JGoodish
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- Jun 10, 2006
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JGoodish
Since I’m “lucky” enough to live where it snows 6 months a year, and I’m always cold even when it’s not cold in my house, I’ve thought about installing a humidifier on my furnace to help bring the indoor humidity up a bit during the winter (likely an Aprilaire 700 powered model).
Aprilaire appears to make two different versions of their powered humidifier: a manual, and an automatic model. The manual model relies on you to adjust for outdoor temperature, and the automatic version has a temperature probe which must run to the exterior of the building.
Since I’ve also wanted a connected WiFi (versus a “smart” thermostat), I thought that I could centralize humidifier control in a new thermostat. Indeed, it appears that I can, but obtaining a connected thermostat which isn’t a “smart” one (i.e. Nest or ecobee) *and* provides accessory control is proving difficult. Honeywell has some WiFi thermostats which will pull weather data and also report indoor humidity, but the accessory control is missing from the direct-to-consumer models (but appears to exist in similar models sold through contractors). Same story with Emerson and one or two other manufacturers I’ve researched.
As a result, I may be forced to consider a Nest or ecobee. I don’t want a thermostat that does things on its own (or reports to Google), so the Nest doesn’t seem to be the best choice even though I think that it does have the best user interface. I don’t want to use the ecobee sensors, which are optional, but it appears that the new ecobee has Alexa spyware built in and, according to at least one review that I read, makes itself ugly with a glowing red light when you disable Alexa.
I’m not sure where to go from here. The other option, or course, is that I could use the humidifier’s automatic option and just manage it separately from the thermostat, but I’m unsure of how much benefit the humidifier will provide to living comfort in the first place.
What say the experience of others on these topics?
Aprilaire appears to make two different versions of their powered humidifier: a manual, and an automatic model. The manual model relies on you to adjust for outdoor temperature, and the automatic version has a temperature probe which must run to the exterior of the building.
Since I’ve also wanted a connected WiFi (versus a “smart” thermostat), I thought that I could centralize humidifier control in a new thermostat. Indeed, it appears that I can, but obtaining a connected thermostat which isn’t a “smart” one (i.e. Nest or ecobee) *and* provides accessory control is proving difficult. Honeywell has some WiFi thermostats which will pull weather data and also report indoor humidity, but the accessory control is missing from the direct-to-consumer models (but appears to exist in similar models sold through contractors). Same story with Emerson and one or two other manufacturers I’ve researched.
As a result, I may be forced to consider a Nest or ecobee. I don’t want a thermostat that does things on its own (or reports to Google), so the Nest doesn’t seem to be the best choice even though I think that it does have the best user interface. I don’t want to use the ecobee sensors, which are optional, but it appears that the new ecobee has Alexa spyware built in and, according to at least one review that I read, makes itself ugly with a glowing red light when you disable Alexa.
I’m not sure where to go from here. The other option, or course, is that I could use the humidifier’s automatic option and just manage it separately from the thermostat, but I’m unsure of how much benefit the humidifier will provide to living comfort in the first place.
What say the experience of others on these topics?