Ecobee fan time setup

I am all new on home animation and habitat.
And obviously I'm a little lots. I'm kindly asking for help, pls.
I have ecobee thermostat which I want to control fan of it. Wanna setup fan to run for 5 mins every 15mins. From 7am till 10pm.
And during the fan run time of 5 mins I wanna turn smart plug on for those 5 mins. And repeat for same period from 7-10 o'clock.
Little background.
I have oil diffuser to connect to hvac which is plug to smart plug. So I want the diffuser run with the fan same time. Thanks a lot.

I would do this in Rule Machine with a Required Expression of “Time between” 7am and 10pm (22h) and a “Periodic Schedule” trigger of 15 minutes.

In my Actions, I would select the action to turn on both the fan and outlet at the same time (used Virtual Switch 1 & Virtual Switch 2) in my example). Then after a 5 minute elapsed time, would select the action to turn off those same devices.

The end result would look like this:

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One thing to note, you need to call resumeschedule to set the fan back to auto for ecobee. Took me awhile to figure this out.

Thank you very much. I will try. I would figure this out in milión years. :+1:

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Thinking that would be one more line after switching fan off to call fan auto. Right?

calling fan off or fan auto won't stop it from running. resumeschedule will though.

I do something similar. I have 3 virtual switches that I can turn on, which when turned on will run the fan for 1, 2, or 3 hours.

Here's what the rule machine rule looks like if that helps ya one way or another.

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I have some thoughts that could be helpful, but I want to make sure I understand your intent...

Is the "fan" that you are running your HVAC fan that will be controlled by the Ecobee, or a separate fan?

What Hubitat driver are you using for the Ecobee? There are at least two that I know of...the built in one provided by Hubitat and a user-created set of drivers and software called "Universal Ecobee Suite."

I'll have more questions...this is just the start. Hopefully we'll help get you to a solution that works for you.

First of all thank you very much for helping me.
On Your quesions,
Yes, the fan is furnace hvac, controlled by ecobee.
I have ecobee integration app.

Built-in (meaning provided along with Hubitat), or one of the two community integrations?

First, I want to caution you that running your HVAC fan that frequently might not be the best idea. It could cause excess energy usage, short runtimes, increased wear & tear, etc. But, thats up to you. Generally speaking, the advice you've already gotten is on the right track, but you'll need to set the fan mode as a separate action. Here is what it looks like all together...

Note that I use the Universal Ecobee Suite...the "resume program" action might look different for another integration.

Also note that this is a very basic method that could end up conflicting with the normal heating and cooling cycles of the thermostat. There ways to get around this, but the rule will get complicated pretty quickly.

And you should be aware that any outage of your internet service or the ecobee servers will prevent the rule actions from running successfully. That means you could end up running your HVAC fan longer than intended, or operating your oil diffuser without the HVAC fan running.

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And during A/C season, increased indoor humidity.

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thank you so much for the help!

Side note; talking about HVAC fan, it is actually highly recommended to run fan for 20-30 mins per hour for air circulation, keep house equally cool/warm . and it is very cheap actually , in my area i pay peak cost is 18c/kwh. and fans are aroung 500w. so if i run it 60mins it costs me 3 cents .

thanks again!

HVAC fans run internally, don't suck air from outside. just circulate inside air . thanks for concern though .

Your response suggests you may be unaware of how air-conditioning works. The increase in humidity, when running the air-handler/furnace fan frequently, has nothing to with air being taken in from the outside,

When an HVAC system is run in A/C mode, refrigerant that is compressed by the condenser (outside the house), absorbs heat (and expands) in the evaporator (inside the house). It absorbs heat because the air-handler fan blows indoor air across the evaporator grill, thereby chilling indoor air.

As a consequence, the evaporator grill becomes very cold and acts as a surface for moisture in indoor air to condense. Under normal operation, when the air-handler fan is off, this condensed moisture drains down into the evaporator pan, and then down the evaporator drain.

If the furnace/air-handler fan is run frequently during A/C season, when the condenser is not running, this condensed water is blown back into living space, thereby increasing humidity. This is undesirable for many reasons, but particularly so if one lives in the hot-humid and mixed-humid climate zones.

Not sure where you read this recommendation. In general, HVAC engineers would recommend that balancing be done using manual or automatic dampers. Alternatively, one can install in-duct blowers on specific duct runs to improve air-flow. I had one of these in my old house to balance air between upstairs and downstairs, and I had it wired using a RIB relay to turn on/off along with the main HVAC blower.

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