It would be nine if I can manage my A/C vents with my phone thru the Wize App. I would like to auto program for all the vents to close at 11:00PM except for the bedroom and reopen at 7:30AM. this way I can set my temperature higher but it will be concentrated on my bedroom. I can also close the vents for rooms I don’t use.
What do you think
Sounds good in theory, but I do know depending on the size of a house, let’s say you close 80% of the vents and let the air flow to the other 20% the furnace can get unhappy and shut off. I found this out because I manually closed a bunch for rooms I was not using and my furnace got unhappy, opened a few and it got better.
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Hey Jason,
I was thinking more of the hot areas like South Florida. I sleep with pale fans so I do not need the A/C to be so cold.
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Keen has something like this already, but I think it would be good for Wyze to develop something similar to foster competition.
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The Smart Vent market I see it wide opened now, the few companies selling them have bad reviews and crazy prices, to me an Smart Thermostat get you only have way, you need it to control the vents to really have an effective temperature control in occcupied and unoccupied rooms.
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I like the idea of a residential “smart vent” control module as part of a holistic HVAC control system that incorporates a kW and kWh data logging and real time monitoring to see the impact on energy consumption as adjustments are made.
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How about a smart vent to easily control/zone a forced air Hvac unit?
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I have a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house with an office space with central air. Having smart air vents that close when any of the rooms are not in occupied would help improve energy efficiency. This would also help keep the rooms at a regular temperature throughout the house.
Just a thought.
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Yes, I agree this is better regulate temperature for each of the rooms. However, as far as it being energy-efficient, that is 100% dependent on the whole HVAC system.
In order it for it to be energy efficient it need to be tied to a VRF (variable refrigerant flow) system to achieve any type of dollar savings. Otherwise the compressor may be going into short cycling and could cause huge dollar repairs, greater than any savings associated with warmer temperatures settings as just one potential issue.
If not VRF, then you need a compressor that can vary its speed to achieve energy efficiency.
Would be awesome to have good affordable smart hvac vents that connect to our smart thermostat like flair, keen, ecovent and the new one Alea.
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A smart thermostat with integrated room temperature sensors and vent controls. There are some vents on the market right now but they’re fairly expensive for even one, let alone doing multiple rooms.
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Big thanks to @zaul.covarrubias526 on this forum for this idea.
Wyze should build smart duct vents for HVAC systems that tie in with the it smart thermostat in development. It could potentially use the Wyze outdoor camera hub to conserve power to the units or use the other wyze widget hub for sensors.
This would allow for zoning of a home that doesn’t have it, turn off rooms that are too hot/cold, who knows what else
Thoughts?
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Problem: What smart thermostats lack in the market is a way to prevent hot or cold spots in your home. They will turn on cold air during the Summer and hot air during the Winter based on the temperature by the thermostat. This leaves your home with a cold small bathroom or a hot large upstairs bedroom during the Summer. A similar but opposite situation would exist during the Winter.
Solution: Create a heating/cooling register (floor or wall vent) that would determine the temperature of the surrounding area (IR?) and that would then adjust its vent more open or more closed depending on that temperature until the whole house has equalized to your desired temperature.
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Unfortunately this one’s more complicated than it seems…20 yr HVAC professional here, system design and controls. I’ve zoned LOTS of homes…
The biggest hurdle to the theory of controlling each room individually with the supply vent/grills is- what do you do with the rest of the air? Here’s the conundrum-
Most of your HVAC systems are designed to deliver a specific amount of air when running. For round numbers we’ll say 2000 CFM (5 tons of cooling). Each duct in your home is sized to deliver a specific portion of that total air flow based upon heat load…
Let’s say you only want air to one room and the ducts to that room can only handle 200cfm. What do you do with the other 1800 CFM getting chucked down the pipe?
If you do nothing the pressure rises within the ductwork. They won’t explode but the increased static pressure/load on the blower motor will eventually kill it and possibly your compressor too as it slugs unvaporized/liquid refrigerant back to the compressor. Oh yeah, it’ll sound like a freight train at the supply grill and your evaporator coil will freeze too due to lack of air flow.
Current zone systems overcome this with appropriately sized zones, bypass loops that feed the extra air right back to the return or dump it in a common area, or have integrated system controls to reduce the systems capacity.
Think of it as a fire hose worth of water through a garden hose. It just ain’t gonna work. Not to mention all of the closed supply vents are going to sweat and drip water (zone dampers are upstream in the ductwork and insulated).
Trying to zone a house simply by opening and closing vents is a recipe for disaster.
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Excited about the new Wyze Thermostat! Would like to make a suggestion, as a smart thermostat owner/user, and that is to consider making smart vent duct covers to sync with the thermostats! With multiple rooms and floors it’s difficult to truly manage the HVAC in an efficient manner. In the summer months the 2nd floor requires more AC but being the entire house is on one system the 1st floor ends up being to cold. This would be the opposite for the winter months. It would be great to use the remote sensors to control these vents and have heat or AC redirected to the rooms/floors that you want. Why have empty rooms heated or cooled when you could close vents in those rooms and divert to the areas you are in or need.
There are smart vents on the market but they suffer from the same issue … COST! Wyze has been great at identifying the problem and coming up with economical solutions for the smart home owner. I have the utmost confidence that Wyze could develop and bring a cost effective product to the market! Great work team!
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AFAIU, a general challenge with retrofitting these to many forced-air systems is that they can lead to higher pressure in the system than it was designed for. (At the most extreme, if all vents were accidentally closed, then something would blow, I presume.) AFAIR, some smart vents attempt to avoid this using pressure sensors. So maybe this is a solved problem now? Can anyone comment?
EDIT: Oh, I just saw the earlier comment from an HVAC engineer saying “Trying to zone a house simply by opening and closing vents is a recipe for disaster.” Okay, so that’s pretty much what I thought.
Equalizing or ‘balancing’ HVAC systems is not for the feignt hearted.
Dear Wyze Team,
Since you’ve got a Thermostat in your arsenal now, can you please also add Smart Registers? This would be a fantastic addition to intelligently monitor and control heat and cooling delivery to specific areas of the house. My house was built 5 years ago, I have 2 floors and live in the northern climate. I have a single zone, so I am constantly adjusting my registers to get consistent temperatures year-round. There are smart registers on the market, but they are very expensive and do not belong to any common ecosystem. I feel like you could make a significant contribution and disruption in this market space.
Thank you for your consideration,
-Brent
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I have a large central AC unit at one end of a long house, and while the kitchen, living room and lounge area are always cool, the bedrooms and office are always a lot warmer. I wish I had smart vents that used sensors to see if anyone was in a room, and if it is empty shut off the vent to that room which would redirect the air to the occupied areas.
I give this idea freely to wyse to use as they see fit. Of course I would not complain if they gave me a set of smart vents.
I get what you are saying, but I have a 2 stage furnace and AC system… so most of the time, it is not blowing full CFM anyway. And when it doesn’t, the cold basement and far end of the house stay cold in the winter unless I restrict vents in the rooms closest shortest distance from the furnace… isn’t that also why registers have dampers in the first place?
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