Thermostat & Emergency Heat - Any updates on this?

Just picked up two Wyze tstats to replace a Honeywell system in a new construction home.

Spent hours up until 3am on here and on Reddit trying to figure out what’s going on with Wyze thermostats and emergency heat.

In the app with the latest firmware, I do not see an emergency heat toggle in the advanced settings. During setup I also did not see any mention of this, although I do remember selecting “heat pump” during setup.

The system is operating normally, but it’s warm this week (Virginia). Last week was cold, and next week it’s going to dip back below freezing. I’m worried that this purchase may have been a mistake - as the EM heat is going to need to turn on when the heat pump can’t keep up.

Then there’s the other issue - I’ve been reading horror stories about peoples electric bills skyrocketing because the Wyze system apparently will use EM heat as second stage heating during NORMAL operation…but there is no indication of this anywhere.

Wyze team - is this going to be addressed in a firmware update? This is a critical, BASIC function of a thermostat/HVAC with a heat pump. The only thing I saw on here was a 160post long thread about it from two years ago.

Additionally - I cannot seem to figure out what has priority, and when, as far as the settings go. I’ve created a schedule for both tstats, and then I’ve also set the ‘preferred temperatures’. Additionally, I turned on the auto away mode for when my iPhone is seen leaving the geofence.

There is no way to tell which has priority though. If the schedule is running, any other thermostat I’ve ever had shows a ‘following schedule’ indicator.

I literally have no idea what rules the Wyze thermostat is following by looking at the tstat or the app…but it is working.

Thanks & sorry for the long read.

12 days later! I guess you have your answer by now? I know I have been waiting on the answer for almost a year.

Unfortunately, no.

I still have no option to enable EM heat when it is needed. The week before last we had a few days where it was below 30, and the heat pump was really struggling. The system was literally running for 16 hours on two of those days, trying to maintain 70 in our downstairs. Since there is no way to enable EM heat, it looks like it simply just never kicked on. To test this theory, I temporarily connected the old Honeywell thermostat downstairs, and it asked the system for EM heat after about an hour of running.

I was tempted to try wiring the Wyze thermostat in a way that I have seen here and on Reddit (but nowhere officially) so that it would at least give me the option to enable EM heat in the advanced settings.,.but after pondering it, I wouldn’t be able to set a temperature for it to turn off, and then I wouldn’t have ANUY indication of when the system was even using EM heat or not.

I have kept the Wyze thermostats for now, as they are working, and its been very convenient…but for people with heat pumps, this is kind of an insane issue. I am not looking forward to seeing what the electric bill is going to look like this month…

We’ll see.

I have Wyze Cam and ear buds, so want to stay with Wyze for thermostat and room sensors. However I have a heat pump and need to be able to control the emergency heat manually like I do today with my Honeywell Home Pro Series standalone thermostat. So I am waiting to purchase the Wyze Thermostat with 3 Room Sensors bundle until this feature is available. Unfortunately if this feature is not available within 6 to 8 weeks I will have to invest in Honeywell’s or Nest’s system. Hopefully this lights the fire under you to resolve this issue (not being mean, rather trying to give Wyze a nudge in the right direction :slight_smile: ).

Wyze, are you ever going to address this? Some response on if/when you are going to address the emergency heat settings in your thermostat would be nice.

Would really like an update on this. As well wyze

If you want emergency heat to appear on your app and in the t-stat, move W1 to the *, delete and reinstall the termostat. If that doesn’t work, during setup, tell the app you have W2 and *. The app will squawk about a missing wire. Just ignore it and you will see the option for emergency heat. HTH,

That’s not the issue I see the option for emergency heat in the app.

We want to be able to tell when the system is using aux heat.

I feel like this thermostat goes to aux heat wayyyyy too much and can’t tell easily when it’s doing so other then taking temp readings from the vents.

I have my system in max savings and this is still the case with outside temps in 50s. Old unit ran on heat pump just fine

Gotcha. We are having the same issue. It is 40+ degrees outside and emergency heat is active. My Nest works so much better. I am thinking about just biting the bullet and buying another Nest. The heat pump balance in Nest is really good and works well.

This doesn’t work for me. Photos of my setup are above. I still cannot see an em heat option no matter how I wire this thing. And the system is still blowing lukewarm air for hours and hours and hours on cold days. On warmer days, it’ll blow lukewarm air for maybe 30 min and then be blazing hot after that until the temp is reached. I’m about to just give up. Wyze already got our money and clearly doesn’t care at all. It’s been AN ENTIRE YEAR!!!

Same. Wyze is never going to address this and it’s incredibly frustrating.
On the other hand, there are some days where our compressor will run for hours and hours while the system is just barely maintaining the temp inside. It’s [Mod Edit] insane!!! It was 40 here the other day, and ky downstairs tstat was just running for 9 hours straight before I finally went and hit the breaker switch. It was just stuck blowing cool air. On other days, the air will be hot as hell after 30min. I literally never know what’s going on and have to keep a constant eye on this [Mod Edit] thing. Called a tech out to coke and look at our one year old system … no issues.

The heat pump will either run all day and night long if you let it, or it’ll kick on the heat strips when they aren’t needed after 30min. There’s no balance. It’s wild as hell and our electric bill is def suffering.

WYZE HELLO ???

MOD NOTE: Post edited to conform to the Community Guidelines.

I have 2 Wyze Thermostats. I installed 1 a year ago and just finished remodeling an area for the 2nd one.
I thought that the Aux Heat (emergency heat) was not working. First reason was that during the install testing, there was no heat when I got to the heat 2 test. Second reason is that there is NO indication that AUX heat is on - neither at the thermostat or the app!
Today, I decided to change the wiring for testing, but before I did I tried a few more things. I discovered that an indicator on the furnace itself will show when the AUX heat is being used (I still have a honeywell thermostat connected to test with). So I ran the Wyze thermostat temp up 6 degrees higher than the room temp. The furnace indicator light came on right away.
When I checked the Honeywell thermostat - set normally - It also showed that the Aux heat was on.
Both of the Wyze thermostats worked the same way.
I recently saw that they reduced the temperature differential from 5 deg. down to 4 degrees before the AUX heat kicks in. This is still an issue because you have to set the thermostat too high to get Aux Heat.
My Honeywell sets the temperature differential for the AUX heat at 2 deg. and works well.
The other issue is that there is no indicator that AUX heat is being used on the thermostat nor in the app. A real design flaw in my opinion.
Because of these 2 issues, there are probably a lot of people that think - like I did - that the Aux heat is not working at all.
Come on Wyze. How hard can it be to address these issues.
Ted

@wyze Sounds like there are a few things consistent through this thread that need addressed with the thermostat.

-Simple notification in the app when the heat pump is using secondary heating circuit.
-Clarification on how the Behavior changes if any affect the calling of secondary heating
-Why is my Wyze thermostat calling secondary heating more so then my old thermostat

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I joined these forums yesterday to post an issue I’m having, and after spending 10 minutes poking around other threads, my faith in Wyze has absolutely plummeted. So many unaddressed issues with existing products, while they continue to churn out new ones. Very disappointing.

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