Questions about smart thermostats
I have been hearing a lot about smart thermostats particularly the ecobee premium smart thermostat and the Honeywell smart thermostat.
Has anyone used these smart thermostats in their buildings?
Are there any risks associated with smart thermostats?
So far, what I have found online is a mixed bag. Some say they are great, others say there are issues.
Most Popular Reply
If you are someone who's really hands on and want to do lots of tweaks yourself to optimize comfort and save energy, then smart thermostat might be an upgrade to your vacation rental property. But personally, I think smart thermostat is really meant for home owners, not investment properties.
We started using smart thermostats when we started our STR businesses 3 years ago but gradually shifted them to simpler thermostats that has a little aesthetic design to it.
We just don't have the time and patience to figure out the nuances of smart thermostat. If you just install it and forget about it, you will have issues. There are times the smart thermostat is creating issue for the HVAC system and render it stops working (service call), guests not knowing how to operate them and then they will message you (after hour message), weird heating/cooling schedule (We had guest texted us in the morning saying last night the HVAC switched to heat and they were sweating in the morning), etc. All of these small issues, although easy to address by themselves, they do add up and just eat up the attention of the property manager. Therefore within a year, we switched all of our thermostat back to a simpler one. The only function that people want is that when they feel hot, they need a button to dial the AC down and the house start cooling vice versa. Any other functions or features just complicate the issue and introduce potential problems for host to solve.
So in the end, aesthetics is the key. So we find a reliable brand, find the most pretty one with the simplest function, that's what we use.