[DEPRECATED] Universal Ecobee Suite, version 1.7.**

(Topic: humidity control)

Thanks for your reply! FWIW, I'm a product manager in my day-to-day existence, and was a mechanical engineer back in the day. :slight_smile: So I love these discussions.

As context for the rest of this post, one thing that's struck me in reading about this topic is that most posts on it talk about frost on the windows being "the problem" - when in reality, that's just one of many potential problems from excess humidity. Check out this article for more detail on that. The TL;DR is that high humidity causes many other problems besides frosty windows - and I'd add that it seems that you could have no frost on windows but still have other problems, particularly if your windows are more efficient than the rest of your house (which is true of our home).

So my assumption is that what we're trying to do with this overall is to keep humidity in the house low enough that it never condenses anywhere, not just on windows. That should, then, be a function of the relative humidity inside the house, inside the outdoor-temperature-exposed building materials of the house (itself a function of building envelope efficiency), and the temperature the building materials are exposed to.

Now, certainly, much of this is out of our control - if, for instance, a climate had very high humidity for weeks - say, 70% - leading to very saturated wood framing, a cold snap could cause all of that to freeze quickly if the humidity didn't drop slowly enough to dry out the wood.

So that's my thought behind looking at lowest temp [n] days ahead, as well as why I'm less concerned with exact accuracy of a forecast - if what we're trying to do is to make sure building materials can slowly dry out, then we just need to know roughly what the temperature is going to be when.

To your point, yes, that means that comfort may suffer - in which case, yes, we should probably let people choose the level of risk to their building they're willing to accept.

FWIW, even the automatic humidifiers that have outdoor temp sensors - like the Aprilaire 800 I just had installed - don't even account for the future temperatures, which is actually one of the key things in my mind, as they even note in their user manual:

So we're breaking new ground here. :slight_smile: As for ecobee's frost control, yes, I don't get frost on my windows either, but the humidity never gets high enough to be what I consider comfortable (40-50% RH), even when it's warm enough outside to be ok raising it to that level, and is predicted to stay that warm. So that's why I say it doesn't work well.

Anyway, a few other small comments on your post:

I'm sure that's the case - how "off" have you seen it be in terms of temperature?

This is where I'm sure it matters some in making sure you don't get frost, but ideally we would ask something about the overall building efficiency to understand how fast indoor humidity escapes. That should be a proxy for how saturated building framing might be - the more efficient, the more the indoor is separated from outdoor, and thus the less time needed to adjust ahead of drop in temperature. (I'm assuming that low-efficiency buildings mean that much of the humidity is also humidifying the building materials themselves; therefore we need to give them more time to dry out in advance of a cold spell.)

Anyway, all that said, thanks for all you've done! I'm in awe. And let me know if you want me to write up a functional spec or something. :slight_smile:

Could you add a hold type to the Work From Home helper? Similar to the mode change helper, where I can set it to hold "until next program change" or "until I change".

That's a reasonable request - I will add it to my todo list.

In the meanwhile, the default is to use whatever you have set in the Preferences for the Thermostat Device - there you can set the default to be any one of ["Permanent", "Temporary", "Hourly", "Parent", "Thermostat"].

So it's the default of the device? Not the parent app? I read through the code and it seemed like the parent app.

I have an issue with the "Work from home" helper app. I have the helper setup to enable if I am home at 9am on certain days. What is happening though is the helper app is changing the thermostat profile to "home" before the specified time. So for example when my thermostat changes to "away" at 8:30am the helper app changes it right back to home. It should not be checking for the current thermostat profile until 9am in order to determine if someone is home. I leave at different times for work usually between 8-8:30am, but not beyond 9am, this why I set it for this time.

You have turned on the "When any thermostats' Program changes" option, which is a trigger in addition to the "At this time of day" trigger.

Simply turn off the "When any..." trigger, and it will ONLY check to see if it needs to change to the desired program at 9:00 AM.

I already have this on but at 9am it did not change.

Please try turning off the "When Program changes to any of these..." totally, and try testing with a time of day that is "soon". Run Live Logging while you do this, so you can see if there are any errors in ES Manager, ES Thermostat or the ES Working from Home Helper app.

Yes turning off that option worked, the T-stats changed at the time I specified.

EDIT: So that setting is only to change the T-stats at anytime during the specific days? Meaning time is not factored in?

Yes, the "Whenever the thermostat changes to Away" will override the change if any of the selected sensors are present when it changes - regardless of the time of day.

Okay, thanks.

I also have a question about the the "Smart Mode, Programs & Setpoints Helper" app when dealing with the "Outdoor weather source." Should I be using the actual outdoor temperature or can I use an indoor virtual HE temperature sensor for the "above/below" fields? The virtual temperature sensor that I have is an average of all of the physical ones for each floor. I am not sure exactly how the helper app is calculating when to raise the T-stat to the specified setting to keep the temperature within the specified parameters.

For the Outdoor sensors, you can use whatever weather source you want (preferably an accurate source close to you). If the source you are using isn't natively supported (not in any of the lists), select "Hubitat Sensors" and specify a temperature and a humidity source.

For inside, the sources should be relevant to your zones (ie., don't use a floor 1 averaged source for the floor 3 Ecobee thermostat). You can create multiple instances of this Helper for each Thermostat you have...

Okay, so I should be using the actual outdoor temperatures like data from Dark Sky, not pulling temperature from sensors inside my house?

I am guessing you are referring to the desired temperature which would be zone specific?

Yes, you need an "Outdoor Weather Source"

Okay, great this helps. Thanks!

Is there any documentation on the Thermal Comfort helper? Or a simple explanation on how it controls the setpoint based on the provided values? Is the setpoint just set to the PMV temperature that is displayed?

Yes, but the setpoint will change as the Relative Humidity in your home changes...

So would it be best to use multiple humidity sensors or should the T-stat's be enough?

Generally, the thermostat's is enough, but you could use more (or others) if you prefer...

sorry if I overlooked the compatibility list - does this support the ecobee3 lite? Power company want to install one for free...

Edit nm - If id just a read a bit more I would see that it seems it does, thank you for your work on this...

2 Likes