For what it’s worth I have a heat pump (upstairs unit) and I wired it to * and set it to emergency and have no issues. So I know my heat strips never kick on unless I tell them. Granted I have a gas furnace heating the basement and first floor that does most of the heavy lifting. It’s about 15 degrees today and no issues. So in some scenarios this thermostat is fine with heat pumps. Unless I’m missing something?
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Mine does work fine with my heat pump. Emergency heat works fine via the * connector. I have two issues with this:
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The thermostat kicks on the heat strips when it is not necessary to do so. This is noticeable when it is warm enough outside for the heat pump alone to satisfy the setpoint, but the thermostat thinks it will take too long and thus kicks on the strips WITH the heat pump at the same time. This leads to excessive energy consumption.
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When running emergency heat, you cannot set a temperature. It runs forever when emergency heat is enabled, until you disable it manually.
My system is Amana (Goodman). I have two of these and they both do the same. What caught my attention is that one day it was 45 outside and the furnace was blowing very hot heat, warmer than the heat pump could do itself. It’s not supposed to happen that way.
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I was under the impression when you wire to * it would only kick on the heat strips in emergency mode. Basically the thermostat is unaware there is 2nd stage strip heating. You are saying you have confirmed this to not be the case.
Has anyone else seen this? I wired to * because I can get away with the heat pump in my climate. If it turns on the heat strips no matter if you wire to * or W1 then I have an issue with this.
I confirmed that in my setup at least, the heat strips are kicked on by W1 during normal operation, not emergency mode. I disconnected the wire I had on W1 and the thermostat was unable to tell the heat strips to come on. I don’t know about other setups, but in my case W1 definitely controlled kicking on the strips when the thermostat told it to. I don’t know if it is based on time, temperature differential, or whatever. That’s what I am trying to get from support, but they have been silent on this problem.
My old stat would kick heat strips on when there was a 2 degree differential, and only for a little while. During normal operation, mild outside temperatures when the heat pump keeps the setpoint fine, the heat strips did not kick on.
Only the people with wyze in their name work for wyze… the rest of us are just users, afaik.
With all due respect, what you are missing is the fact that WYZE never included this scenario in their instructions. SO, I wired as they said but I see it is wrong because so many of you guys who are much more intelligent in wiring than me have noted that * connection. I just wish that WYZE would have been able to point that out to us before we went through the work of hooking our units up according to their incorrect instructions. Once again, I am not of the opinion you roll out something for your users to trouble shoot and fix. This should have stayed in a beta-test environment for much longer, but money has to be made.
So far the main problem I have with the wyze is that in their rush to make it “easy to install”, they have eliminated all of the actual advanced settings that users might need to actually set up their thermostats properly. The hand-holding is great for some people, but the advanced users or people with unusual setups should be able to bypass all of that stuff and hook it up as they need to, and be able to access the underlying set point logic.
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Yup, that’s the way my original unit worked and it makes sense. So ironic that you buy new technology to help make things more efficient only to learn that the WYZE thermostat is causing my heat use to be much more inefficient, thereby driving up my heating costs. BTW, I have had a ticket in since Friday and I received a message back that they need to run this by the HVAC company that troubleshoots for WYZE. NOT GOOD…on to a Honeywell thermostat, built by a company that is an EXPERT in HVAC…
Great point !! Unless you are an HVAC expert, I don’t see people like me being able to figure out how to wire this beyond the simple “it’s a furnace” setup.
Agreed. It’s not clear. To make things worse if you google aux vs emergency you get a lot different conversations on how to treat these. They can be both. I had a jumper in mine that had the wire going into W1 and Emergency on the old stat so I had to make a decision. That’s why I knew. I’m guessing my old stat would use them for both. I decided for Emergency after reading up a bit. I read that the heat strips can be stage 2 or emergency and it depends on your climate.
All Wyze needs is the ability for software to handle this jumper if the user wants and allow a setting to control the behavior of the heat strips. Savings vs comfort would be a start where savings uses the strips after a long heat pump run and or wide differential and comfort turns them on almost immediately. Then allow for more granular control on the differential and time to kick in. Finally they could add temp control on the emergency heat. Luckily this should all be software. Hope they are listening!!!
For what it’s worth I had a Nest in my old house and wired it up myself and it wasn’t correct even though I did it per the guide so a tech had to come out and fix it. He mentioned that the Nest can be tricky and a lot of people make mistakes. This time I had a scheduled maintenance and the tech (same guy) looked at the Wyze and told me everything looks like it’s operating normally.
The replacement thermostat I received had the same issues as the first, most notably a sudden 1-2 degree drop in the room temp reading when the unit would call for heat. Which would then lead to the system running for longer than necessary, which would then cause the heat strips to fire up, which would then lead to it overshooting the set temp by 2-3 degrees.
I did re-wire it so that my Aux heat was in the emergency heat (*) spot, and that did cause a drop in electricity usage since I wasn’t manually engaging the heat strips during that time. But then we were about to enter a 2-week period where the outdoor temp never got above freezing and lows were anywhere from 10 to -12°, and I didn’t have any confidence in using the Wyze thermostat during this time. So I just put my old Honeywell programmable back in.
What I did do before that cold snap was to take readings at our electric meter outside during 3 days of fairly consistent weather. One day with the Wyze wired with aux heat, one day with the Wyze wired with emergency heat, and one day with the old Honeywell. I know it’s not a perfect test because the temps weren’t exactly the same and other appliances and things didn’t use the exact same amount each day, but I did find there was a very significant difference in usage, with the Honeywell time period using the least amount of electricity. The Wyze wired conventionally (with white wire in the W1 spot) by far used the most electricity. The Wyze wired with the white wire in the * spot was somewhere in between.
So I haven’t had my Wyze installed for nearly 3 weeks now. Has there been a new firmware update yet? I checked the release notes page and the thermostat isn’t even listed?
Still no updates.
Under settings I changed this to more savings and will see how it goes.
Great information!
I finally heard back from support. They gave me the “sorry you hooked up your thermostat wrong” response. I know it is connected correctly.
I guess we get to trade being beta testers for Wyze for cheap things. I would be OK with that if they actually listened to the beta tester’s feedback.
I’m back to my old thermostats for now. I can’t afford to keep experimenting and hoping.
Wow, thanks guys for more information on the heat pump issues with the WYZE thermostat. It is obvious the company is in way over their head with this one. I am looking at 114 messages, since early December, all regarding issues with this thermostat, in particular, the issues with the heat pump and emergency heat.
I also monitored my electric usage since i installed the thermostat and its not good. I am estimating 20-30% INCREASE in electrical use since I installed this “smart” thermostat. I am removing it today and re-installing my 18-year old Honeywell. If I decide to go the route of new technology, it will be with a Honeywell thermostat for $20 more that is made for this type of system.
As far as Customer Support, I am going to have to give the company a 1 out of 10 on this one. I emailed support 2 weeks ago for assistance. They sent back a reply that their HVAC company they have contracted with to provide support would look into the issue and Customer Support would get back to me. I have heard nothing since. AT this point, I am cutting ties with WYZE. I was so excited about this little start-up company with their cameras, but have now done a “180”. I am trying to go online to write some reviews of the product but the reviews out there are all from places that are gushing over the company without really giving this thermostat a true work-out. I plan to write reviews about my own experience with this disaster. NOBODY should have to spend hours upon hours to get something running that has been rolled out to the public before its ready for prime-time. If it doesn’t EFFICIENTLY for heat pumps then say it. Don’t sell it to people who go through the mess of installing it only to not work as advertised. I waited an extra week hoping someone would get back to me to no avail. GOOD BYE WYZE.
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I agree same here.
I just tried disconnecting the W1 wire. See how that works.
I was having the same issue to where it would blow cold air during the heating mode. I tried everything disconnecting several different wires, adjusted temp preferences, and contacting support. They said I could return it but they never sent me the return info…so I tried connecting it back up like my old thermostat…with the rc jumped to rh and it worked for me…I might keep it.
Same thing here. I bought 2 of them, and was very excited given my success with their cameras and light bulbs. I only left it hooked up for a couple of days because of it constantly calling for aux heat (basically at the end of every cycle). Customer service has been non-existent for those of us seeing the issues with heat pumps and aux heat. I even started a direct conversation with one of their thermostat people on here, sent logs, etc, and all I heard was crickets. I ended up sending mine back, and customer service was actually great for the return. It seems like they’re just in over their heads on this one, Definitely makes me hesitant about any of their future products.
Well, I am now within 2 days for the 30-day return policy. Crickets seem to be a theme with WYZE Support these days. I still have not heard back from Tech Support regarding my issues with the thermostat and a heat pump, even after sending along wiring diagrams etc. and that was 2 weeks ago. I disconnected it and boxed it back up last week, Customer Support was supposed to send me a return shipping label etc. to send it back and guess what…CRICKETS…AGAIN!! I have never been so disappointed in a company I originally was so happy with. Their cheap cameras work well. However, I am done with this company, the Tech and Customer Support for this thermostat, as you have also noted, is non-existent. To stay with this company at this point would be UN-WYZE…