Moving Thermostat Options?

Question

Hey Everyone,

So I'm currently enrolled in the school of hardknocks and learning things along the way...we recently bought a 6 unit building that has the buildings thermostat inside one of the tenants units. The previous owner used to live in that unit and so it made sense, to put it there. While selling the building, he put a tenant in there.

Obviously, this is not going to work since we pay heat, so I was going over possible solutions and would like to get an opinion on what others have done/would do:

1) Move thermostat outside of tenants unit in either the hallway or down by the furnace. (Most costly)

2) Put a lockbox on the thermostat. Cheapest option, but accessibility to change the temperature is limited since I have to come into the tenants unit, which I would like not to do

3) Replace thermostat with a smart thermostat. In the middle option in terms of price and very accessible as I can adjust temperature through the app on my phone.

Has anyone replaced their thermostats with a smart thermostat? If so, how's that going?

Appreciate any help. Thanks!

Deanna McCormick · Answer

Move the thermostat to the basement in boiler room or secure area that you can control.

You could put in a smart thermostat for that and have remote access option. We just installed one in our personal home and like the way it works,, got a Nest brand.

We had a 3 story 6 plex and had same set up when we put in a new boiler we made the control for thermostat in the basement under our control.

The locked box cover thing over the thermostat isn't that hard to get into and they would open it up and reset it so that's not a great option.

JD Martin · Answer

In your case I would definitely go with the smart thermostat, because you really don't have an ideal setup anyway - the heat will never be the same everywhere in the building, with the people on the top complaining of the heat and the ones on the bottom complaining of the cold, both in summer and winter. At least with the smart app you can adjust it on the fly.

We don't have any on our units, but our whole portfolio is all SFHs without any MFHs so they're unnecessary. I know a few people who have used the ones with apps and they like them.

Moving Thermostat Options?

2 Replies