Thrilled to have found this thread, because I also would like to control my whole house dehumidifier via zwave, but in parallel with a wired dehumidistat powered from the dehumidifier controls. Noodled through this enough to conclude a Zooz Zen16 would probably do it, but have not figured out the details...
If anyone has figured out the wiring setup and Hubitat rules for adding a Zooz Zen 16 in parallel to control a Santa Fe whole house dehumidifier with a DEH 3000R De/humidistat, any info you can share would be MUCH appreciated.
My dehumidification system is standalone (not interconnected to heating/cooling), and has no dampers or float switches to wire in, and the dehumidifier compressor should never run without the fan also being on.
The ideal operation would be the Zen 16 sends a signal to the the controls on the dehumidifier to go on/off based on the average readings of a number of zwave sensors connected to Hubitat - for example on at 52%, off at 48%. Then as a backup, if the de/humidistat wired remote sensor reports 54%, the de/humidistat controller causes the dehumidifier controls to turn the unit on, or if someone just decides they manually want to turn it on, they can do so from the de/humidistat. I realize the Hubitat sensors and the de/humidistat remote sensor may be calibrated differently and will make the appropriate adjustments.
Currently the dehumidifier is controlled with a zwave plug that goes on / off based on the average of a series of zwave sensors. There are two issues with this setup:
- If I get hit by a bus the chances that the smart controls get deactivated are VERY high, and then the dehumidifier would not run, and this could be bad news in my climate (even though my crawl space is sealed, insulated and watertight). So I need a failsafe "dumb" system backup.
- I am concerned the repeated hard power on/offs from the zwave plug are bad for the compressor. My settings use a fairly wide band so the unit does not cycle and it is usually at least 8-10 hours between run times if I just let it do it's thing based on humidity. But I still think that if controlled via the dehumidifier built in controls the fan operates for a few minutes after the compressor shuts off. If this were working, I would feel better about revising my Hubitat rules to concentrate the dehumidifier run times to the very low overnight power rates, because with such a setting it could go on shortly after it last went off.
The terrific thing about the DEH 3000R is both the de/humidistat and the remote sensor are powered from the dehumidifier controls and do not require batteries. It is also the only de/humidistat I could find that can be set up to operate based on the readings of the remote sensor only, so I can install the de/humidistat in the living space but run the dehumidifier based on the readings from the crawl space.
Dehumidifier controls wiring:
DEH 3000R wiring:
Santa Fe Diagram for wiring the two together:
