Automating Thermostat at Check In

[Michael Kader]

Hello All,

First post here. 

Getting our STR on the market and I was thinking about ways I could automate the thermostat to turn on 1 hour before check-in and right after check-out. Does anyone have any experience with this?

[JD Martin]

No easy way. I have a learning Google Nest and while it has scheduling options you could use, it's not going to know when people are coming in or out. I simply control it remotely and set it to a reasonable temperature (I'm in Florida) about an hour or two before the guests get there. It literally takes me 10 seconds to do it, including opening and closing the app. I do the same thing when they check out, which I know they have done because I have outside cameras and a smart lock that monitors activity.

[Tyler Solomon]

Echoing JD here - a nest thermostat or similar device with scheduling / remote connectivity options will be best for this!

[Paul Sandhu]

I use the biological method with my thermostats.

[Michael Baum]

Hey @Michael Kader, I am with @JD Martin on this. There is no good way at the moment, but a decent smart thermostat is easy to just turn it up the hour before. That is exactly what we do. Emerson Sensi unit.

[Michael Kader]

Thanks everyone. I’m going to do some more digging and see if I can find a way and report back. 

I fully realize that it takes 10 seconds while simultaneously understanding I just about never do it with my own smart thermostats over the last 9 years. :)

[Nathan Gesner]

Quote from @Michael Kader:

If check-in is 3pm, you open the app and adjust the temperature at 2pm. If the guest doesn't show up until 8pm, that's an extra six hours of heating before occupancy. What do you think that six hours of heat is costing you? The home probably costs less than $6 per day to heat, so six hours of heat in a vacant home will cost you around $1.50.

This doesn't seem worth the brain power or time to even consider.

[Scott K.]

Quote from @Nathan Gesner:

Quote from @Michael Kader:

If check-in is 3pm, you open the app and adjust the temperature at 2pm. If the guest doesn't show up until 8pm, that's an extra six hours of heating before occupancy. What do you think that six hours of heat is costing you? The home probably costs less than $6 per day to heat, so six hours of heat in a vacant home will cost you around $1.50.

This doesn't seem worth the brain power or time to even consider.

 Fun fact - my houses cost $900 to heat a month last winter, that's $30 a day. Electricity prices in the Poconos have risen 30 percent this year. I'm literally expecting to spend $50 to $60 a day on weekends heating each property (less on weekdays when no one is home). So a few hours each way adds up, or if I don't change the thermostat, I lose $20 to $30 a week. 

Suffice to say, I could save about $100 a month or more per property by having this automated. It's not a bad idea! 

[Bruce Woodruff]

I just have a standard thermostat. I set it a little low before they get there and let them adjust as needed. When they leave, I just set it to a reasonable temp, like 66d.

Never had any abuses, knock on wood....

[Nathan Gesner]

Quote from @Scott K.:

So your property is $30 a day to heat. It's still simple math and it's still a small amount. If you waste 12 hours of heat 30 times a year, that's a total of $450 a year. If that's breaking the bank, then I would suggest you've bought a bad investment.

[Michael Kader]

I never thought my first post would be so um.... controversial. :)

My reasoning isn't really about money but consistently producing a quality product for each tenant and doing so without anyone's interaction is the goal. I've been to many hotels that have the AC off when I get there and it's not fun. Furthermore, I've arrived home late many Sundays to a house that's 83*F while I'm trying to get the kids immediately to bed.

So in the end

- I save having to change AC settings 75 times a year (which yes takes 10 seconds, but let's be honest that the timing of it is more crucial than the time it takes)
- Years down the road I save doing it 750 a year when I have 10 properties
- My guests always walk into a clean cool, pleasurable space (first impressions)
- If I can do it before, I might as well do it after and save a few bucks
- Lastly, it's really not THAT important in the grand scheme of things, but it's just something fun to do when I'm tired of doing the real work.

[Michael Baum]

Hey @Michael Kader, ok, so I have been researching some of what you want to do and here is something that could work but requires some work on your part.

You could put in a Samsung Smartthings hub and compatible thermostat. Z wave or Zigbee. Then you setup automations within the Smartthings hub.

You can automate a ton of stuff including setting the thermostat to a certain temp at a certain time. If check in is 5pm, set the automation to turn up (or down) the heat at 4pm. If checkout is 10am, have it turn everything to what you want at that time.

Plus you could have an automation that would set the temp back to your preset when it is off. If you have the temp at 69 degrees and it is at 75, it would automatically lower it back to 69.

Here is a bit of the basics of setting up an automation in the Samsung app. - https://www.samsung.com/us/sup...

You will have to read up more on this topic. There is a ton of info out there on home automation with Smartthings. BKM's and best products so you will have to research.

Now I have a Smartthings controlling my thermostat and locks. I have no automations setup as I just do it manually, but I think this could be a solution.

[JD Martin]

Quote from @Michael Kader:

I never thought my first post would be so um.... controversial. :)

My reasoning isn't really about money but consistently producing a quality product for each tenant and doing so without anyone's interaction is the goal. I've been to many hotels that have the AC off when I get there and it's not fun. Furthermore, I've arrived home late many Sundays to a house that's 83*F while I'm trying to get the kids immediately to bed.

So in the end

- I save having to change AC settings 75 times a year (which yes takes 10 seconds, but let's be honest that the timing of it is more crucial than the time it takes)
- Years down the road I save doing it 750 a year when I have 10 properties
- My guests always walk into a clean cool, pleasurable space (first impressions)
- If I can do it before, I might as well do it after and save a few bucks
- Lastly, it's really not THAT important in the grand scheme of things, but it's just something fun to do when I'm tired of doing the real work.

 Mostly this is going to depend on how regular your check-in/check-out schedule is. If your guests always check in within a couple hour window, and check out the same way on the same days, then setting up a schedule is easy. With my home, people are arriving at all hours of the day/night on check in, and though they always check out around the same time (our check out is 10 AM), the actual day they check out is always going to vary. So setting a schedule for changing the thermostat at 11 AM won't work because they might not be checking out that day.

I get the idea of wanting to put as much as possible on autopilot but I don't see any way you're going to get around doing this manually if you want it dependent on the guest and not on the clock or calendar. I have Samsung Smarthings too, and while it has cool scheduling capacity it has no way of knowing that this week your guest is going to check in at 10 PM on Tuesday and check out at 9 AM on Saturday, and the next guest is going to check in at 4:15 PM on Sunday and requested a late check out on Wednesday at 12 PM. 

The only possible way I could see that working according to the guest would be if the thermostat was tied to the door lock/unlock, or if it was just set to the learning mode like my Google Nest. In that case, as people came in and walked around Google would turn the air down or heat up, whatever it might need, but it's not going to do it until people are walking around so they're still going to arrive to a house that's 77 degrees in the summer. 

So I get your mindset but here's the thing: when you have 10 properties down the road that are STRs, you have virtually another job and checking temperatures just becomes part of your job. What you are looking for is a free lunch - no effort required on your part to provide a pleasant experience for your guest (by regulating temp before they get there). There are no free lunches. One of the reasons you get paid is for offering hospitality, and part of that is being responsible enough to check the thermostat. If you're too absent-minded or lazy to just do it without prompting, then put an alarm in your phone.