OT- Honeywell makes a WiFi HVAC thermostat that has no backup battery

Milacron · Aug 5, 2016

I found this out the hard way....just a warning to make damn sure if you buy one it has provisions for a backup battery, as otherwise you loose a lot of tedious programming even if the power goes out for 5 minutes....or you have to shut the system down for maintenance or whatever. I'm posting this because I was dumbfounded any company would be so stupid to design one like that in the first place...expecially considering the typical plain jane digital thermostats that don't need programming, DO have provisions for batteries.

What I mean is, how bizarre to make a thermostat that depends on complex programming (including the type of equipment it is connected to and twenty other parameters, plus WiFi connection info) that has no battery backup after decades making Plain Jane digital thermostats that require no programming at all, but yet include provision for two AA batteries anyway !

The icing on the cake being confusing terminology in the parameter choices....like is this gas or electric furnace ? "electric furnace" ?? Why can't they say "heat pump" like everyone else in this country ?

So, this is a rant, but mostly a warning to be careful which Honeywell programmable WiFi enabled thermostat you buy. This one was a something 6500 model from Lowes.

L Vanice · Aug 5, 2016

I saw a house with an electric furnace some years back in northern Indiana. The HVAC system included normal forced air ducts so that the house could have AC, and used a big box with electric coils for heat. I think it may have included a cost-saving feature with heavy fire brick sort of stuff that held heat for a long time and a timer that heated the storage media during off-peak hours when the electricity was billed at a lower rate. Anyway, it was nothing like a heat pump.

Probably different parts of the country make different systems the most efficient local choice. The electric companies try to push their systems, but most people around here with AC use gas furnaces. It is a pain to add central AC to a house with in-ceiling electric heat, which was popular for a while around here.

Larry

goldenfab · Aug 5, 2016

Well that is a terrible design! Thanks for the heads up.

My thermostat broke a while back. It was some cheap Chinese crap that came with the house when I bought it. So being the nerd that I am hacked one together with an arduino I had laying around. Works ok. I have some improvements planned like a wifi chip and programming/access via network. Thinking of making a kit to sell to other nerds like me. I have several of these ideas a day....

Monarchist · Aug 5, 2016

Milacron said:
So, this is a rant,

Much shorter 'rant' if you'd kindly shout-out the discovery of ANYTHING AT ALL - current manufacture - with the Honeywell name on it that IS NOT a Charlie-Fox of disaster walking.

Blank screen for the next several years on that score will surprise me not. Every unit and model of Honeywell t-stat I've bought from Lowes has been a disappointment - manual to magical.

Had to resort to cannibalizing 40-odd year-old 'Singer' units that came with the house from less-critical rooms to more-so this past winter when 3 H-Well in a row couldn't reliably hold anywhere CLOSE to the temp ranges the Singers always took in stride.

Am now scouting industrial-grade makes. Basic dumb all-manual ones. Had good luck with a Barber-Coleman.. if even they still make that line.

House and climate here just ain't that complicated. Don't need programmable anything.

Bill

mnl · Aug 5, 2016

goldenfab said:
So being the nerd that I am hacked one together with an arduino I had laying around.

I resemble that remark, but I like to think I'm not that crazy.

Thanks for the heads up, not that I'm in the market for a thermostat, but it is a useful reminder never to make any assumptions when it comes to commercial electronics.

mnl · Aug 5, 2016

Monarchist said:
if you'd kindly shout-out the discovery of ANYTHING AT ALL - current manufacture - with the Honeywell name on it that IS NOT a Charlie-Fox of disaster walking.

I have a total of three programmable thermostats, all branded "Honeywell", and bought about five to seven years ago. All have backup batteries, AA , in believe, but only one has needed replacing. They program fine, and not too much of a CF to program. All still work as intended. Will they last as long as a bimetal strip attached to a tube of mercury, I doubt it. But they are off to a good start.

gkoenig · Aug 5, 2016

Meh. Honeywell tried to copy Nest... after Nest showed up on the market with the first innovation the thermostat world had seen in 40 years, and started eating everyone's lunch (they almost instantly took something like a 30% share of all new thermostat sales in less than 3 years).

Probably doesn't help Honeywell that anyone with decent engineering or design chops doesn't want to work there, and can get paid a gazillion dollars at one of about a thousand startups who's business plan is "Put a Chip In It!"

Monarchist · Aug 5, 2016

mnl said:
I have a total of three programmable thermostats, all branded "Honeywell", and bought about five to seven years ago. All have backup batteries, AA , in believe, but only one has needed replacing. They program fine, and not too much of a CF to program. All still work as intended. Will they last as long as a bimetal strip attached to a tube of mercury, I doubt it. But they are off to a good start.

The Mercury & Bi-metallic round-dial made Honeywell's name. I'd be delighted if I could find about ten or a dozen of those, NOS, yet today, but ONLY if their build dates predated HoneyUNwell's switch to Chinese goods.

Not exactly a Luddite here. I DO use six or eight expendable-grade WiFi remote temp & humidity monitors. But only for information. Heat, A/C, or the passive both-off 'flywheeling' that covers about six months of the year, here.

I still take the decision as to what to DO about their reports - usually not a damned thing - in 'wetware'.

Bill

Jeremy · Aug 5, 2016

I don't understand why all these devices don't just use flash RAM so settings are retained permanently. Having to reprogram a VMC because the battery died just sounds lazy on the manufacturers part. Flash RAM just isn't that expensive.

JST · Aug 5, 2016

Jeremy said:
I don't understand why all these devices don't just use flash RAM so settings are retained permanently. Having to reprogram a VMC because the battery died just sounds lazy on the manufacturers part. Flash RAM just isn't that expensive.

but it IS *more* expensive..... Those chinese sources threaten the bean counters with "higher costs" for anything extra. And with the volume sold, the beancounters worry that their bonus will go away if there is a cost increase of a penny per unit manufactured cost. Added cost due to shipping is not in their department,so that's not an issue.

Monarchist · Aug 5, 2016

Jeremy said:
I don't understand why all these devices don't just use flash RAM so settings are retained permanently. Having to reprogram a VMC because the battery died just sounds lazy on the manufacturers part. Flash RAM just isn't that expensive.

Many do. This might even have BEEN one such.

Stuff made really cheaply, OTOH, can still lose it all from a near-miss lightning strike or artifacts accompanying the power outage itself.

Happens to more than just thermostats, dasn't it? CNC machine-tools, anyone?

Oh.. Shit. They are not as NEW as the kid's iPad!

Buggers were built BEFORE NVRAM went cheap and available. And PROVEN. Battery was as good as was 'proven trustworthy' for a long overlap period.

Bill

gadget73 · Aug 5, 2016

My grandmom was convinced her thermostat had died last year. It was a mid 1960s vintage Honeywell, the old bi-metal spring type with the glass vial of mercury in it. I special ordered the modern equivalent of the basic old roundie for her. It involves an onboard LiOn battery and circuitry to get the job done. I installed that old mercury thermostat in my garage to replace a cheap digital that needed batteries every time I needed heat out there.

Digitals can be had anywhere, but i was not about to try and teach a 93 year old lady who isn't quite at full speed anymore how to operate a modern thermostat. I got her one that looked and operated exactly like the one she'd had for 50 years. The feebs at the big box stores didn't understand, and couldn't get me a basic thermostat. I ordered it through the local plumbing supply, who understood why I wanted that particular unit when I explained it was for my grandmother.

Monarchist · Aug 6, 2016

gadget73 said:
My grandmom was convinced her thermostat had died last year. It was a mid 1960s vintage Honeywell, the old bi-metal spring type with the glass vial of mercury in it. I special ordered the modern equivalent of the basic old roundie for her. It involves an onboard LiOn battery and circuitry to get the job done. I installed that old mercury thermostat in my garage to replace a cheap digital that needed batteries every time I needed heat out there.

Digitals can be had anywhere, but i was not about to try and teach a 93 year old lady who isn't quite at full speed anymore how to operate a modern thermostat. I got her one that looked and operated exactly like the one she'd had for 50 years. The feebs at the big box stores didn't understand, and couldn't get me a basic thermostat. I ordered it through the local plumbing supply, who understood why I wanted that particular unit when I explained it was for my grandmother.

Funny, elders can be. My late Mum, 1922-2016 mastered a T-Stat that integrated her Gas heat and electric A/C in one complicated little panel with time-of-day and holiday settings. Got chilly or warmish she'd program it up or down by override in a New York Minute.

I don't integrate either system, nor even two rooms on the same dumb manual T-stat. Doesn't do anything for me. Can't be bothered with s**t that can break easily or forget what prayer book it is reading anyway.

Sooner take off a shirt or put on a sweater as the Chinese side of the clan do.

They don't run much heat OR A/C. Just adapt clothing, bedding, and activity level to wot exists - type of food and how cooked, what hours of the day to go active or set and rest included.

Doesn't cost a lot to live that way. They don't get illnesses from going into and out of different temps when they move about.

Uber-flexible humans have been doing that 'adapting' stuff all over the world for a very long time, after all.

Bill

dbsuthe · Aug 6, 2016

Milacron said:
So, this is a rant, but mostly a warning to be careful which Honeywell programmable WiFi enabled thermostat you buy. This one was a something 6500 model from Lowes.

My 8 year old digital honeywell uses a backup battery. It even keeps it's programming when the battery goes dead.

Just for fun I looked at a sample of 4 or 5 of the Honeywell Wifi thermostats, and it looks like the 6500 model is the only one that I found which does not use a battery to keep the time and/or settings. I suspect that the designers were expecting it to use the network to find the current time after a power failure. That does not excuse the failure to store the settings in a few Kbytes of non volatile RAM.

If it's within the 1 year warranty it would be worth looking at returning it as a design defect.

Dan

Monarchist · Aug 6, 2016

dbsuthe said:
My 8 year old digital honeywell uses a backup battery. It even keeps it's programming when the battery goes dead.

Some do that well-enough. Downside may be that the LCD display goes South and you can neither see or alter the program, nor even grok what the current temp IS.

When you have to rely on 'luck' to ascertain whether you are beneficiary or victim, it is time for seeking a more predictable product.

Bill

dbsuthe · Aug 6, 2016

Monarchist said:
Some do that well-enough. Downside may be that the LCD display goes South and you can neither see or alter the program, nor even grok what the current temp IS.

When you have to rely on 'luck' to ascertain whether you are beneficiary or victim, it is time for seeking a more predictable product.

Bill

Well Bill, it's powered by the 24 volt from the furnace and only uses the battery to keep the clock running in a power outage.

It is true that if there is a power outage the thermostat won't display anything, but the furnace won't work so that does not matter much.

If it's seriously cold I start up the "whole house" backup generator.

Dan

Monarchist · Aug 6, 2016

dbsuthe said:
Well Bill, it's powered by the 24 volt from the furnace and only uses the battery to keep the clock running in a power outage.

It is true that if there is a power outage the thermostat won't display anything, but the furnace won't work so that does not matter much.

If it's seriously cold I start up the "whole house" backup generator.

Dan

Oddly, my old Singer T-stats did do. All, including the A/C one, had dumb-old totally independent red-dyed alcohol in glass linear 'thermometers' parked in a snap-in slot in their plastic covers.

KISS methods. Cheap and reliable. Why'd we ever abandon so damned many of them?

And yeah.. THIS winter coming, the MEP-803A will easily haul the whole lot of my heater complement, fridge/freezers and more.

Partly because a decades-long uber insulation beef-up project has allowed downsizing all the heater units by roughly 50%, though.

Can't claim the insulation has a for-sure economic payback, greatly reduce energy bill notwithstanding.

Some of it was part of fairly costly rework - doubling-walls, both insulated, and with air-gaps and quasi 'airlocks' for example.

It most certainly has delivered an improved comfort, reduced dependency, and health stress safety gain - year-round, too.

Bill

adama · Aug 6, 2016

This is the 21st century, no need for batteries, this is what super capacitors were made for! Or like others mention, simple non volatile storage!

Milacron · Aug 6, 2016

adama said:
This is the 21st century, no need for batteries, this is what super capacitors were made for! Or like others mention, simple non volatile storage!

All I know is my shop heat pump stopped working due to a kaput compressor capacitor and low 410, which required numerous system shut downs to test, and with each shutdown the thermostat lost memory and had to be reprogrammed. I tried to contact Honeywell and found they are hidden behind an FAQ steel wall....no phone, no email.....only Facebook type of contact possibilities. So I gave up and reinstalled the old unit back. WIll try again with another brand of WiFi unit eventually.

I took the WiFi unit completely apart to see if there might be a watch size battery or super capacitor on the board and there was neither. If this one had flash Ram, it sure wasn't working, as it lost all my settings after each total shut down (circuit breakers off)

Needless to say, this was extremely irritating....

tnmgcarbide · Aug 6, 2016

never seen your TS , but GAS FURNACE or ELECTRIC FURNACE switch on my honeywell electronic controls the
way the fan timer works with either . the gas furnace setting blows air longer to gather the residual
heat left in the burner after the fire goes out . ELECTRIC FURNACE refers to "HEAT STRIPS", hence the
name "electric furnace" where the fan cuts out sooner - the heat strips in the air-handler don't stay
as warm once they shut off...obviously.

OT- Honeywell makes a WiFi HVAC thermostat that has no backup battery

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