Control for TH8320ZW1007/U Honeywell Thermostat

I have TH8320ZW1007/U Honeywell Thermostat installed and connected via Z-Wave Vera 2. The thermostat control appears in my UI but does not have the Em Heat (Emergency Heat) control. It only shows Off /Auto / Cool / Heat.

I have a heat pump with electric aux heat. Because this thermostat does not have an outdoor sensor like the non z-wave version I replaced, I am unable to get the control to lockout the compressor automatically and switch to emergency heat. I was thinking that I could do this through Vera by using an external z-wave temperature sensor but I need the control to appear in the UI. Does anyone know how to get this to show?

@ash789

Sorry that I’m not responding to help,

I have the Honeywell VisionPro TH8000 Series Non-Zwave that I’ve been agonizing over replacing it with the TH8320ZW that you have. The only reason I haven’t, is that my kids will miss the Outside Temperature reading on the display. (I guess I could put a wireless display next to the Honeywell, & buy a wireless sensor, but that’s overkill IMO)

My heat pump system sounds just like yours with the electric boost “Aux Heat On” setting. I see this on the display everytime I boost the temperature by more than 4 or 5 degrees at once.

I guess if this feature does not work on the Zwave version, it’s another reason NOT to change my thermostat.

I hope you find your answer.

Chris

http://www.smarthome.com/300673/Honeywell-TH8320ZW1007-U-Z-Wave-Touchscreen-Thermostat-with-Wiresaver/p.aspx

This thermostat is compatible with a broad range of 24-volt heating and air conditioning systems, including both single-stage and multi-stage heating and cooling systems, heat pumps with and without auxiliary (back-up) heat, gas fireplaces, steam or gravity, hot water, and heating only or cooling only systems. It is not compatible with electric baseboard heat (120-240 Volts) or 750 millivolt systems.

Should do the job. I am researching it for my heat pump with gas backup.

After re-reading the original post, I now realize that his question is about the the UI & not the wiring/installation/features of the Honeywell unit. So I’m only back to my original misgivings about the lack of terminal for the external temp sensor that the Vision PRO has.

Thanks for the clarification & sorry to Ash789 for cluttering up his thread.

Chris

Thanks ChrisTheC. The backstory is that when our furnace installer swapped out our Honeywell with the z-wave model, he disabled the electric back-up heat unit in the furnace (I have a heat pump outside but it loses efficiency in extremely cold weather). When we discovered that our heat pump was running constantly during very cold temperatures, we found that the electric back up (emergency heat) - green wire - was not hooked up and the breakers in the furnace for the electric unit were turned off. When we had another guy come out to hook it up, he said that every time the heat goes on, both the outdoor heat pump unit AND the electric back up will turn on each and every time the heat runs. He said that there is no fail over like the non-z-wave unit which used to turn on emergency heat as a booster when it got too cold out but not be used all the time. He said it is because of the missing outdoor temp sensor.

I really don’t understand what the EM Heat setting will do with this model which is why I was trying to access it. If anyone can help me understand how to make the electric heat be a fail over for the heat pump ( i.e. turn on only when the heat pump can?t operate efficiently in the extreme cold), I’m all ears. It serves no purpose for them both to turn on all the time.

Ash

With a heatpump and aux heat… The aux heat is usually like a second stage and may only kick in if the setpoint temp is more than 4 deg higher then the actual heat. The heat pump usually engages with 1 degree diff. When emergency heat is enabled … The heat pump should not come on on the aux heat behaves as the first stage.

[quote=“ash789, post:5, topic:178076”]Thanks ChrisTheC. The backstory is that when our furnace installer swapped out our Honeywell with the z-wave model, he disabled the electric back-up heat unit in the furnace (I have a heat pump outside but it loses efficiency in extremely cold weather). When we discovered that our heat pump was running constantly during very cold temperatures, we found that the electric back up (emergency heat) - green wire - was not hooked up and the breakers in the furnace for the electric unit were turned off. When we had another guy come out to hook it up, he said that every time the heat goes on, both the outdoor heat pump unit AND the electric back up will turn on each and every time the heat runs. He said that there is no fail over like the non-z-wave unit which used to turn on emergency heat as a booster when it got too cold out but not be used all the time. He said it is because of the missing outdoor temp sensor.

I really don’t understand what the EM Heat setting will do with this model which is why I was trying to access it. If anyone can help me understand how to make the electric heat be a fail over for the heat pump ( i.e. turn on only when the heat pump can?t operate efficiently in the extreme cold), I’m all ears. It serves no purpose for them both to turn on all the time.

Ash[/quote]

I am in exactly the same boat. The way our HVAC guy explained it to me (after he came by to hook up the green wire, just like your case) is that we are “2 Heat / 1 Cool”. In the mild months and in winters like 2012, the heat pump can keep up and can use aux heat (heat pump plus electric furnace) if it needs to make a major correction as explained above. However now that it is 10-15 and below at night, the thermostat will need to occasionally be switched over to Em Heat to keep up. That’s all electric furnace, like blowing a fan over a toaster. :slight_smile: In other words, $$$$$$. In fact the thermostat has a little red flower shaped light that comes on to remind you that you need to flip back to heat mode as soon as you can.

There are two threads on this now.
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,6690.30.html

[quote=“fullauto, post:7, topic:178076”][quote=“ash789, post:5, topic:178076”]Thanks ChrisTheC. The backstory is that when our furnace installer swapped out our Honeywell with the z-wave model, he disabled the electric back-up heat unit in the furnace (I have a heat pump outside but it loses efficiency in extremely cold weather). When we discovered that our heat pump was running constantly during very cold temperatures, we found that the electric back up (emergency heat) - green wire - was not hooked up and the breakers in the furnace for the electric unit were turned off. When we had another guy come out to hook it up, he said that every time the heat goes on, both the outdoor heat pump unit AND the electric back up will turn on each and every time the heat runs. He said that there is no fail over like the non-z-wave unit which used to turn on emergency heat as a booster when it got too cold out but not be used all the time. He said it is because of the missing outdoor temp sensor.

I really don’t understand what the EM Heat setting will do with this model which is why I was trying to access it. If anyone can help me understand how to make the electric heat be a fail over for the heat pump ( i.e. turn on only when the heat pump can?t operate efficiently in the extreme cold), I’m all ears. It serves no purpose for them both to turn on all the time.

Ash[/quote]

I am in exactly the same boat. The way our HVAC guy explained it to me (after he came by to hook up the green wire, just like your case) is that we are “2 Heat / 1 Cool”. In the mild months and in winters like 2012, the heat pump can keep up and can use aux heat (heat pump plus electric furnace) if it needs to make a major correction as explained above. However now that it is 10-15 and below at night, the thermostat will need to occasionally be switched over to Em Heat to keep up. That’s all electric furnace, like blowing a fan over a toaster. :slight_smile: In other words, $$$$$$. In fact the thermostat has a little red flower shaped light that comes on to remind you that you need to flip back to heat mode as soon as you can.

There are two threads on this now.
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,6690.30.html[/quote]

I can’t find ANY resources after many hours of searching to help me figure out if my Trane dual fuel system (heat pumps + gas furnace) is 2 heat/1 cool or 3 heat/2 cool. Even with model numbers, there is nothing out there.

Ash789, the Honeywell …1007 is configureable to many different configurations. The manual is available on-line thru honeywell.com or Amazon. Every heat pump system uses an aux heat of some kind to supplement during cold weather. The outside temp monitor is connected to my air handler “brain” that determines how much demand is required in the house. The Honeywell thermostat does not care what it is, electric or gas, 1,2 or 3 stages, once configured. The thermostat is simply reporting cool on/off or heat on/off and a little or a lot to the air handler based on the difference between ambient and set temp. If I change the thermostat more than 2 degrees, I go to “emergency” heat on my heat pump which raises the speeds on the inside & outside units and 4 degrees adds in the electric heat coils (stage 3). Last year, the heat pump failed and I heated my vacation house on emergency heat all winter, quite by accident and unknown to me. I was 600 miles away, monitoring temperature, the power bill was twice the year before. The …1007 thermostat reports emergency heat locally on the display, but the Vera3 plugin does not…you cannot tell on the Vera3 html control page what stage of heat or cooling the house is in. Probably multi-stage heat/cooling was not a design requirement when the plugin was written. In summary, just about everybody on the thread is correct, including your techs…your air handler (air unit in the house) is the ultimate controller of the house temperature in conjunction with the thermostat and outside temp monitor if it has one.
Mine is built into the outside condenser. (new, this spring after the failure :-[)

I can't find ANY resources after many hours of searching to help me figure out if my Trane dual fuel system (heat pumps + gas furnace) is 2 heat/1 cool or 3 heat/2 cool. Even with model numbers, there is nothing out there.

If you have two stage heat pump … you start with two stage Heat and two Stage cool.
If it’s a single stage heat pump you start out with 1 Heat and 1 cool.

Add in extra stages for secondary heating, typically one, occasionally two. Gas is usually one extra stage.

In your case you could have 2-Cool/3-Heat (For a dual stage heat pump) or 1-Cool/2-Heat (For a single stage heat-pump).

The # of stages engaged is dependent on the difference between ambient temperature and the set point setting.
i.e. Delta 1 deg - 1st Stage heat (Heat Pump Stage 1)
Delta 2 deg - 2nd Stage heat (Heat Pump Stage 2)
Delta 3 deg - 3rd Stage heat (Aux Heat)

With Emergency heat setting
Delta 1 deg - 3rd Stage heat (Aux Heat)

This 1 deg/stage is adjustable in your thermostat.

Some thermostats will turn on Emergency Heat automatically when the outside temp is to cold to operate the heat pump.

You should verify that your system has a lockout for extreme cold … or you will burn out your compressor when it tries to compress
liquid refrigerant returning to the compressor instead of gas … and if you remember your physics … liquids do not compress well !
The compressor will fail!

Folks you should verify with your HVAC technician that your unit has a cold-weather lockout. It’s a simple Go/No Go outside thermostatic switch set around 40F. It can save you a lot of money!

You should verify that your system has a lockout for extreme cold … or you will burn out your compressor when it tries to compress
liquid refrigerant returning to the compressor instead of gas … and if you remember your physics … liquids do not compress well !
The compressor will fail!

Folks you should verify with your HVAC technician that your unit has a cold-weather lockout. It’s a simple Go/No Go outside thermostatic switch set around 40F. It can save you a lot of money!
[/quote]

I understand what you’re saying, but how does this affect the method we implement the tstat? Or are you saying make sure the Tstat has this feature?

I was able to finally verify my heat pumps are single stage. That is the setting(2 heat/1 cool) the Tstat powered up on even though the directions said it would default to something else. I’m sure it detects the wiring scheme to an extent.

EHeat mode on most thermostats will LOCKOUT the heat pump and replace the Aux heat as the first stage heating.
Some thermostats have an external temperature setting and will do this when the temp drops below some setpoint (near 40 deg F).
For those that do not you can change the thermostat manually to EHeat.

Those heat pumps that have good safety features built in, will do this for you automatically.
Actually they do not change the thermostat setting, they route the request for Stage1 heat (via the Heat Pump) to the Aux Heat device.

Even if you have this routing take place in the Heat Pump, if your thermostat supports it, it would be good to do it there. If the outside temperature setting failed on your outside unit, it could allow your Heat Pump to run below it’s designed operating limits.

Z-Wave thermostats to not have a way to set EHeat directly via the Vera UI.
You can have a scene called EHeat with the following LUA code.
luup.call_action(“urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:ZWaveNetwork1”, “SendData”, {Node=32, Data=“x40-1-4”}, 1)

Replace the 32 with the ZWave NodeID for your thermostat. You can get this from the Advanced Tab of the thermostat … it’s called altid

Then run this scene to set your thermostat into EHeat mode.
To automate this see:
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,22053.0.html

Richard, as always thanks for your invaluable inputs. The support you and others provide is tremendously appreciated. Do you have any advice for “getting more” out of the Z wave thermostats? At the present time, the functions seem to be fairly limited in what you can do with them, i. e. on, off, energy/normal mode, fan settings & notifications. I would like to understand if we can extract diagnostics such as run time, on/off cycles etc. Thanks.

You can detect when the Unit is actually on/off by putting a luup.variable_watch on the ModeState variable of the thermostat.
You could write some LUA that integrated the ON time, and cycles for each day. At the end of the day it could write the results to a file and
reset the statistics. You would want to save the running statistics and the last on time in a variable … so you would not loose the data when Vera restarted.

Any thoughts on using the Datamine plugin for monitoring?

I believe there is a programmable setting to lockout the emergency heat in the setup menu on the thermostat.

Wanted to touch base on both threads for this topic. MCV support implemented a firmware fix that allows me to switch to Aux mode.

The explanations in this thread have been very helpful though.

[quote=“RichardTSchaefer, post:12, topic:178076”]…

Z-Wave thermostats to not have a way to set EHeat directly via the Vera UI.
You can have a scene called EHeat with the following LUA code.
luup.call_action(“urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:ZWaveNetwork1”, “SendData”, {Node=32, Data=“x40-1-4”}, 1)

Replace the 32 with the ZWave NodeID for your thermostat. You can get this from the Advanced Tab of the thermostat … it’s called altid

Then run this scene to set your thermostat into EHeat mode.
To automate this see:
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,22053.0.html[/quote]

Richard, this works great!! I have been looking for this capability for some time. I understand that MCV has a firmware fix for this (http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,17858.msg157310.html#msg157310) and I have a ticket in to see if this is something I have to ask for, as I have not seen the fix appear. Maybe this is such a specific fix it is not integrated into the general release?

Anyway, my question is: can you provide the similar LUA code to return to normal heating mode so that I can set scenes to toggle back and forth based on outside temp?

Many thanks!

Hi Richard,

this

luup.call_action(“urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:ZWaveNetwork1”, “SendData”, {Node=32, Data=“x40-1-4”}, 1)
works great for my Honeywell thermostat. Thank you very much.

(and to answer FourLeaves, all I do in my case when I want

to return to normal heating mode
is to send the regular HEAT command to my thermostat and it stops the emergency-heat)

Richard, where/how did you find this “code” to send to the thermostat… my brother has a CT30G (now rebranded to CI300e) thermostat but this specific code does not work fro him (it does nothing) so I’m guessing that the code

“x40-1-4”
you provided works only for Honeywell TH8320ZW1007/U thermostats… is there a way I can find out what command needs to be sent to his thermostat to achieve the same Emergency-heat?

Thx
Claude

I just installed the WiFi version of the Honeywell Thermostat --TH8320WF1029–because I had the same situation described earlier in this thread–dual heat with no external fossil fuel temperature kit, so I had to rely on the thermostat to do the EHeat switchover. Unlike the ZWave version, this thermostat supports the external temperature sensor, so you don’t have to worry about manually switching to EHeat. When used with Vera’s Honeywell plugin, you can control the thermostat’s basic functions with Vera, but not the EHeat setting (you still need Richard’s code above). But you do have that control via Honeywell’s Cloud service, so it’s there if you need it.

For the record, I found the TH8320WF1029 to be virtually identical to the Lennox X4147 I replaced, and almost all of the settings can be directly copied across.