when I first got a smart thermostat, I thought it would be so easy to save money on my bills while
always having the air be the perfect temperature. But the truth is it's taken me years of trial
and error to figure it all out. I'll show you how I use sensors data and automations across
three zones in my home, to live more comfortably and save money even in Arizona. Starting out I
was under the impression that I did not have to do much to get my smart thermostat dialed in.
It would learn my schedule, automatically adjust for peak pricing with my power company,
and not run my AC when I'm away from home. Technically yes, a Nest thermostat can do that.
But there are some trade-offs. When you allow the smart thermostat to make all the decisions
by itself, it might not always be what you want. Kind of like parenting. Hey Reed what
do you think we should have for dinner? Um let's let the kids decide tonight! Uh really?
I learned the hard way that maybe I shouldn't trust the smart thermostat's decision making.
I would come home and the air would be running or not running when it should be,
and it was frustrating. Now I realized I prefer more customization to get things
running just the way I like, with things I use every day like the temperature swings, sensors,
and more data to make adjustments. That's why I ended up going with Ecobee in our home. It's
not perfect by any means, but it's a great fit for what I need in my house. We have two AC units that
are divided into three zones. That means we have three thermostats in our home, one for each zone.
I always wondered how smart thermostats worked with multiple zones, and turns out it's pretty
simple from a user's perspective. Each thermostat works independently from each other. And obviously
there's a lot more going on behind the scenes with the HVAC system, but the thermostat works the same
whether you're using multiple zones or just one. In our previous house we just had one zone, so I
already had bought the latest Ecobee thermostat with voice control. I needed to buy two more,
and I decided to buy the Ecobee lite thermostats to save money. Turns out they were missing a big
feature I didn't realize when I was buying them: an occupancy sensor! Let me explain why that may
or may not be that big of a deal. Originally I thought a lot of sensors all over would make a
huge difference. I bought extra Ecobee sensors because they can adjust the AC based on the
temperature of the room you are in. They can even put your system into away or home mode,
using motion. The reality is, for me it's not as useful as I thought it would be, mainly because
occupancy detection is not perfect. For example, when I'm using Follow Me so it can detect which
room I'm in, if I'm sitting still in a room, it just stops using that sensor. For me it makes more
sense to disable the Follow Me from room to room, and just average the temperature of the sensors
in that zone. So going back to the Ecobee Lite that does not have an occupancy sensor built in,
personally I don't use it, but if you think you will, then I would consider the more expensive
Ecobee with one built in. I really like the extra temperature data from the sensors though.
This is something I did not expect to like so much when I first started, or that it would even help
me save money. Ecobee has detailed graphs to show me when my system is running and what the sensors
are reading. Home Assistant can also provide this data as well. This comes in handy all the time,
and just the other night I noticed that my AC was running more than normal, even when it
wasn't that hot outside. I looked at the graph and realized the temperature sensor was extra hot in
the room where I was watching a movie. That was causing the air to run more than it needed to,
so now I can just open up the curtains for more airflow, and it's way better!
One thing I expected to be simple was to save money by running my air conditioning less often.
In real life, it actually took some thought to set it up just right. If all i had to do was have my
thermostat go into away mode using geofencing, that would be easy. Then it wouldn't run the
air at all while we're gone since no one is home. Instead I had to set up a few automations to run
everything exactly how I want them to. And they're really useful automations, but before I show you
what they are, let me explain what they're doing. To save money, we're on a time of use plan with
our power company. That means our electricity is more expensive for three hours of the day,
but less expensive for the other 21 hours. You can save a lot of money this way and all you have to
do is not run your AC during the peak pricing time. So you pre-cool or pre-heat your home an
hour or two before the pricing hike kicks in, that way you stay comfortable in your house when the
air is not running. If you do this, make sure to turn off smart recovery so the AC doesn't turn on
before it's scheduled to. Your smart thermostat like Ecobee can actually do all this for you.
Enable time of use and it will pre-cool your home and run the air less during peak pricing,
based on your utility company's plan. Personally I prefer to skip this option and schedule
everything myself instead, because running the AC during these peak pricing times can be costly,
and I don't want the system to make these decisions that could actually cost me money.
That's why using the smart thermostats geofencing for away mode is not a good option for me. Because
if everyone is away when the system is supposed to pre-cool it won't happen, since away mode is
prioritized over any other schedule. And that's where the automations come in. The system will go
into away mode when everyone is gone as you would expect. But it will always pre-cool even if no one
is home that way the house doesn't get too hot during peak pricing hours, which would turn on
the AC and cost me a lot of money. I'm using Home Assistant for these automations since I can use my
phone's wi-fi for geofencing, plus I can run the action to resume my ecobee schedules. The other
thing I do to save money is change two of the zone temperatures on a schedule. During the day,
I have our master bedroom zone running as little as possible. Then at night it runs normally since
we're in there, and the zone for the main area switches to run less. That's a lot more simple to
set up. As you can see a smart thermostat can be simple or complicated, depending on what you do.
If you're trying to save a lot of money and have everything run smoothly, it can take some work.
It's more set up than I originally thought, but for me it's worth it. Are you sure that Luna's
gonna be okay in there? It's probably gonna get kind of hot! Oh don't worry i took care of it...