Omnipro II and temperature zones ?

Serhito

Member
Sort of new to home automation and need some guidelines.

I am looking to equip my new construction house with an Omnipro II controller. I will have 6-7 different zones as far as air conditioning/heating is concerned. I would like to be able to control the temperature in each room through a dedicated thermostat and control that input remotely with my iPhone.
I am looking at a temperature zone controller such as this one here :
http://www.smarthome.com/3038C/HVAC-4-Zone-Controller/p.aspx

My understanding is that I will need a thermostat control unit in every 6-7 rooms that needs to be compatible with the Omnipro II controller AND the HVAC zone controller ?
Correct ?
Is there any zone controller that anybody can recommend ?

Thanks.
 
OR
a specific thermostat that would be compatible with the temp zone controller that I posted the link, and the Omnipro II ?
 
Theoretically this zone controller will work with HAI thermostats, as it only requires standard heat-pump thermostats and omnistats can do it.
 
Have you spoken with your HVAC contractor about your plans yet? The reality is that for a system to be big enough to heat/cool the whole house, it needs to be good sized. But, if you want to now adjust temperature in just one small room, guess how it handles that? You can't pump 5-tons of air through a single bedroom! Instead the system must be sized with the appropriate intakes and outputs, a blow-by system so you don't put too much pressure into the room (basically restricting the system because you won't have appropriate intakes/outputs to run the whole system through a single room) and a multi-speed system that can run at a slow speed thereby reducing the pressure, blah blah blah...

So not to say it can't be done, but I just want to say that it has to be perfectly designed by a competent HVAC contractor - and you should make sure it's worth the expense before investing too much energy into how you control it.

That said - Once it comes down to controlling a multi-zone HVAC system (to be clear, that's a single HVAC system that's divided into multiple zones through the use of dampers) - there are two ways.
  1. A non-communicating zone controller - RCS and many other companies make these. They work with any normal compatible thermostat... the thermostats think they have sole control of the HVAC system and make their calls like normal; then the Zone Controller handles the damper control and prioritizing heat/cool calls and zone prioritization. In this case, you'd just use communicating thermostats like HAI's OmniStat2 for control. In this scenario, you need Cat5 to each thermostat and each must be wired up. A single Elk XSP can handle 4 thermostats I believe...
  2. Using a complete Communicating Zone Controller - The only one I'm familiar with is the RCS model. In that case, the zone controller has all the brains - and the units on the wall are just Wall Display Units - dumb terminals. Only one connection to the panel is needed, as it's connected to the controller. The individual thermostats only need 4 conductors. What's really nice about this, is that from any thermostat, you can see the status of the system (if the system is running; if it's in the Minimum Run Time or Minimum Off Time, etc. It makes for a pretty cohesive system - I'm just not sure how compatible it is with the HAI controllers.
 
I have a basic 3 zone system.
The HAI thermostats talk to the zone controller for interface to the HVAC unit.
The Omni talks to the thermostats for automation.
The zone controller manages the traffic between the zones for heat/cooling calls and operates the dampers and HVAC unit.

I'm sure a larger multi-zone system woul operate on the same principle.
 
I have a basic 3 zone system.
The HAI thermostats talk to the zone controller for interface to the HVAC unit.
The Omni talks to the thermostats for automation.
The zone controller manages the traffic between the zones for heat/cooling calls and operates the dampers and HVAC unit.

I'm sure a larger multi-zone system woul operate on the same principle.

which zone controller do you have ?
 
If going with a non-communicating zone controller, it really doesn't matter all that much which one... they're not the most complex devices... It's the communicating thermostats that matter, and they won't realize that they're not talking directly to the HVAC system.

Although, I did highlight some benefits above to going with a communicating zone controller... and the only real one available is the RCS.
 
I just built a new house with 10 zones. 7 are in-floor heating zones and 3 are A/C zones. I used the Omnistat thermostats along with the disk-like temp sensors for the in-floor heat zones and 3 temp/humid sensors for the 3 AC zones. I have all of the thermostats themselves in the control room with the Omni.

These thermostats interfaced with the zone controller that the HVAC company supplied with their system. Like Work2Play said, this many zones leads to a complicated system. Mine is also geothermal with boiler backup.

I would recommend using the zone controller that the HVAC company is used to and is known to work with your HVAC system. The Omnistats are extremely customizable and the HVAC people that I used were amazed as to the different number of configurations that could be programmed.

Joe
 
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