What are smart thermostats and why would you want to use one?
How much thought have you given to the type of thermostat you use at your home or your business? Maybe you’ve heard of smart thermostats, but aren’t sure what they are or why you would want one?
A smart thermostat typically refers to a thermostat that connects to your wifi and is accessible through the internet via a smartphone app, computer, or tablet. Gone are the days of 
having to manually adjust your thermostats temperature before you leave for work, throughout the day, or before you go to sleep at night. Now you can program your thermostat for each day of the week individually, or even allow your thermostat to think for itself and learn your daily routine and figure out what works best for you. You can even listen to music and connect to smart home systems such as Alexa (built-in to the device), Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant, SmartThings, and IFTTT.
Smart thermostats allow you to have very fine tuned control over your heating and cooling system, make adjustments remotely, check on your systems remotely, review data on how your system is performing, including tracking your energy consumption and money savings. When used in residential applications, smart thermostats can often be enabled to learn how you use your space and will automatically make adjustments necessary to provide you the best comfort, energy/cost savings, and be more eco-friendly!
There are many types of smart thermostats to choose from and Heating Green currently offers two of the best on the market, the Ecobee Smart Thermostat Pro, and the Mysa Smart Thermostat. Both are great choices for residential applications and the Ecobee is particularly great choice for your commercial or home yoga studio.
- The Mysa Smart Thermostat is a high/line voltage thermostat and works great with our infrared heaters and is perfect for creating zones in your house controlled by individual thermostats.
- The Ecobee, a low voltage thermostat, can be wired to control your furnace, boiler, or electric infrared heating system via a single controller (thermostat).
Yoga Applications (Ecobee Smart Thermostat Pro)
I just installed my Ecobee, now what?
One you have your Ecobee installed and connected to power, you will first need to register your thermostat by following the prompts on the thermostat itself. You will need to be sure you have wifi available in the space that your Ecobee is installed in. After you complete the registration of your Ecobee you will want to download the smartphone app as well as create an account online at ecobee.com. For a detailed walk through of this process, please view the video, Ecobee Registration and Setup Tutorial.
How do I use this thing for heating my yoga studio?
For yoga studios, the Ecobee is particularly advantageous. This is one of the few thermostats on the market that is capable of being operated to as high as 120 degrees fahrenheit (the majority of thermostats max out between 86-92 fahrenheit). This is great news for hot yoga studios who operate in those higher temperature ranges!
In addition to being capable of operating in the temperature range that most hot yoga studios desire, the Ecobee Smart Thermostat Pro also offers scheduling flexibility that few others rival with the ability to have up to 48 programs per day (think of a program as either your heaters turning on, off, or changing temperature), and 32 different comfort settings (these are your classes, i.e. Hot Yoga Morning, Warm Yoga Weekends, Evening Hot Barre, etc.).
When it comes to operating the Ecobee in a commercial setting, there are some settings that will always need to be adjusted. Now to answer that question; How do I use this thing? Well, we here at Heating Green felt that the best way to answer that question for you was with our great new video that explains everything you’ll ever need to know about using your new Ecobee thermostat and more specifically, how to adjust the settings and program a schedule so it operates to its best potential in your yoga studio.
Residential heating applications (Ecobee Smart Thermostat Pro & Mysa Smart Thermostat)
For those of you who are looking to add a smart thermostat to your home, you can choose between our Ecobee Smart Thermostat Pro or the Mysa Smart Thermostat. Your choice
will depend on what type of heating system you are operating. If you are utilizing your existing furnace, boiler, or other HVAC system and your current thermostat operates via low voltage, then the Ecobee is your best choice.
If you are using your existing baseboard heaters or similar, or using your existing infrared heaters, or upgrading and adding the sun-like warmth of infrared radiant heaters to your home or office you will want to utilize a line voltage thermostat like the Mysa Smart Thermostat.
The Mysa is the best choice when you have one thermostat controlling a single heater, or a few heaters up to a max of 4,000W. If you prefer to operate all of the electric heaters in your home in unison, you could connect them all to an Ecobee thermostat by utilizing additional equipment such as relays and a transformer which would be required to operate the low voltage Ecobee.Both thermostats are wifi capable and can be controlled via your smartphone or tablet. The Ecobee has the added benefit of being able to be connected to an online web portal as well that I find to be incredibly robust and user friendly. The Mysa dashboard on smartphones and tablets is incredibly user friendly and informative with a great data component that will give you detailed information on your energy use, cost savings, and more.
The Wrap Up
Whether you need a smart thermostat that can help you maximize scheduling and reach high temperatures in your yoga studio, or you want to maximize energy use and cost savings in either your home or business, the Ecobee Smart Thermostat Pro and Mysa Smart Thermostat can help you achieve your goals.
For more information feel free to check out our Ecobee FAQ or contact us.
