Very neat. This would be great for our multi level home as upstairs gets hot in summer and cool in winter. We adjust our vents manually to try to get equal heating and cooling throughout entire home. If I programmed these to operate with temperature sensors could achieve that. They are a bit expensive but if I’m getting more consistant heating and cooling could pay for themselves… I have corner vents though. Don’t see those on their website. Neat find though.
Just ordered one earlier today. Question, does this report battery status?
- Garrett
Yes, it does report battery status 
Manual states one year with alkaline batteries (2 x AAA) with 2 movements a day. Manual says 2 years are possible with Lithium Ion.
Guys, correct me if I’m wrong but I had always heard that it’s a bad idea to close off air vents in a forced air system because 1) The furnace or central AC now has to work harder to move the air which was already sized appropriately for the house it’s operating in and 2) If a room’s vent is closed to avoid having to heat it, the room now gets colder faster than the rest of the house and draws more hot air into that room as heat naturally flows from hot to cold areas, thus again making it inefficient to shut down a vent.
Would these vents (as cool as they are) actually be useful for climate control situations or would they just cause more potential problems than they would actually solve?
[quote=“agoodman82, post:24, topic:180114”]Guys, correct me if I’m wrong but I had always heard that it’s a bad idea to close off air vents in a forced air system because 1) The furnace or central AC now has to work harder to move the air which was already sized appropriately for the house it’s operating in and 2) If a room’s vent is closed to avoid having to heat it, the room now gets colder faster than the rest of the house and draws more hot air into that room as heat naturally flows from hot to cold areas, thus again making it inefficient to shut down a vent.
Would these vents (as cool as they are) actually be useful for climate control situations or would they just cause more potential problems than they would actually solve?[/quote]
many people presently (including myself) do this manually with their existing louvers; sort of fine-tuning the distribution of the hot/cool air supply. Whilst your point is very valid, you would have to significantly restrict a lot of outlets to affect the overall operation of the HVAC system. I think people would use this to cut off a guest bedroom they don’t regularly use or a single room that just gets too warm because it has much higher airflow; a consequence of the initial engineering and installation of the system.
These looks really cool. I have a finished basement and the only heat I have down there is 2 registers cut directly into one of my main ducts from the 1st floor heating zone. The registers are usually manually turned off, unless someone is planning to hang out in the basement. It never gets toasty down there, but good enough for the kids to play/watch movies (low to mid 60’s dead winter when it’s a high in the teens outside)
These vents seems perfect, can set these off a scene taking into account motion/temp/light switches, tie them in to kick the 1st floor thermostat if needed, etc. I’m looking at 4x12’s and it wouldn’t be simple to make them larger (a few inches of additional duct work extending from the main duct to make it go through the drop ceiling)
Question for anyone that has one in their possession: From what I’ve seen online, it looks like you loose a good 30% of the surface area that the air flows through the vents due to the controller that opens/closes the vent. This is the only reason I’m not pulling the trigger on 2 right now. Any comments on what you think of the airflow (compared to the ones that were replaced)?
Thanks!
I’ve found another wireless control air vent. Now, it’s not Z Wave but it is rather cool (pun not intended) and the price is very cheap. It’s called the Activent http://www.theactivent.com/ . It comes in two parts; the wireless vent and a controller. The vent and controller talk to each other and the controller acts like a wireless thermometer. You set the temperature you want the room to be at in the controller and the vent will then open or close to reach the desired temp. (This does not control your thermostat). You can have many temperature zones acting independently without a central controller and the added benefit on having individual remote control of each vent in your home.
Looks interesting but they claim to be on smarthome.com and they are not. They are on the market since 2009 but I don’t see any wide adoption and on the hvacsystems website the base model is out of stock.
The idea sounds great but honestly I am concerned because the thermostat will only kick in when it is too cold or too hot. If the room with the thermostat has the proper temperature it won’t start cooling or heating so closing off vents or opening other vents won’t do you any good. Maybe it is just me not getting it but this product sounds great but I don’t think it is there yet. Open for corrections or suggestions 
This device obviously has to operate within the cycle and temp limits of the main thermostat. But if you have a room that tends to cool off or heat up faster than the room with the thermostat, then these activents would open and close to a temp you set within the thermostat temp limits. I agree there is very limited utility for this but interesting none the less.
In some cases a duct booster on zwave on the power might provide more control. Furnace fan control from zwave is another way to even out temp, especially in a too warm room that has direct sun.
Direct sun can be determined by the weather app.
I’m reading threw this thread and seeing everyone jumping up and down and wagging their tails like never heard or seen a zoned a/c setup before.
https://www.forwardthinking.honeywell.com/products/zoning/zoning_products.html
I self installed my Honeywell 4 zone system 7 years ago and within the last year changed out my thermostats to Trane Z-wave’s to incorporate it into VERA.
To answer some questions. In a zoning system you used a “Pressure Relief Damper” that connects the discharge air to the return/intake air with an adjustable weighted manual vent. So as pressure builds up from zones closed it dumps the air back into the return duct and recycles it threw the blower again (making the cold air even colder and hot air even hotter).
On top of this zoning systems use a discharge air temp sensor on the outlet of the blower to make sure this recycled air after passing threw a few times is not getting to cold or to hot from several passes which could lead to problems.
Sure if your only closing off 1-2 small rooms your probley not going to have a problem, but there is alot of work going into sizing your a/c and duct work. Closing some off might not cause harm but will throw it out of wack a bit.
I’m sure you could PLEG it but there is normally a controller that passes the info from several thermostats to system. It allows multiple zones to fire up the unit, and hand off between each zone without the compressor having to shut down and cycle back up. It also processes the info on how long it takes to heat or cool and zone and sets a priority.
I'm reading threw this thread and seeing everyone jumping up and down and wagging their tails like never heard or seen a zoned a/c setup before.https://www.forwardthinking.honeywell.com/products/zoning/zoning_products.html
I self installed my Honeywell 4 zone system 7 years ago and within the last year changed out my thermostats to Trane Z-wave’s to incorporate it into VERA.
Good for you. I’ve heard of zoned systems, but they’re pretty expensive and often extremely difficult to install. I, for one, don’t have access to almost any of the ducts in my home, as they all disappear after leaving my furnace.
I’m not saying that these Econet are a good solution, though. In fact, they’re some of the most marked-up products I’ve seen in the ZWave world, and that’s saying something! I offer, as exhibit A, the Vent-Miser. Look closely. It’s obvious that this is the exact same product as the EcoNet vent product, just with a control module that’s been gutted and fitted for ZWave control. I’m not saying that isn’t worth something, but I don’t think it’s worth a more than 1000% markup. That’s kind of sick.
Wow. That’s way above somebody should charge. Thanks for sharing.
No problem! I came across that Vent-Miser first, and then was curious to see if anyone had made a similar ZWave product. Imagine my surprise when I saw the same product for ten times the cost!
And please, everybody, if I’m wrong and this Econet product is a different thing, I’d be happy to be corrected! But you can even see the part where Econet took out the LCD screen, presumably to make room for the ZWave internals.
After searching the forums, it looks like someone else drew the same conclusion back in December.
integlikewhoa gave a good overview of what a true zoning system looks like. HVAC/R is what I do too allow me to buy all these expensive zwave toys so I’ll just add a few points… 
- I think in principle it’s an innovative idea and I can certainly see a few advantages. Maybe for that troubled room where it’s too cold in the summer and just right in the winter.
There are a lot of details to actually zoning a system, that maintains comfort, and performance without jeopardizing the integrity of the equipment. So here is a “rule of thumb” that sometimes works and sometimes not… Never ever restrict more then 1/8 of the total number of vents in a house (count every single vent), and never restrict them more that 2/3.
A quick way to make sure your system is not being harmed is to record the temperature delta across the heat exchanger (evaporator and or furnace heat exchanger) both in full load cooling and heating. The cooling delta should never exceed 24F. The furnace is a little trickier. You need to find the allowable heat rise for your furnace, typically indicated on the nomenclature plate. You should have 2 numbers, a low and high temp. Your delta during a full demand heating cycle needs to be somewhere in between those numbers.
Now about that return air bypass… The bypass should be as long as possible, the longer the bypass line the better. This allows the excess cold and hot air to cool or heat up before getting dumped back into the return system, this is very important. Also, while barometric dampers are “OK”, if you want MUCH better regulation, a Honeywell SPC Static Pressure Control with motorized bypass damper is preferred…
Anyway Hope this help a little…
Thanks, that was useful information about zoning. I really do like the idea, but I’m afraid it isn’t possible for many people due to how their furnaces are placed. Not everyone is able to trace all the trunks of their system, unfortunately. The best I would be able to do is to zone off the top floor but accessing where that trunk hits the attic. But then I don’t have a way to get the communication lines back to the basement, and while it’s nice to be able to shut off the heat to the top floor in the winter, what I really want is to be able to cool the top floor more than the others in the summer.
How easy is it to retrofit these systems? I have an HVAC company coming out next week to tell me how much they’d charge, which I’m sure will be astronomical…
Which is why bigger new homes and major remodels use multiple HVAC units. There should be no surprises with multiple units, especially with the A/C coil up high in multi story homes.
There are very few homes that would have a problem closing off a duct or two, either manually or with zwave. It is an added incentive to keep the filter clean, however. Perhaps not use the now common more restrictive filters too. The old style filters allow more airflow, especially when dirty. The new style filters create a lot more service calls, especially with AC. Nothing necessarily wrong with the newer filters, they just reduce the margin of error.
And besides, a proper response to dust for a HAS owner is not a restrictive furnace filter, but a robotic vacuum.
I think I said this earlier: Using vera to run the furnace fan will often even out temps. Currently I’m running my second floor furnace fan at 5:30 am because the east facing bedrooms get warm with the early sunrise. Running the furnace fan also evens out rooms that warm up with electronics or cooking. Making a vera scene with a timer makes sure the fan goes off without intervention.
The furnace fan solution is often unsatisfactory once a household member is hot or cold. But as a preemptive solution it often works well. It works least well with cold rooms in winter. But changing register flow usually doesn’t help much either.
I’ve built houses with bedrooms over 3.5 car garages. In Chicago, it’s best to either heat the garage (to 50f) with a separate wall mounted gas furnace, or provide electric baseboard auxiliary heat in the bedrooms over the cold space. These solutions cost the same or less than a complicated zone setup, and work 100%. Complicated HVAC setups are usually for the benefit of the company doing the work.
My issue is lack of airflow in the upper level rooms. Air handler is in the basement so the main level (middle level) gets about 2x the air flow as the top level.
I’m looking at putting in dampers in the ducts/plenum (not at closing/controlling registers) to restrict airflow to the main level and ‘force’ more air to flow to the top floor.
Any comments/suggestions on this endeavor?
you may benefit more by adding a high static auxiliary blower.
dampening the 1st floor may not help too much
Anyone contemplating blocking off an entire floor worth of vents really needs to seek the advice of an HVAC professional that has experience in correcting duct system problems.
Decreasing efficiency is bad enough; destroying an 8K+ HVAC system is far worse. :-*