Like a lot of people in Canada I have to heat a bunch of rooms to keep the house and the people from freezing.
So we have baseboard heaters all over our 2-storey + basement house, with 10 ordinary programmable thermostats. Some of them started failing after 30 years of intense use.
So now I am trying to determine if it's time to do the big upgrade. Therefore I have to determine, with your help, if the technology is mature enough to ensure that "Smart" baseboard thermostats:
1- never fail stupidly after a power failure. They reset correctly and start heating.
2- operate 100% correctly for maintaining an adequate temperature, even if the internet is down, or the central hub is down
3- last many years reliably, before needing any maintenance
4- are not too vulnerable to ill-willed hackers
5- are priced for middle-class families
Since you are reading this, you likely have a Hubitat, so I would like to know your thoughts and experience with the "smart" baseboard thermostats you have chosen for your house.
- What model thermostats did you pick
- Do you recommend it "5 stars"?
Here are some of our details. There is nothing special about our baseboard configuration:
- 3 bedrooms (est1500W avg), 2 bathrooms (1400W fan-forced+ est500W)
- Living room (2500W), kitchen (2500W), basement (2500W)
- Garage (3000W fan-forced), storage (est1000W)
This is done with baseboard heaters, controlled by 10 thermostats on 240 Vac.
Currently these thermostats are programmable by hitting buttons. That means walking around room to room, each time a change or verification is needed. After power failures, these things may lose some/all settings, depending on the duration of the power failure. This is no good.
Hence the justification for going with a centrally-controllable device (will it be the Hubitat?) that occasionally tells those 10 thermostats what to do.
And we just added a mini-split air-conditioning heat-pump with Wifi. I wish Hubitat could control it but apparently it's a separate app (FGlair) that is cloud-based which is what I am trying to stay away from (cloud-based = uncertainty that it will be there in the future, and a magnet for ill-willed hackers).
Welcome to our community. I'm also interested in a smart thermostat for baseboard heating as that's what my apartment has. Thanks for asking this and hopefully we'll get plenty of answers.
Ive been using the STELPRO Ki ZWave Thermostat for all of my 240volt baseboard heaters and they are awesome. They cost around $CAN 100.00 Each, and i found them very easy to install and link. I purchased mine at Aartech.ca, and HomeDepot, but others like Rona may also sell them.
If im not mistaken, the zwave model is: Model # STZW402WB+
They paired with WINK previously where I used them for about 4-5 years previously. I recently migrated to HUBITAT a few months ago. All 7 or 8 excluded from the previous network and included into by hubitat mesh just fine. They work great with my Hubitat Elevate. Simple and effective. Nice backlight and they report the current temp and setpoint. I Havent had a single problem. Their rated for 120V / 240V and up to approximate 4000w or so. Look them up. If suitable, i bet you will like them.
The only downside i've found is that it is seen as a Generic Zwave thermostat device, with many useless settings and config options not needed for the device's actual control/configuration; therefore, on the dashboard there's superfluous info like "mode". -- since baseboards done have e-heat or cooling, these just act as a useless distraction.
I was able to clean out the superfluous settings from the dashboard tiles using a little css code added to the advanced CSS text editor as follows:
.thermostat div.w-full.my-1>div.inline-block {
visibility:hidden;
}
Welcome to the forums my fellow canuck!
ah yes the Canadian winter and baseboard heaters, the bane of those without heat pumps!!
I have been using SINOPE zigbee thermostats to control my baseboards.
They run about $104.00 CDN.
They work very well and you can support a Canadian company.
The only issue I have with them is their firmware support, I reached out to them a year ago looking to see if I could get the latest zigbee firmware and their response was that the only way you can do a firmware update is to buy their hub or send your thermostat back to them. I find that completely unsat but that is me (if I want to brick my device by trying the update so be it, I might have to replace it with another of yours). One can hope they will change their mindset on this or I buy and then return their hub after my updates are done, their call.
TL:DR SINOPE pretty good device, but support could be better.
Go LEAFS Go
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