Help configuring basement for separate zone? – Flair

Andrew Vital

• 5 years ago
  I have the main floor of my house with smart vents and an Ecobee with several ecobee room sensors. My finished basement has vents that run off the main floor system. In the summer I just close the vents as it stays cool enough, but now that colder weather is here, I'm trying to set up the basement as a separate zone for heat.

I bought another puck and want to use it as a sensor in the basement. Is there a way I can configure Flair so I can set a temp on the sensor puck and have it turn on the heat knowing that the vents on the main floor will close once they get to their set temps? Essentially making my basement a separate zone?

Comments

12 comments

Chrissie

• 5 years ago
• Edited
  Yes definitely.

Minor note/clarification - on the flair side, we consider 'zones' to be the true HVAC zones in the home, so if you have a single air handler, you have 1 zone. From there, you can set up as many rooms that are independently controllable and within a room you can have as many devices as make sense.

Not sure if that helps clarify but essentially, I'd start by creating a room called 'Basement', assigning the appropriate vents and Pucks/sensors to it, and then if it's part of the main HVAC system (same blower/heater/ac), make sure that you set that room as part of the main zone. From there, you can just set points as you'd like and it should automatically do what you suggested above if I followed that correctly.

If you email support with the email address you use with your flair account, we can take a look at the setup and make sure it all looks right :)

Brian Wuttke

• 5 years ago
  To add to this, I am wanting my basement (a rental suite) to have its own zone in the aspect that the tenant can independently control just the basement. Would be nice to have a guest profile for the tenant where they can have their own app to control just their zone and have no control over the main house

Flair Customer Support

• 5 years ago
  Hi Brian,

The tenant can control the set point by rotating the Puck. Is there other functionality that you'd want them to have that requires the app?

All the best,

Finn

Flair Customer Support

• 5 years ago
  Hi Andrew,

If you want the basement temperature to drive the ecobee, do this:

• Set Flair's Set Point Controller to "Thermostat" (located in Home Settings->System Settings)

• Create a comfort setting in the ecobee that uses the sensor from the basement only - use occupancy to trigger this

• Place Smart Vents and Pucks/remote sensors in all rooms around your home

The basement will drive the ecobee and the Smart Vents will open and close to maintain the set points you give the rooms.

All the best,

Finn

Al Diaz

• 5 years ago
  Andrew, I want to do the EXACT same thing you do. Just got my basement finished. Main floor (non-basement) HVAC is also tied to ducts in basement. Ecobee in main floor. I go downstairs, would like the heat to go on, and not heat the perfectly comfortable first floor. I don’t want my vents to just open or close. I need heat pumping through them to be diverted to the basement.

How did you end up doing this?

Andrew Vital

• 5 years ago
  Since I wanted to maintain primary control with my Ecobee on the main floor, I added an Ecobee remote sensor in the basement and have it enabled only for the "work" comfort zone I created which is when I'm primarily down here. It's not perfect as the Ecobee is just averaging the lower basement temp with the higher main floor temps but at least the main floor rooms won't overheat due to the flair vents.

We’ll see how this goes as winter starts. If it isn't good enough my plan B is to just add an HVAC zone controller and another ecobee in the basement so I can actually turn on the furnace independently of the main floor in response to the temp in the basement. In that scenario, the main floor flair vents would close if the basement ecobee was causing it to get too warm upstairs and once the basement is satisfied it would shut the system off. The only downside (besides the cost) to this method is without adding flair vents in the basement if I had the basement set to 70 and it satisfied and then the main floor called for heat I could end up driving the temp in the basement too warm, but given it's the coldest area of the house I don't see that being a major issue.