Quote:
Originally Posted by MoneyGuy
My furnace has a C wire.
I’d hire a pro for sure. I’d never do it myself.
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If you have a live c-wire into the nest, it's easy as hell. No need for a pro. Just don't forget to take a picture of the wires before doing it. Worst case scenario, with the pic you reverse what you did, and call a pro at your leisure (rather than in a panic).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Barnes
Yes, the only kind of 'advanced' settings I changed was the temp differential to 1.5deg. The default is lower and I felt that it was cycling too often.
I think so.
Install is pretty much the same as the Nest but, the Ecobee comes with a Power Extender Kit for installs that dont have a C-wire. If you have a Nest, you probably have one already. It may have changed since I installed a gen 2 Nest but you couldn't use a Nest without a C-wire.
If you get an Ecobee with sensors, you can place them in rooms that you are more frequently in. If you have a thermostat set at 20 and a sensor in the family room and bedroom, the temperature is averaged across the rroms that are occupied.
For instance, our upstairs has the thermostat in the Master, one sensor in the family room, one in my son's room.
Our upstairs is set for 21 deg, the master is south facing and may be 22deg, Family room is north facing so say it's 18deg, sons room is in the middle of the house and say it's 19 deg. If all rooms are occupied the Ecobee would report a temperature of 20. The average of all three.
If only the family room at 17 and the master at 22 is occupied the average would be 19.5 and the heat would kick on to bring that average temperature of the 2 occupied rooms up to 21.
Nest has sensors too and they try to balance in a similar way but they are only temperature sensors. They can't inform the system that you're are still home and have been watching TV in the family room for 2 hours.
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Gen 2 nests and later can operate without a c-wire via power steal. I know this because I've done this. It isn't necessarily the best route though as the power draw isn't necessarily high enough to ensure your thermostat doesn't die at the most inopportune time.
I had c-wires installed at a later date for the gen 2 and I'll get someone to do the same for the gen 3 I currently use at a later date, but I know for sure they definitely can operate without the c-wire.