I am brand new to hubitat and looking for some help. I am getting a ventilated dehumidifier installed in my home to help with humidity levels during the seasons where the AC runs less frequently. The HVAC company can wire the dehum to my Ecobee Premium or a stand along "dumb" humidistat. I am leaning towards them hooking it to the ecobee just to have more control over it but I dont trust the humidity sensor in the ecobee. Using hubitat, can I have external humidity sensors in the house that can trigger the ecobee to turn on/off the dehum versus relying on the built in humidity sensor in the ecobee? Is this a bad idea to try and should I just go with the stand alone humidistat?
Your best bet is a separate dehumidistat if the dehumidifier is not otherwise tied in to your HVAC.
Also, since this is a major appliance in your house, you want it to work even if you no longer use the Hubitat. However you may also wish to concurrently be able to control it via Hubitat.
Some very helpful Hubitaters helped me figure out how to wire a Zen 16 relay in parallel with the dehumidistat so now if the Hubitat goes down the dehumidistat will control the dehumidifier.
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Welcome to the Hubitat Community!
+1 for everything @calinatl said.
There is also another user user with lots of experience controlling humidity with HVAC equipment... @aaiyar . Maybe he'll chime in with some tips?
Separately, i had tinkered with a virtual thermostat app (used to control space heaters or plug in cooling equipment) to modify it for de/humidifier control. Seemed like my modifications were working, but that was a while back and I sort of lost interest before I finished it. Don't really have time right now to pick it back up, but i could share the code if you're interested in creating an app to run this.
P.S. You'll want to go in to the forum menu and join the Owners group... it will give you access to a few more features in the community.
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I would keep your standalone dehumidifier separate from your ecobee. And then use a dry contact relay (like the Zen 16 or Zen 17) to control the dehumidifier as recommended by @calinatl.
FWIW, there are also zigbee and wifi dry contact relays that can be used in this situation.
There is also another user user with lots of experience controlling humidity with HVAC equipment..
I too remembered this, so I went back to the thread to see who is was..................................
................and found the person I was thinking of is @dylan.c
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