Controlling temp in 2 rooms

Other Devices & Integrations Climate Control & Temperature Sensors
#1

Hi all,

I’m looking for the best way to control the temperature in 2 parts of my home. I just bought the Lowe’s Iris thermostat and it works great, but I live in a 2 story town house and it gets too hot upstairs in the bedroom. At my previous apartment I had a WalMart thermostat (non z-wave) that had a remote sensor that we could stick in the bedroom and it was great. Here are a couple options that I’ve thought of and I wanted the communities opinion on whether they would work and which is preferable.

  1. Get a second thermostat and put it in the bedroom. It wouldn’t be physically wired to the HVAC, so it would be a “logical” thermost. I would imagine it shouldn’t be too hard to tie them together. Programming doesn’t scare me, and I am starting to learn PLEG, so if I need to do “more than basic” configuration that’s fine with me.

  2. Just get a temperature sensor. With that I could use the control panel with PLEG to tell the thermostat which temperature to go by.

My girlfriend would like to have something in the bedroom that she can set the temperature with (ie. another thermostat or something), but if that’s significantly more complicated a temp sensor would be fine for now.

Any insights? Thanks!

#2

If you want to control the setpoint from the second thermostat, then it seems obvious that a second thermostat makes more sense than just a sensor. You would almost certainly need to do some programming to change the primary thermostat based on settings and sensors of the secondary. A WIFI thermostat with a public API and Vera plug-in gives you more options for control. Although they have their issues, some Radio Thermostat and related brands have a “Thermostat Remote Temperature” option which allows it to be controlled by a remote temperature sensor.

#3

I have a multi-story townhome, and getting the temperature right was crazy - until I installed a zone system. Essentially if all ducts meet at the main unit, and if you have enough extra space, a zone system can be added to an existing heating/AC system. As I remember it cost about $3,000 (in my case I did as part of $10K system replacement)…

It made a HUGE improvement. Bedroom previously was always too hot or too cold, and now it all works like one would think it should.

I know you want a simpler solution - and I guess you can setup a virtual thermostat to control the heating and cooling of a Z-Wave thermostat, but there will be a lot of wasted electricity. Only a zone system can direct the right amount of heating and cooling to each floor…

#4

Thank you both for your replies.

I am just renting my townhouse, so spending a bunch of money will have to wait until I live somewhere that I own. I appreciate your insight, though, it’s definitely food for thought down the road. For now I will just implement some sort of logical z-wave environment. Not perfect, but it’s better than nothing at all.