HVAC Questions - Looking at Rheem with EcoNet

[macosr]

I'm replacing the two furnaces/hvac units in my house. Between the two furnaces there are 9 zones. I'm primarily looking at Rheem's newer systems that are modulating variable speed and their systems have a deep integration with their zoning control which is EcoNet. The main drawback I am seeing is that from what I can find there is no EcoNet integration with Control4. That's not a deal breaker for me because the systems I'm replacing don't integrate currently with my Control4 setup.

With that said here are my questions for everyone:

1. Has anyone hear of any potential integration with a driver being worked on for EcoNet?

2. What have others done for larger HVAC installations when replacing systems or building with many zones, high efficiency, etc.?

Thanks!

[DLite]

On 10/24/2020 at 7:18 AM, macosr said:

I'm replacing the two furnaces/hvac units in my house. Between the two furnaces there are 9 zones. I'm primarily looking at Rheem's newer systems that are modulating variable speed and their systems have a deep integration with their zoning control which is EcoNet. The main drawback I am seeing is that from what I can find there is no EcoNet integration with Control4. That's not a deal breaker for me because the systems I'm replacing don't integrate currently with my Control4 setup.

With that said here are my questions for everyone:

1. Has anyone hear of any potential integration with a driver being worked on for EcoNet?

2. What have others done for larger HVAC installations when replacing systems or building with many zones, high efficiency, etc.?

Thanks!

We have a similar situation -- 2 furnaces/hvac units with 7 zones total.  IMHO, Control4 integration is tightest with Ecobee's or Control4 thermostats, and much less tight with manufacturer-specific thermostats.  And, as I understand it, you won't get the most out of a manufacturer-specific zoning system unless you use the manufacturer's thermostats.  On the other hand, manufacturer-specific systems give you more HVAC features.  So, it's a trade-off without a perfect solution.

We ended up using a Honeywell zoning board, which is manufacturer-agnostic, with 7 Ecobee's, but that has its own drawbacks. E.g., we don't get true continuously variable speed performance out of our system.

But, if you find a perfect solution, please do let me know!  I hope this helps.

 

[macosr]

16 hours ago, DLite said:

We have a similar situation -- 2 furnaces/hvac units with 7 zones total.  IMHO, Control4 integration is tightest with Ecobee's or Control4 thermostats, and much less tight with manufacturer-specific thermostats.  And, as I understand it, you won't get the most out of a manufacturer-specific zoning system unless you use the manufacturer's thermostats.  On the other hand, manufacturer-specific systems give you more HVAC features.  So, it's a trade-off without a perfect solution.

We ended up using a Honeywell zoning board, which is manufacturer-agnostic, with 7 Ecobee's, but that has its own drawbacks. E.g., we don't get true continuously variable speed performance out of our system.

But, if you find a perfect solution, please do let me know!  I hope this helps.

 

I’ve found the exact same thing. What would be smart is for Control4 to be able to integrate with the manufacturer thermostats for simple temp and schedule. I want to keep the variable speed especially due to the zoning.  

[cdepaola]

1 hour ago, macosr said:

I’ve found the exact same thing. What would be smart is for Control4 to be able to integrate with the manufacturer thermostats for simple temp and schedule. I want to keep the variable speed especially due to the zoning.  

They can for some...  Example, my modulating variable speed Amana uses Honeywell RedLink, which has a driver and fully integrates nicely

[DLite]

3 hours ago, cdepaola said:

They can for some...  Example, my modulating variable speed Amana uses Honeywell RedLink, which has a driver and fully integrates nicely

I have used Honeywell RedLink in the past, with Carrier equipment. In my case, it supported only  a limited number of discrete speeds -- I think it supported 3 speed levels -- but not the continuously variable speeds that a Carrier communicating thermostat would support.  The same is true for the Honeywell zoning board, which supports (I think) 3 speed levels.  However, I've never used Amana, so I'm not sure if Honeywell is uniquely capable of getting true continuously variable speeds from it.

And, I agree it would be great if these manufacturer thermostats would integrate more closely with Control4, but I think the obstacle is very often on the manufacturer side, not the Control4 side. I think C4 and its driver developers do as much as they can with the APIs that are made available, but I'll defer to the experts on whether new and better drivers could be written with the current APIs.  

 

 

[cdepaola]

I guess in my case the Honeywell RedLink Thermostat is Amana’s Communicating Thermostat.  This is why I was saying that some do support C4 integration.  

[Dueport]

Is the system BACnet compatible?  Apparently BACnet is a common deep HVAC communication standard especially commercial systems. Anyone tried integrating with HVAC through this method?  My geothermal zoned systems require manufacturer thermostats they work great and can stay but I have to get a card to allow BACnet integration plus get a driver written. @alanchow noted in another thread that there’s an ip BACnet bridge with a driver. So maybe you could use that if your system supports BACnet? Of course you’d need a driver too.....

[C4 User]

For the highest efficiency zoned HVAC systems, i strongly recommend the manufacturers thermostat as suggest above. That said, i wonder what it would cost for someone on this forum to write a driver for the larger name brands - in my case carrier infinity. Although I might be naive, i believe there are enough carrier users that would fund such a driver. And the same is likely true for other brands. What am I missing?

[Neo1738]

For the most part Aprilaire only can't do more than 2 stage variable A/C. Everything else it can do. 

[C4 User]

6 hours ago, Neo1738 said:

For the most part Aprilaire only can't do more than 2 stage variable A/C. Everything else it can do. 

Agreed. Unfortunately I had a 2 stage system installed a few houses ago back in 2002. Today, efficient systems (ac and heat pumps) are 5 stage or true variable. You can still get a high efficiency gas furnace that is 2 stage burner, but the most efficient gas furnaces are true variable. If I had a multi zone system in my house (and I do) I would only recommend a 5 stage or true variable system with intelligent zone control (meaning the system is monitoring and self-calibrating the air flow to each zone). For Carrier Infinity, one must use the infinity thermostat to get this level of performance. I can only assume the same is true for the highest efficiency units of the other brands.

[macosr]

So what I have found is that some furnaces do control the continually variable speed from the furnace board itself. What I am leaning towards is a zoning system that is driven with ecobee thermostats in each zone. 

[DLite]

On 10/30/2020 at 5:29 PM, macosr said:

So what I have found is that some furnaces do control the continually variable speed from the furnace board itself. What I am leaning towards is a zoning system that is driven with ecobee thermostats in each zone. 

Very interesting. Would you mind sharing which brands have this feature?  And, is it controlled by the zone board or the furnace itself?

Thanks a lot.

 

[macosr]

On 11/3/2020 at 2:03 PM, DLite said:

Very interesting. Would you mind sharing which brands have this feature?  And, is it controlled by the zone board or the furnace itself?

Thanks a lot.

 

The HVAC units are Daikin units. The contractor I am using prefers these because they can use commercial grade zone controls that are not specific to the HVAC units (Like Carrier and Rheem). It gives them more flexibility on zoning and, according to them, the only units they know of right now that can do this (at least from my understanding).

[Jakelay]

I'm no expert on this but I'm starting to investigate thermostats as well and we purchased a York high efficiency, variable speed, multistage, etc. etc. and my understanding is that, at least with some newer units, the thermostat call for different speeds/stages only sets a threshold and the variable speed and stages are handled by the board on the HVAC unit.

Again, don't quote me on this but it appears to be working with our current setup as far as I can tell and might open up some possibilities if you are able to confirm with your installers and/or manufacturers.

I'm starting to look to replace Crestron T-stats from my previous system that handled variable speed, multistage and humidifier that integrates with C4.  It looks like one of the higher end Nest stats will do 3 stages of heat and 2 of cooling and I'm trying to figure out if the hudifiers will work.

Anyway, hope this helps!