Please vote in the poll above for your thermostat. Feel free to provide any feedback (good/bad/interesting) of your experience with the tstat. Thanks.
I’ve got the Wayne Dalton unit. It works OK but not great. It was a pain to install since it needs power and my installation didn’t have enough available wires. The telephone support folks were great, fast and knowledgeable.
My main complaints are twofold:
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Has too much hysteresis. Temperature seems to fluctuate ± 4 degrees (as noticed by the humans and as indicated on the thermostat display)
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Not as automation friendly as it should be. Lots of stuff that should be easy to control remotely isn’t.
I have the Wayne Dalton too, a chose this model after reading the forums here and finding out it does everything I need at a great price. So far the thermostat itself has performed flawlessly and I like how small it is. Since I flashed to .980 there seem to be a few bugs with with Vera, but I don’t think the thermostat is to blame at all. I also had a problem with not enough wires, but after reading the forum and opening up the FAU I could see that I had all of the wires at the furnace and at the wall thermostat somebody had pigtailed down to less wires and I was able to dig the cable out of the wall to get access to the extra wires.
All around great value, we need a thread like this for pan/tilt IP cameras w/ night vision (to catch the cat in my side yard)
I have the Wayne Dalton, works great for me and my only complaint is the way the cover clips on, i don’t find it very easy to put it back on at all, although thats probably user error!
I went with the Trane after reading about the flimsy case of the Dalton. Although it’s more expensive, it is a quality device that I’m glad I bought. It looks great, and has excellent quality parts, fit, and finish. It is like the Leviton devices compared to the flimsier Intermatic ones.
And @steveg, regarding its hysteresis (good word), this one is tighter than any I’ve had before. I love that it keeps the temp within a degree or so of the set temp.
Be interested in people’s view of real benefit beyond what a standard programmable thermostat offers for a typical homeowner that the ZWave alternative gives. I want to buy the Trane, but can’t get myself to spend the money just to gain limited access through Vera, and my home would require 3.
@Chimp - I use the WDTC-20’s and you can pick these up pretty cheap. They are extremely simplistic almost a electronic version of the old nob style T-Stats. With that being said there is the nicety of being able to access the T-Stat remotely. If I am gone for a week I turn the heat or AC off on the T-Stats so I can get on the net an turn them back on when I am an hour or so from home.
I too went with the Wayne-Dalton WDTC-20. Mine seems to be pretty well built and was found at a very reasonable price online.
This stat needs a “C” line (common 24 volt) from the furnace to the stat.
I called the TOLL FREE number listed in the manual and after a few minutes a lady answered and proceeded to supply me with a couple of easy, alternative methods to accomplish what I needed.
Great Customer Support from Wayne-Dalton! Oh…and did I mention that this was at 9:30 SUNDAY MORNING?
I’m there!!
Yeah the common was a pain in the ass. I ran a new line from each of my furnaces. The worst part was running down 2 stories to the master bedroom. My wife was real happy since I put my foot through the ceiling! LOL
I got lucky for my C line as I had a spare wire from the furnace (whew). So all I had to do was use a power supply from Radio Shack and off I went.
One thing that annoyed me was the lousy way the cover attached to the base. It was too hard to attach and if you messed up, there was no way to know until the battery went dead on you. Argg. I solved it by using two 8 inch lengths of quarter inch white velcro. Anchored in back by the screws and wrapped around the front, clasps the cover firmly and isn’t too bad to look at (my wife has yet to comment on it so I’ll take that as a “win”).
Can the person who voted for HAI Omnistat share their experience with it? How good the thermostat is itself and how well it works with Vera. Thanks in advance!
[quote=“Chimpware, post:6, topic:165385”]Be interested in people’s view of real benefit beyond what a standard programmable thermostat offers for a typical homeowner that the ZWave alternative gives. I want to buy the Trane, but can’t get myself to spend the money just to gain limited access through Vera, and my home would require 3.[/quote]Most (all?) standard programmable thermostats offer a program for M-F, and another for the weekend. With Vera and a Z-wave thermostat you can schedule different programs for each day of the week, and it should be less troublesome to change this programming when you have an unusual daily or weekly schedule (e.g. if you leave the house in the middle of the week for vacation or a business trip). And even if you fudge your programmable to work ok in this situation (i.e. tell the thermostat it’s Tuesday when it’s really Friday), you have to guess when you will be home if you want your house to be warm/cool at that point. With Vera and a Z-wave thermostat you can tell the home to heat or cool just before you arrive, even if you don’t know beforehand when you’ll be getting there.
In more routine situations, you can turn off the AC or heat when leaving the house at odd times. My wife is a teacher, and during the summer some days she is home all day, and some days she is out of the house all day or almost all day. I could have a “I’m leaving” button by the garage door that will turn off the AC (and the lights, TV, etc.) in the summer - either for a few hours or until another scene is activated.
I had the same thought, that maybe my old trusty programmable was good enough, especially when I saw the $150 price tag on the Schlage/Trane. Setting my normal schedule is much the same on Vera as on Old Trusty, and being able to read setpoints and actuals remotely isn’t that big a deal since I could infer them from a temp reading on one of my HSM100s. But as Joe said, I find there are many exceptions to my “normal” schedule, and it’s one less thing to worry about when I’m out and about. Did I turn off the oven? the lights? the furnace? And I use it while I’m at home, too. If I had A/C it would be even more worthwhile to me since cooling is so much more expensive than heating.
I feel for you, though, having to buy three thermostats, especially if you’re a quality nut like me and need the Schlage/Trane units.
To comment on the usefulness of a Z-Wave thermostat in general, this was the component that won my wife over. Granted we live in Southern California and what we consider cold here is nothing compared to colder regions, but to be able to kick on the heat before we arrive home from just down the street is nice but not a must have (more of a luxury). My wife really likes being able to have the heater off at night and using the remote control to turn it on before she gets out of bed in the morning, now I realize this could be accomplished with a timer, but we are rarely on a repeditive schedule. You could just use a programmable thermostat and have a Z-Wave appliance module kill power to the furnace, but it is nice being able adjust the temperature remotely throughout the house because sometimes 68 degrees seems warm enough and sometimes it doesn’t.
To comment on the design of the Wayne Dalton cover, mine snapped on perfectly and looks beautiful. It is just a matter of routing the wires correctly, and make sure you push any excess wire back into the wall. And as far as accuracy mine works great, I calibrated it to match a cheap indoor/outdoor thermometer clock we have and I don’t know which is truly correct but they stay matched. For under $80, you can’t go wrong with this thermostat, great quality unit.
Which thermostat should be used for a het pump? Does VERA work with a heat pump thermostt?
I have two WDTC20 thermostats, and find the hysteresis to be spot on at about Plus / minus 1 degree. That is both for heating and cooling. I suspect something else is going on. I’m basing my statement on remote viewing of the setpoint Vs the current temperature. I have not compared the displayed current temperature with a calibrated instrument, but that error would not be related to hysteresis, but rather to accuracy, so that should not apply here.
Great use of the word hysteresis. I have always called this thermostat function by that name, and most people have no idea what I’m talking about. I hear it called “anticipator”, “proportional band” and a number of other things. Hysteresis is the correct engineering term.
Anthony
From what I have heard the 1 Degree difference +/- is due to a rounding discrepancy between the thermostat and Vera. One is rounding up while the other isn’t.
I use the WDTC-20’s and got them for 75.00 each. I like many here, had problems closing them. However, by removing the unused connection terminals, it closes much easier. Process: Remove unused screw, then with needle nose pliars - pinch the terminal connector to drop out of plastic housing.
Personally, I always found “programmable” thermostats to be a real pain in the @ss to set. Once set, they’re not terribly easy to modify. Setting up scenes to program the thermostats with vera is a snap, they’re easily modifiable, and you can monitor/change it from anywhere that has a network connection.
I am using the WD-20.
Pros:
Cheap
Already had the “C” so that was not a problem
Easy for the family to understand / control at the unit.
Cons:
Fan On/Auto does not work with Vera
No “AUTO” setting to automatically switch from heat to cool
Plastic case feels like it is going to break when you take it apart.
Moving soon and will need an additional thermostat. Will most likely go with the Trane after reading the posts.