Bryant Furnace

stacyh3

Active Member
I'm hoping someone out there has extensive HVAC experience or has some good contacts. As some of you know, my family and I are in the process of building a new home. Our builder recommended a Bryant Evolution System Plus90iâ„¢ Gas Furnace. It appears that this furnace has a pretty complex control mechanism. So I'm wondering if I can interface it to my automation system.

My builder was told that you can do furnace diagnostics from a PC or PDA. I'm wondering if you can do control also. I don't want to loose features of the furnace, but I'd love to be able to control it from my automation system.

I sent a note to Bryant via a link on their web site asking for information about automation interfaces and the response that I got was "we're not technical people in this office." That's fine. Why they didn't have the customer service skills to forward my inquiry on to someone within Bryant who does have technical knowledge, I do not know. They suggested I talk to a local dealer. I will certainly do that, but I thought I'd reach out to this community first.

Thanks,
Stacy
 
I think it would be safer to control that furnace through the termostat, or do you have something in mind that a thermostat wouldn't be able to control? Sounds like a nice setup tho!
 
I was looking at the HAI and Aprilaire thermostats and the ability to interface them to the Elk-M1G. I want to be able to have access to themostat controls from my touchscreens. I don't know if the the HAI or other thermostats will work with the Bryant furnace. It seems like the Bryant thermostats have lots of smarts in them. I just want to be able to have the Elk (via the touchscreen) send a temperature change request to the thermostat.

Stacy
 
The Elk RM touch screen software supports HVAC control, so you would be good there. I just bought the HAI RC-80 to control my HVAC, but I have a simple single state system. Do you have a model number or spec sheet for the actual thermostats?
 
I don't have a model number yet. I'll ask my builder to get that from the HVAC guy tomorrow. There are a number of options listed on the Bryant web site including one with a remote control! Yikes!

Stacy
 
stacyh3 said:
including one with a remote control! Yikes!
you can always figure a way to control the unit with IR/RF (whatever the remote uses) via your HA system
 
My builder also recommended the Bryant Evolution system. He used it on another house and loved it (the variable speed fan is generally silent). The other house had a Crestron based automation system, and the Crestron folks had (or were going to) write a driver for this thermostat. It would be great if Elk would write a driver for this as well!

--Bob
 
Bob,

If you find any additional information please do post it. I still haven't heard back from my local dealer. I'll have to ping my builder again...

Updated Information below

Since my last post, I found this Crestron Electronics, Inc. - HVAC which includes screenshots and information about control of the Bryant Evolution series.

Stacy
 
Here is the Crestron page: Crestron Bryant integration

I can't see the .PDF file, but the Sample Screens link gives you an idea of all the features they support. I assume the thermostat they are interfacing with is the Evolution Control. Bryant's website doesn't talk about integration at all, but the Evolution Control thermostat is the only one that has the "Remote Access" feature. "Remote Access" seems to mean you can go to a password protected section of the bryant web-site and change your thermostat settings from there (if you go on vacation and forgot to setback your furnace). Not too appealing, but it means there must be some level of communication going on with that thermostat.

I just sent ELK an e-mail asking them about this system.

--Bob
 
We have 2 Bryant Furnace & A/C units driving a shared plentum and configured for two-stage operation. One unit carries the load most of the year, and the second unit kicks in as needed. The Bryant Comfort Zone II zone controller does a wonderful job controlling this 8-zone system. Bryant did offer an unsupported interface to monitor and program the unit through the PC.

Jeff
 
Jeff,

Do you have details or documents you can share about the PC interface? If you email any information, you may need to copy my email address from my profile. A couple of times, people have had issues sending me email from the site itself.

Thanks,
Stacy
 
The version I use is called "Bryant Zone Access Plus Software 1.3.0 March 1999". While somewhat dated, it runs fine under XP SP1. I haven't tried it with SP2.

The zone controller uses a RS485 bus to connect to the master thermostat and up to 7 additional digital thermostats. The computer is connected to that network through a RS232 to RS485 converter.

I downloaded the system monitor software from a Bryant dealer support website about 5 years ago. I couldn't find that site again with Google, but perhaps a newer version of the software is available directly through your dealer.

It's a pretty neat tool that provides a full screen display of zone control positions, temperatures in each zone, and the present operational state of the HVAC units. The Comfort Zone controller has worked flawlessly since I first set up the system.

I uploaded a temporary copy to: http://jeffvolp.home.att.net/setupbhm.exe

It includes a demo mode if you don't have the hardware connection.
 
JeffVolp said:
It includes a demo mode if you don't have the hardware connection.
How do you initiate the demo mode? When I try, the software won't run without a connection to a zone controller.
 
I get a divide by 0 error when i run the code. As for the demo mode, this was in the readme file:

Features and Limitations
in this release (Ver 1.0 4/97).
---------------------------------------
DEMO MODE:
To start the program without
communications double click
on the startup screen background
this will invoke DEMO mode.
(A demomode box will appear in
the bottom left corner)
 
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