Help with HVAC thermostats

[ysualum]

Hi Everyone,

I've been perusing the forums for some time getting everything planned for our new house construction. I plan on having an ELK M1Gold for the hardware backbone and will eventually run Girder or Homeseer. We will be having 3 furnaces/AC units for the whole house. Each of these will have subzones controlled by electric dampers. I'm trying to figure out on which HVAC thermostat to buy and what would be needed.

I like the new features and small footprint of the HAI Omnistat2. Are these able to on their own control electric dampers directly or is there a zone controller I would need to purchase? I don't see any made by HAI and it's not mentioned in manuals. Could I just buy another zone controller, such as from RCS or Aprilaire and then connect the Omnistats to that?

I would prefer to have a zone controller handle the commands, I don't want to try to program everything through the Elk as mentioned in other posts. I'm new to HA/low voltage and want to make things as easy as I can.

Appreciate any input. Thanks

Prashant

 

[ysualum]

Found the answer to my own question in case it helps anyone else.

RCS sells two types of zone controllers, (ZCV2, ZCV4, ZCV6) are designed for use with RCS thermostats only. (ZC2s and ZC4) can be used with any thermostat including the HAI Omnistats.

HAI doesn't have any branded zone controller.

Aprilaire has their own brand specific zone controller. Not sure if their thermostats could be used with the ZC2s and ZC4, but I would assume so.

I will probably get some Omnistat 2s with a couple ZC4s