Intelligent HVAC Operation Program?

[nickcat]

I have a house with 2 individual AC/Gas Furnace setups for 2 separate sections of the house.

 

One is single zone for a 1st floor mudroom and a second floor bonus room over the garage, the other is dual zone for the main living space with a 1st floor kitchen/dining room/living room/office and 2nd floor bedrooms.

 

I have two Venstar 1800s on the dual zone setup, and a 1900 with a Venstar remote temp sensor which gets averaged with the thermostat temp, as the layout is split across the two floors with the thermostat on the second.

 

When I originally got the Venstars I was using the built in 7 day programming to control, which was originally working great. But now I work from home, and since my daughter was born my wife is staying home with her. That change affected the major savings of trying to turn down the stats in "unused" portions of the house when nobody would be expected to occupy them.

 

So what I would like to ultimately setup would be programmatic control of the stats and temps using motions sensors to judge occupancy, and maybe KPLs butons to manually override if needed.

 

Problem is, I'm not really sure where to start. At any point during the day all three of us are likely to be in any part of the house. So when I'm working downstairs in my office, and my 8 month old us upstairs sleeping in her crib I want to make sure the temp is stable and comfortable for everyone. However I would like to trim back the cooling/heating when nobody is home or we're all downstairs, or upstairs as all the bedrooms are on the 2nd floor.

 

I have humidity modules installed in all the stats, as well as the weatherbug module with fairly accurate data from about 1 mile away at a school. I am also one of the lucky ones who was emailed by Smarthome to swap out my stat devices, so they are all using Rev2.2, which is said to have eliminated the weird issues with babbling units. So I'm hoping controlling them should be stable now.

 

So does anyone have some good occupancy triggered HVAC programs I can build from? I've been reluctant to start programming the stats with the ISY simply because I don't want to overlook something simple and accidentally short cycle my HVAC equipment causing major issues. Fortunately the house is very tight so holding temp in winter or summer isn't much of an issue, I would just really like to do my part to cut back on the power and gas usage and keep everyone more comfortable while doing so.

 

Sorry for rambling on... just want to make sure I answered the major questions about the setup before asking for help. Thanks for listening, and thanks in advance for any help.

[oskrypuch]

Have a peek here ...

 

Prioritizing Thermostats using dynamic cycles

 

 

I have yet to receive by 2.2 swapout, how did yours proceed?

 

Smarthome did make contact, but I am in Canada and bought from a Canadian retailer, so may be out of luck. I have not heard anything further.

 

* Orest

[oskrypuch]

FWIW, for the Canadians here, I just contacted AARTech in Canada, where I purchased the tstats, and they are waiting for a shipment from SM to carryout the swap-out to v2.2 dongles.

 

So all good. Full marks to SM to resolving this issue.

 

* Orest

[nickcat]

Thanks Orest.

 

Could you export all the programs you use for this so I can look them over and try to adapt it to my setup?

 

It looked like a fair bit of your stuff was missing from your examples in the other thread.

 

I'm also going to have to learn how to set up the variables. I only upgraded to 3 about a week ago, so hadn't invested any time in it yet.

 

As far as the 2.2 modules, they seem to be fine so far, but because I wasn't controlling them directly before I don't have a good direct comparison. And since they have only been up for about 24 hours any weirdness hasn't had a chance to rear it's ugly head.

[Illusion]

I do not think I can help by giving you my programs. As I have over 200 interrelated folder/programs just dealing with the temperature control in my house I think it would confuse things. Even with me having written them it can take me some time to understand their interrelationship to make changes. I have had to make flow charts for portions of it.

 

That said, I would say start simple. Build a set of programs that set temperature based on conditions. Include ability to override these in the conditions and when the override is removed the conditions will have changed and the temps will go back to desired settings.

 

At the core of my system are just a few enabled programs like:

 

Away Temperature:

If
       Program 'Away Flag' is True

Then

       Wait  30 seconds
       Run Program 'Away Temperature Set Liv Cool' (If)
       Run Program 'Away Temperature Set Liv Heat ' (If)
       Wait  6 seconds
       Run Program 'Away Temperature Set Bedroom Cool' (If)
       Run Program 'Away Temperature Set Bedroom Heat' (If)
       Wait  6 seconds
       Run Program 'Away Temperature Set Office Cool' (If)
       Run Program 'Away Temperature Set Office Heat' (If)

Else
  - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

Daytime Temperature:

If
       From     8:00:00AM
       To      10:00:00PM (same day)
   And Program 'Away Flag' is False
   And Program 'Suspend Temp Programs' is False

Then
       Wait  10 seconds
       Run Program 'Daytime Temperature Set Liv Cool' (If)
       Run Program 'Daytime Temperature Set Liv Heat' (If)
       Wait  6 seconds
       Run Program 'Daytime Temperature Set Bedroom Cool' (If)
       Run Program 'Bedroom Mode Check' (If)

Else
  - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

Office Occupied:

If
       Program 'Away Flag' is False
   And Program 'Suspend Temp Programs' is False
   And (
            Status  'Office / Office Fan' is On
         Or Status  'Office / Office Hutch Lights' is not Off
       )

Then
       Run Program 'Occupied Temperature Set Office Cool' (If)
       Run Program 'Occupied Temperature Set Office Heat' (If)

Else
  - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

Office Un-Occupied:

If
       Program 'Away Flag' is False
   And Program 'Suspend Temp Programs' is False
   And (
            Status  'Office / Office Fan' is Off
         Or Status  'Office / Office Hutch Lights' is Off
       )

Then
       Run Program 'Un-Occupied Temperature Set Office Cool' (If)
       Run Program 'Un-Occupied Temperature Set Office Heat' (If)

Else
  - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

Sleep Temperature:

If
       From    10:01:00PM
       To       7:59:59AM (next day)
   And Program 'Away Flag' is False
   And Program 'Suspend Temp Programs' is False

Then
       Wait  10 seconds
       Run Program 'Sleep Temperature Set Bedroom Cool' (If)
       Run Program 'Sleep Temperature Set Bedroom Heat' (If)
       Wait  6 seconds
       Run Program 'Sleep Temperature Set Liv Cool' (If)
       Run Program 'Sleep Temperature Set Liv Heat' (If)

Else
  - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

 

'Away Flag' is an empty program controlled by my Home/Away KPL button.

'Suspend Temp Programs' is an empty program controlled by a KPL button.

 

You could set a different one for each area.

 

Temperature control is such a personal thing I think it would be tough to have one persons programs work for all. I just list these as ideas to get you started. I do not think my methods of programming are as skillful as more advanced members of this forum. I am reasonably certain that using a different approach like Orest's machine states would greatly simplify things, it is just beyond my capability.

 

So I take a much more blunt force approach. I write some schedule based programs, and then keep adding parameters and other interrelated snippets as situations come up that I wish were accounted for. Years go by and I end up with literately hundreds of programs to adjust my temperature. Messy, but it does work flawlessly and nearly every possible desired operating parameter has been addressed. The one nice thing about this approach is that you can have basic scheduling and/or occupancy with some overrides and away settings operational in 30m of programming or less.