Reliability of HAI thermostats

[icellama21]

I was shown a few stories today of people whose HAI thermostats have gone bad and left the heat on while they were on vacation. Yet another great use of home auto so you can deal with this before you get back and the wallpaper is on the floor ... Anyhow, wondering if anyone here has had a problem or if it is isolated? If only a few people in the world have had an issue, I'm cool with it. But if anyone here has had a problem, and knows that the thermostat is at fault(who knows what really causes problems unless you investigate), then that is one time too many for me. Local HVAC guys swear by Aprilaire, but HAI is cheaper. Thanks!

 

[broconne]

I was shown a few stories today of people whose HAI thermostats have gone bad and left the heat on while they were on vacation. Yet another great use of home auto so you can deal with this before you get back and the wallpaper is on the floor ... Anyhow, wondering if anyone here has had a problem or if it is isolated? If only a few people in the world have had an issue, I'm cool with it. But if anyone here has had a problem, and knows that the thermostat is at fault(who knows what really causes problems unless you investigate), then that is one time too many for me. Local HVAC guys swear by Aprilaire, but HAI is cheaper. Thanks!

You have any links to these failures? The HVAC sub made it very clear to me that if I replace the carrier edge thermostat I would violate the warranty.. I don't think that is true, but he was adamant that I don't swap that out and he was going to go "investigate" if you can use HA with the carrier edge thermostat. Course, I really want to use the HAI - The thing is flat out nice looking.

 

[icellama21]

No, but I can start looking. It was a potential customer who did some research and found a few bizarre postings out there. Since the people here are more technically minded I figured it was a good place to look for problems. Maybe the problems he read about were from homeowners who set the temp to 110, who knows.

 

[icellama21]

Here is the thread from worthington's board about the wallpaper that he found. You can ask the poster over there about it. I don't really care if there was a problem somewhere at sometime(of course there is), just trying to see if anyone else has heard of issues. Don't have time to look for more now, not much info.

http://www.worthingtondistribution.com/cgi...um=1169082189/2

 

[Rupp]

There are hundreds of HomeSeer users that use HAI stats and I can't recall ever reading of a single post of someone who had one of these fail. These are among the best stats on the market.

 

[Steve]

1. I would not worry about a few isolated incidents over 2 years old. If there was a systemic problem it would be much more well known.

2. The current line of HAI stats (RC1000/2000) are fairly new so the 2 year old issues would not even apply to these stats.

 

[BryanE]

I've had an RC-80 for years... never a single problem.

 

[ano]

I have 3 RC-80's running fine for years.

 

[rosenqui]

I've had 3 RC-90s running since 2000 with no issues. They've been very reliable, even when the HVAC guys were working on the radiant zones and had things hooked up incorrectly, sending 24VAC to the wrong places. The RC-90s would just reset themselves rather than fry.

My main floor RC-90 was replaced with a Carrier Infinity control, but that's only because I got a new Carrier Infinity ICS furnace and opted for the Infinity control since it handles the staging, humidifier, and so many other things.

 

[dutchyn]

My main floor RC-90 was replaced with a Carrier Infinity control, but that's only because I got a new Carrier Infinity ICS furnace and opted for the Infinity control since it handles the staging, humidifier, and so many other things.

Presumably, the new RC2000 would do all of those things also. Is the Infinity a communicating thermostat?

Chris D.

 

[rosenqui]

Presumably, the new RC2000 would do all of those things also. Is the Infinity a communicating thermostat?

It communicates... but not without an extra-cost module which I didn't purchase. The Infinity control is rather interesting in that it just uses 4 thermostat wires to do everything including handling a multi-stage furnace, multi-stage AC or HP, HRV/ERV, multi-speed fan control, and humidifier. It also displays the outdoor temperature via a sensor built into a Carrier Infinity AC/HP or through a dedicated sensor wired into the furnace if you don't have a Carrier Infinity AC/HP. It uses the outdoor temp to determine the ideal indoor humidity, so you can just set humidity to "auto" and it will take care of running the humidifier or dehumidifier. It will run the AC in dehumidify mode (low fan) if the temp is OK but the humidity is high.

The OmniStat2 line does a lot of that as well, but I would imagine it needs a lot more wires present since it is designed to work with any type of HVAC gear.

The Infinity control communicates with the Infinity furnace, and the circuit board on the furnace has the extra connections for the HRV, humidifier, AC, etc.