Using wifi thermostat with my boiler (Tekmar 260) ?


  #1  
Old 11-17-22, 03:47 PM
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Using wifi thermostat with my boiler (Tekmar 260) ?

https://www.poweredbyefi.org/ugi/smart-thermostats.html

my gas company has a sale and i can even get an emerson for free.

https://sensi.emerson.com/en-us/shop...sensi-sku-st55

ive see conflicting reviews and company literature regarding the C wire needed or not. so unsure what..or if i can buy. i remember when my boiler was put in about 14 years ago that he couldnt get it to work with my old timer thermostat so he put this one in and its worked fine but it would be nice to more easily change times for it to go on and off. i do NOT want any thermostats that try to figure out when i'm home or whatever. i just wanna set it to the times i want etc. typically down 2 degree over night then up for shower time in the morning.

i also have a tekmar outdoor reset hooked up but dont think that affects the choice of wifi stat? i do see one of the new ones have a sensor you can put in an important room which is probably like the sensor i never installed on the tekmar


 
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Old 11-17-22, 03:51 PM
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You need a C wire for a smart thermostat.
Good news.... you have an extra wire there that could be used for C.
I need to know/see what's at the other end.
 
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Old 11-17-22, 04:37 PM
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pretty sure nothing. if i'm correct the white wire was snipped and the red and black hooked up to tekmar

 

Last edited by PJmax; 11-24-22 at 02:54 PM.
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Old 11-17-22, 05:06 PM
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i found reviews like this for that stat:

The instructions inside the box clearly state that it will not work without a C-wire, but I ignored them and kept going. With only two wires it was a breeze to install. I put in the batteries, snapped it into the wall plate, downloaded the app, created an account and was ready for testing in about 15 minutes.

I'm not sure if it's just my system or all boilers, but I didn't realize it doesn't turn on instantly when the thermostat temperature is raised above the existing temperature. So when I first tested it, I was bummed that it didn't work. But as I walked downstairs to the boiler, it was running! So I did some more testing, and found that there's about a 20-25 second delay between increasing the temp and the boiler kicking in.

Granted it's only been a couple months since I got it, but I've played with it plenty and it's working great. Instead of a C-wire, the thermostat is powered by two AA batteries. The guy in the video said he's been using the same regular alkaline batteries for two years and they're still at 90% charge capacity, which is awesome. But I figure that even if I have to replace batteries every year, 12 AA batteries is a helluva lot cheaper than paying an electrician to rewire all six zones!The instructions inside the box clearly state that it will not work without a C-wire, but I ignored them and kept going. With only two wires it was a breeze to install. I put in the batteries, snapped it into the wall plate, downloaded the app, created an account and was ready for testing in about 15 minutes.



and this one: My house is 70 years old with no common wire. This works great and has just the amount of smart features that I was looking for. All of the other mainstream smart stats were overkill for my needs. Highly recommended

and : Love this thing. Doesn't need a common wire to use. So, it was the perfect choice for my somewhat older system. And it has Wi-Fi. Absolutely the best thermostat ever. Thanks
 
  #5  
Old 11-17-22, 05:33 PM
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i guess i should ask though. do all those 'learning' thermostats really work for boilers. i never have mine turned up or down more than 2 degrees. the recovery is too long if you do more than that. i guess in theory if it can make the boiler run better id be more interested in those features. just dont know enough about them
 
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Old 11-18-22, 05:02 PM
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I don't have a smart thermostat and don't see a need for it.
One feature they have that I've built myself is that they can notify you if the temperatures travel beyond preset levels. I have a control that calls me if the temp dips by 10 degrees.

You didn't mention you have a smart thermostat.
I'm not sure which ones use batteries. None that I know of.

I don't seen any place to connect a thermostat to that Tekmar unit.
I see a boiler input but it's not addressed as a thermostat.
I don't believe your thermostat connects there.
 
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Old 11-23-22, 07:02 PM
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i traced the wires into the box , and in the blown up pic there's a white wire just snipped and not sealed off there and black and red wires leading somewhere i think to a transformer outside (pic attached). i did not trace them perfectly but i do believe those wires are twisted in the tekmar box and connect to the green red white wires in that blown up pic.

also ive read some google nest reviews and guys have said they didnt need a C wire and even if somehow you do, theres an adapter. but thing is i dont get where the C wire would connect on my system if i needed to connect the adapter. or if i could use that snipped white wire to connect to the C but i dont know what the C is in my system

also the reason i want one is i'm just guessing when the boiler needs to kick on to reach the temp i want at a certain time. i'm assuming the nest will take a few weeks then see how long it takes to get up to temp.

also found one review that says : the Nest Learning Thermostat charges its battery from the low voltage wires on your heating and cooling system. .

is terminal 14 or 17 the C wire that needs to be hooked up to a new stat?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlx2...ature=youtu.be
 

Last edited by PJmax; 11-24-22 at 02:58 PM. Reason: resized pic
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Old 11-23-22, 10:51 PM
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paying an electrician to rewire all six zones!
You have six zones ??
Each one has a thermostat ?
If that is a yes..... the thermostats do not go to the tekmar.
Thermostats control zone valves or circulator pumps.

You're showing a picture of a transformer. With six zone valves there should be two transformers.
 
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Old 11-24-22, 04:06 AM
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no i have a single boring old 50s boiler system. go back and read the 1st line of that post. it was a post of reviews i found online showing that no C wire need

so with all the pics ive shown youve seen it all except a 30 second delay relay he put on the side of the boiler.

so nothing in my pics is where a C wire would go? even if i buy the nest power i need to know where to hook it up to my tekmar or transformer.




 
  #10  
Old 11-24-22, 05:26 AM
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i just noticed on the transformer there's a letter C.. is this the mysterious C wire that is needed for the thermostats?

i decided to trace the wires and this is the result

in the thermostat i have black hooked up to W and red hooked up to the R and white wire is unused

in the tekmar the red wire from the thermostat goes to the 24v transformer on the R. the black wire from the thermostat goes to the boiler demand terminal 1 on the tekmar. the white wire from the stat is snipped off in the tekmar box..mighty short too i may add

the white wire coming from the 24V transformer goes to both terminal 2 and 4 on the tekmar

the green wire that runs next to the other transformer wires is not hooked up at either end.

the red wire from the transformer is also twisted with a wire that goes to my indirect HW heater

so now is it possible to determine what my C wire really is?
 

Last edited by luckydriver; 11-24-22 at 06:01 AM.
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Old 11-24-22, 10:28 AM
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Sorry.... I'm a little lost. Back in post 4 you talk about rewiring six zones.

Ok..... the diagram is your system. Whereas most controllers require a contact closure... the Tekmar requires 24v on the boiler (1&2) or DHW (3&4). Your 24v transformer is supplying the 24v switching power. That means the C comes from that transformer.


There is another device that starts the boiler connected to the boiler demand line that uses 24vAC with the C. It's the green wire. It's not DHW control

.
 

Last edited by PJmax; 11-24-22 at 10:48 AM.
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Old 11-24-22, 02:21 PM
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So is the short answer that the transformer white wire which is on the letter c is the c wire that should be hooked up to a new Wi-Fi thermostat. Thanks for the diagram
 
  #13  
Old 11-24-22, 02:24 PM
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I'm not sure what the green wire in your diagram is referring to and I am not home to verify if the green wire is hooked up to anything
 
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Old 11-24-22, 02:51 PM
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Cable not in your discussion......

You described one wire on terminal 1. There are two.... black and green.
 
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Old 11-24-22, 03:21 PM
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So can I just connect the unused white wire that comes from my thermostat to the c terminal on the 24 volt transformer or actually I guess I could just put it under number two on the tekmar
 
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Old 11-24-22, 03:28 PM
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Either location will work.
You can also add it to the white C splice you already have there.
 
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Old 11-24-22, 03:34 PM
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Okay I didn't think of that. So just take the wire nut off and add a new wire.. I'm going to have to pull out the set of wires that comes from the thermostat because as you can see there's only a little nub there. It needs to be stripped and extended but I'm not sure how much life is in the line I will have to figure it out when I get home. But I appreciate the help at least now I know I can easily do the c wire and now I am looking into the different features of the thermostats the ecobee is supposed to have a smart recovery but somebody else said Honeywell makes a specific setback Wi-Fi thermometer for boilers
 
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Old 11-24-22, 04:25 PM
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The feature you need is adaptive recovery.
The thermostat learns how long it takes to recover from the setback to the new temperature.
 
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Old 11-24-22, 05:19 PM
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Ecobee it's supposed to have that I read one review that a guy said it doesn't work but today never know who's using the thing. And when I Google best thermostats for a boiler or a Honeywell came up but I have yet to research it. Right now I have the thermostat going on at 4:00 in the morning for a 5:00 wake up time but I don't know if that's good or bad so hopefully the new thermostat would learn it
 
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Old 12-03-22, 10:17 AM
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sigh installed the white wire to the C cluster in my tekmar and then white C wire to C in ecobee and it didnt come on.. sad face.

maybe will try the power connector thing

edit: turns out even though i dont have cooling it has to be on RC not RH! who knew.
 

Last edited by luckydriver; 12-03-22 at 10:52 AM.
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Old 12-03-22, 10:36 AM
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So it's wired just like in the diagram ?
R = red, C = white, W = black.

I haven't had to re-learn an Ecobee but many of the electronic thermostats need to be re-booted
or re-learned from the start in order to recognize the new wiring.
 
  #22  
Old 12-03-22, 10:53 AM
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changed wire from RH to RC and it works. confirmed it fires up the boiler too.

i used the wire nut where all the white wires were for the new C wire. also adjusted the eco mounting plate to cover all my old holes. were 4 of them. one from the old mercury thermometer i'm sure

decided to do just one time change. morning wake up and then sleep time 2 degrees lower. nothing else fancy. except i may eventually use their indoor sensor but i want to run it a month to see how it is without the sensor. it already says my air quality is poor lol. probably wants me to buy something to fix it
 
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Old 12-03-22, 10:58 AM
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I'm going to look into that. Ecobee says you can use either R and it will work. Use no R jumper.
You're the second person this week that found that not true.

Technically when you use the C.... it's referenced to Rc. Using Rh has worked in the past.
 
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Old 12-03-22, 11:03 AM
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i do remember somewhere on 'some' thermometer i was researching not to jumper but i admit i didnt read that specifically on ecobee site just now. i just decided it's easier to change from RH to RC and see if it worked. lucky that it did.
 
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Old 12-03-22, 11:24 AM
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NOTE:
Do not connect any jumper wires between Rc and Rh. Ecobee does this automatically.
The R wire needs to go into the Rc terminal on your your Ecobee.


A bit of a change.
 
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Old 12-03-22, 12:50 PM
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temp is 68 during the day. it went down to 67 and turned on which is great. old stat waited till 66. but when it got to 68 didnt turn off. maybe i didnt leave it enough time?

i did change to 67 and it turned off right away.
 
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Old 12-03-22, 01:48 PM
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Depending on which model you got you may be able to change the deadband or cycles per hour.

Thermostats don't operate in whole numbers.
They operate in tenths.
67 = 67.1, 67.2, 67.3, 67.4, 67.5 .... 67.5, 67.6, 67.7, 67.8, 67.9, = 68.
 
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Old 12-03-22, 02:10 PM
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ah ok. well i have temp sensors in 4 rooms in the house and i know my historical readings. the LR got up to 71.6 and it's never been above 70 so i have to figure this out. also its so warm outside today it may not call for heat for hours. i just cant go out of the house not knowing if it will turn off or not lol. but it's GREAT that it goes on at one degree below set instead of 2. isnt it? i assumed it's easier to get 67 to 68 than from 66 to 68.

with a boiler theres no fan of course so should the setting be on AUTO or ON? currently on auto
 
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Old 12-03-22, 02:20 PM
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There are certain settings that are only available to thermostat. I found the equipment setting and it is correctly set to boiler one stage. There is also a setting for thresholds and it says configure staging and it is on automatic. It says the minimum on heat time is 5 minutes they're also corrections for temperature and humidity but I do not need those there is also a thermal protection that says minimum temperature reading difference between sensors that will trigger the algorithm to ignore the inaccurate sensor reading and I have no idea what that means

but I do have when I click on configure staging manually it allows me to do the heat differential temperature which says the minimum temperature differential before engaging heating and it is currently set on point five. Does that mean if it's 68 degrees it has to be 67.5 in order for it to turn on.
 
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Old 12-03-22, 03:10 PM
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The auto/fan switch isn't active with a boiler.
Does that mean if it's 68 degrees it has to be 67.5 in order for it to turn on.
Correct.
 
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Old 12-03-22, 05:48 PM
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got all hooked up and setup then decided what fun it would be to make alexa work with the eco. the unit itself comes with alexa. got that hooked up just fine and you can work it like alexa but cannot for the life of me figure out how to make alexa control the eco. gave up for the nite. searched every eco article i could. even shows as a device in the alexa app and that it's connected.
 
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Old 12-04-22, 05:19 AM
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well i def have a learning curve on this. its 66 over night and set to be 68 at 630. the unit is set at .5 diff so i assume it was shooting for 68.5 before turning off. well i woke up early and it was way too hot in the bedroom. over 70. even my ice cold spare bedroom that is normally 3 or 4 degrees behind the curve is up to 67. unheard of!

i know i should have waited to see when it turned off but i couldnt. even the bathroom was 70 (comfy but unnecessary). so now i set the normal temp to 67 during the day. so we will see what happens. my guess is the 67.5 'overshoot' will be the perfect temps for me. and i can adjust that to 1 degree then it will go to '68' i presume.

the graph showed it turned on 415 and stayed at 66 till 540 when it was 67 then at 645 it was 68. which is great. i never knew what diff my other stat was set to except that on the screen it had to get 2 degrees colder to kick on. but it def NEVER over shot when it was set at 68. meaning the LR didnt get over 70 like with the eco.
 
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Old 12-04-22, 08:59 AM
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Often when heating problems focus is on something that is not the cause i.e. boiler, thermostat, etc

A frequent cause of problems in modern systems with electronic controls using 24 volts AC is due to phase conflicts. Using one 24 volt transformer for everything avoids the issue.

Without going into electronic explanation, there are simple fixes if wiring is correct.

If a new thermostat is flaky, revering wires on it to C and RH for heat and or RC cool may resolve problems. If not would review wiring plans.

On systems without fans, the fan setting option is irrelevant. But thermostat G terminal can be use to activate other things when there is call for heat. Recently when one thermostat W heat terminal failed use G.
 
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Old 12-04-22, 10:30 AM
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There is only one transformer involved in this installation.
 
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Old 12-08-22, 08:48 AM
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unsure if leaving it on automatic for the differential is a good idea. it was on 3 hours this AM to get from 65 to 67 and it was 50 outside. so certainly didnt need to run 3 hours. i dont know the true setpoint since it's on automatic. could have wanted to get 67.9 or even 68. all i know is even hours later i had an increasing temp in my LR to over 71. the room temp may not really be 71 but for comparison sake to PRE ecobee time i had to leave it where it was. its on a table sitting about 18 inches from the baseboard. so it's def warmer there but relatively speaking its still a major overshoot.

i wanted to wait a month to deploy the sensor that came with it but maybe it would be a good way to help with this overshoot. or maybe just turn it to manual and .5 like i had it before. but it's just week 1. hate to make toooooo many changes.
 
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Old 12-08-22, 11:46 AM
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geez the eco is set for 67 and just came on even though it says it's 67 on the device..what gives! turned it back to manual threshold at .5 and hope that helps. no clue why it would turn on, wasnt DHW either. i checked the tekmar screen.
 
 

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