Venstar ISY compatibility Question

[apostolakisl]

I installed Insteon heat pump thermostats at my church a while back (9 of them).  Well, on Monday, an oversized truck driving down the main highway next to the church hooked onto an overhead powerline and ripped down a whole block worth of power lines.  A huge mess, they are still out there doing repairs as of last night.  The power went crazy causing half of the thermostats to need to be reset and one of them appears to be just dead.  (also screwed up other electronic devices). Insteon no longer sells the heat pump version.  I found this on ebay  https://www.ebay.com/itm/292710000156?ViewItem=&item=292710000156  Can anyone confirm that this will work?  I'm using ISY to run all the schedules, not the thermostat.  I'm hoping to just use the "replace with" function.  It was my impression that Venstar required an adapter, but the person selling this says it does not.

[lilyoyo1]

There was one venstar model that did not require an adapter as it had the board built in. I believe it was the 2491t1e. Something of that nature 

[apostolakisl]

6 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

There was one venstar model that did not require an adapter as it had the board built in. I believe it was the 2491t1e. Something of that nature 

Thanks for the info.  With that model number, I googled it and discovered that they have a couple Insteon models.  The base model on this one is T1800 which is not Insteon compatible except for a sub-model of it (2491T7ER) which is a native Insteon model.  Not sure why they didn't change the T1800 name, it is confusing.

 

Interestingly, today, the dead thermostat started talking to ISY again.  It is still not functional however.  I can change the settings on it, but the screen is black and it does not seem to turn the system on nor report temp/humidity.  But it does respond to query and it does allow me to change the set points and mode.

 

EDIT:  The thermostat has now completely come back to life.  

Edited September 21, 2018 by apostolakisl

[paulbates]

I had the problem with the 2441 series where noise from the HVAC units down the 24vac lines either numbed or stunned the 2441 until it was restarted. In my case it was igniters for the heat, but the behavior was similar. It would spontaneously become uncommunicative and unresponsive, and then could be brought back to life. I'm guessing a power blip through the HVAC unit could cause the same thing.

My point is, I think the advantage of getting the Venstar branded stat is that they are an HVAC company at their core and consider the entire HVAC design spectrum when engineering their products. 

Paul

Edited September 21, 2018 by paulbates

[apostolakisl]

27 minutes ago, paulbates said:

I had the problem with the 2441 series where noise from the HVAC units down the 24vac lines either numbed or stunned the 2441 until it was restarted. In my case it was igniters for the heat, but the behavior was similar. It would spontaneously become uncommunicative and unresponsive, and then could be brought back to life. I'm guessing a power blip through the HVAC unit could cause the same thing.

My point is, I think the advantage of getting the Venstar branded stat is that they are an HVAC company at their core and consider the entire HVAC design spectrum when engineering their products. 

Paul

I picked up those two venstar thermostats on ebay.  They are used, but that is all that is out there right now for Insteon heat pump thermostats.  I'll probably replace one of the Insteon ones with the Venstar one and see how it works.  If I like, I'll put the second one into service as well.

[gweempose]

20 hours ago, paulbates said:

I had the problem with the 2441 series where noise from the HVAC units down the 24vac lines either numbed or stunned the 2441 until it was restarted. In my case it was igniters for the heat, but the behavior was similar. It would spontaneously become uncommunicative and unresponsive, and then could be brought back to life. I'm guessing a power blip through the HVAC unit could cause the same thing.

My point is, I think the advantage of getting the Venstar branded stat is that they are an HVAC company at their core and consider the entire HVAC design spectrum when engineering their products.

My experience was the exact opposite. I had lots of communication issues with my Ventstar thermostats, but my 2441's have actually worked quite well.

[paulbates]

6 minutes ago, gweempose said:

My experience was the exact opposite. I had lots of communication issues with my Ventstar thermostats, but my 2441's have actually worked quite well.

My comment was more around core operation of the standalone 2441TH working with the HVAC system, even if insteon was not linked. I could not get the 2441s to operate correctly as a thermostat, despite being shipped multiple 2441TH replacements. I had a 22 year history with other thermostats on the same HVAC systems: Beginning with the original Honeywell contractor thermostats (non automated) and 7 years with RCS TX15 Thermostats (x10). The 2441THs locked up, changed modes on their own or went into continuous heat calls, where we'd wake up in the middle of the night with the house over 90 degrees.

We debugged it over several weeks and fortunately it was not winter and I could turn them off. SH eventually threw up their hands and gave me refunds for them and I reinstalled the RCS TX15s while shopping for something else. I ended up with non Venstar non insteon thermostats that I'm really happy with operationally and features/function.

I know this doesn't happen to most 2441 users and glad they work for most. However there's a very long thread around here about this specific problem and how others attempted to address it by soldering on the units or putting filters on the 24VAC lines; its a design problem.

Its worth looking through the reviews at SH. To the OPs point, the Heat Pump version appears to have been withdrawn, there are only 3 reviews and the newest one is 3 years ago. 

Paul