimmed the service here, there are a lot of things that you can do
with ecobee.
In fact, the sheer amount of customization that you can do with the product makes the
initial process, setup process, kind of overwhelming.
But once you get through those hurdles you realize that all of the options and things
that it can do is really what makes it a great product.
If you have any questions about ecobee feel free to comment them below.
Also below you'll find some links and I put down there the article that I wrote about
all the products that I've installed in this Florida condo.
And also you can find links to purchase the products that we've talked about today.
So, thank y'all for spending time with me today.
I really appreciate it.
If this videos been helpful at all, I would be thankful for a thumbs up.
Otherwise, I will see y'all next time.
Thanks again.