Am i the only one being driven crazy by manual threshold settings that do absolutely nothing? i’ve searched all over and either find people acting like it works as expected or also finding the settings are wonky, but no one can explain why. Ecobee never follows the max runtime per stage settings and the temp delta settings are not adequate for my situation. and i am entirely confused about how they do/don’t work together to make staging decisions.
my home has a poor envelope and heat/cool retention that I am working on addressing, and i have a new multi-stage heat pump/HE furnace setup. it is very realistic for my temp to hover below the temp differential, not making progress but never dropping to the next stage temp delta trigger. Given the nature of my home the heat pump is not as effective at lower temps, but the thermostat never switches to aux heat unless it’s a giant setback/recovery or the outdoor temp falls below the compressor cutoff. this is the same behavior whether i am in auto or manual mode. actually, switching to manual triggers stage 2 compressor even less frequently than auto, and neither kicks in the aux.
is there anyway to actually get control of staging so i don’t run stage 2 for 3 hours when the furnace could get it done in 30 minutes? i lean toward comfort over total efficiency/cost at this point. i don’t have the luxury.
I am dealing with the same staging issue, but I have only been cooling so far on my new system. I have learned that ecobee has settings tied to other settings that make no logical sense. For example, if you use temperature hold (vs. scheduling comfort settings), the Fan Minimum Run Time setting is ignored, as is Stage 1 Max Run Time. Stage 1 Max Run Time is also ignored if you set Reverse Staging on.
When features failed to work, I called ecobee. It was very difficult to get through to a human, but the tech stayed with me for an hour go get things working. I am now able to use 1st Stage max runtime to engage Stage 2 after 10 minutes or 30 minutes, but setting at 45 minutes will not work.
I don’t like the extremely long runtimes on my Bosch IDS heat pump. That may be energy efficient, but I have to wonder how long mechanical parts will last if they run 12–14 hours/day. On the other hand, I have seen many Reddit posts where people are trying to get their system to run as long as possible. I just don’t think saving $5/month on electricity will make up for a $5000 repair bill in 5 years.