Vacation home zwave hvac control

Other Devices & Integrations Climate Control & Temperature Sensors
1

Hello all,
I have a vacation home for rent and have central heating and air controlled by a common thermostat.
I’ve installed a micasa verde lite to control a Yale keypad lock

I want to install a aware thermometer for a specific function: to turn off the ac automatically when people leave the house. I wondered if anyone has any good ways to do this and what equipment I need.

I am completely new to zwave ac control

I was thinking that the door would signal “lock” which means people have left the house, then there would have to be a motion control somewhere that would signal “no motion” for ten minutes and that would turn off the ac.

I have no idea if the thermometers and motion sensors can do that.

Any advice would be appreciated

2

You can do what you want to do but I would not recommend relying on the door lock. Renters do not always lock the door when they are not there and they may lock the door while they are there. You can use sensors to help with this. One consideration is to ensure there are senors covering all areas of the home. This will also likely cut off the AC when renters are sleeping (not sure if this will be OK as they may wake up in the middle of the night hot). There are many sensors and thermostats that will work for this and I am sure someone will chime in with specific recommendations (I am currently using a Trane thermostat). There are also several posts on the forum specific to triggering AC events based on motion sensors.

I also have a rental house and have added some things you may want to consider to help reduce you energy usage. If you add door sensors (know when they are open/closed) you can turn off the AC if a renter leaves the door open for an extended period of time (http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Luup_Scenes_Events#Thermostat_conditioned_by_door.2Fwindow). Also, if you have an electric hot water heater you may want to consider installing something like the Intermatic CA3750 to let you shut that off when not in use.

3

Thanks for the response. My Yale lock auto-locks everytime someone comes in or out after several seconds.
Thus I was thinking I would put a motion sensor somewhere conspicuous, if the lock shows "lock"and there is no motion after x minutes, then people have left the house. If there is motion, it means people have entered the house. If someone leaves and someone remains, I assume the people inside would trigger the motion sensor.

The NEST thermostat has a similar feature automatically built in, that it turns the AC off (or down) if there is no motion on the sensor. This is a cool device but I am unsure if it could be applie to my house.

  1. can I trigger the motion sensor to start "detecting"once the Yale lock triggers a "lock
  2. can a motion sensor be set to detect "no motion"after x minutes?
  3. can the trane thermostat use this information to turn off?

Thank you
Thanks