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Anyone else datalogging their thermostat?

4K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  SuperJETT 
#1 · (Edited)
Yeah, maybe it's just me then...

With the new (old) house being bigger and not sure what the utility bills will be like, I bought the $100 wifi-enabled Filtrete thermostat so I can be more aggressive with the programming and hopefully save money in the long run.

So far, I'm happy with it and the Android app works great, but wanted to take it to the next level. I setup a basic php/apache/mysql server on a low power pc and tweaked some code from http://central.isaroach.com/wiki/index.php/PHP to do what I want.

So far, it works great. I'm logging every 10 minutes. inside temp, outside temp, setpoint, runtime, time.

I'm also reading the gas meter every night just to get a feel for what our bill will look like. The previous owners used spot heaters and window units for the 2 used bedrooms they actually used, the hvac system had not been used in a couple of years.

We have a 92% Trane gas furnace with 14 SEER outside unit and a Rinnai 97% gas tankless water heater, so overall those are efficient but the 112 year old house with 41 windows, 15 of which are original, is the problem.
 

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#2 ·
OHS does it for me, but I rarely look at the info about what I am using or how the system runs. I mainly just worry about what temp the thermostat is at, and log into either my cloudbeam account while on my Netbook to change the temp, or do it from my iPhone while gone from the house.

When I first got our 3m-50, I was playing with some third party software and liked the data logging of the software, but grew out of it within a couple of months. I still data log our electrical use through our Ted5000 to three sites, but again rarely look at the info. Only close to the billing to see what we have used before the bill cycle ends.
 
#5 ·
Our furnace is a 92% 100k BTU single stage, so it's pretty easy based on the runtime. I've looked at the numbers, setback schedules definitely save $$ if you're gas-only. Heat pumps with electric backup don't work so well with setback schedules from what I've read and after seeing my numbers, I can see how that would happen.

More importantly for our old house is I have a baseline to compare against once we make some improvements to insulation, windows, etc. Right now the runtime tracks the heating degree days pretty closely with those axis scales, so after making a change I should see the runtime drop somewhat but still track it.
 
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