Ecobee temperature issue

I have 6 ecobee thermostats and 14 remote sensors. They were all purchased together. Over the last couple of weeks I noticed that three of them are having an issue with temperature. If I use the ecobee mobile app or website, I notice that the thermostat (specifically the thermostat) will read 70 and then a few seconds later it will read 65. What initially caught my eye was that the temperature average as used by thermostat was about 4 degrees below the set point and when I looked, the issue was the thermostat sensor itself. It does this dramatic drop in temperature pretty quick (a few seconds). An independent temperature sensor was used to verify the real temperature and the ecobee varies between 0 to 8 degrees too low. Has anyone else seen this behavior?

Mine has been consistent in its temp readings. I did have to adjust the settings a little bit as it was reading below the actual temp when first installed but never any dips like you are reporting. You might need to engage their support to see if they can figure out why that’s happening.

Thanks. Three seem to work fine. It’s just the other three started behaving erratically.

For good measure change your batteries in the sensors. Ive been having all sorts of odd things with my remote sensors. Then out of the blue I decided to change the batteries in them and they have been ok since. Mine were saying occupied almost all the time no matter how far from the main tstat it was.

cr2023’s are cheap, grab some and throw them in there. If its been almost a year since you bought them go for that.

Thanks. It’s the thermostats not the remote sensors. Ironically they’re temperature is pretty accurate (at least at this point).

I’ve had this issue on one of my two thermostats. I find it happens when the heat has been on for a couple minutes and I’ll see it drop 2 degrees almost instantly. Then it struggles to come back up while my bedroom (thermostat in hall) cooks to over 10 degrees too high. Also only seems to happen when I’ve turned the temp up or resumed a program as opposed to when it changes itself. I thought maybe a draft was being caused by the hole in the wall but when I remove the thermostat I can’t feel anything. No solution so far.

Thanks. That sounds similar to my issue (other than the resume issue). I have contacted support. When I was on the phone with them, they saw the issue happen. Unfortunately they said they had never seen something like that before. They had me set the two remote sensors linked to the thermostat right next it. The remote sensors are pretty stable (holding at 70). The thermostat (which should read 70) keeps going up and down from 63 to 69 (totally random). I thought about the hole too, but no draft (plus where the wire goes up is sealed). They also had me look in the web portal at the graphs (of which I had already done). According to the data, the thermostats that work trigger heat when it drops a degree. The ones that freak out magically drop many degrees (around 8-9) all of sudden and trigger heating, which results in overheating most of the time. They’re suppose to call tomorrow. I’ll let you know what I hear.

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Additional piece of info is I have the Ecobee lite so no sensors here. Don’t even have any hooked up via custom DH. Will be interested to hear what you find.

I haven’t seen this myself, but I’ll keep an eye out. Just curious, but have you seen these fluctuations show up in SmartThings. I’m wondering if a smartapp that tracks temperature could be used to alert you when it does something like this. I’d be curious to find out how often it fluctuates.

Thank you. I have the sensors set to average, so a drop of 9 degrees on the one thermostat appears as a 3 degree drop on the display and in ST. Mine are experiencing the problem approximately every 30 minutes. After a few seconds, or typically no more than a couple of minutes, it bounces back to where it was. To minimize the effect on heating, I removed the thermostat from the averaging. While this has kind of fixed my immediate problem, it’s still disconcerting that three of them are starting to fail. Hopefully ecobee will come through with a fix or a warranty replacement.

It’s also concerns me that the ecobee lite exhibits this problem. If if weren’t for the remote sensors, I couldn’t even temporarily work around the issue.

I’m not sure what I could use to capture there data. I hadn’t thought to go look in the event history directly, will do that next time.

[quote=“bago, post:10, topic:67770, full:true”]
Thank you. I have the sensors set to average, so a drop of 9 degrees on the one thermostat appears as a 3 degree drop on the display and in ST. Mine are experiencing the problem approximately every 30 minutes. After a few seconds, or typically no more than a couple of minutes, it bounces back to where it was.[/quote]
Bah. Sorry. I keep forgetting that I have each remote sensor and the thermostat as separate Things because I use the MyEcobeeDevice DTH with remote sensors DTH/app and so I can see the reported motion and temperature of each one separately. Makes it a little easier to see what’s happening with each.

Same issue as above. I forgot you normally can’t see one separately and thus you can’t monitor them separately in ST. Disregard.

I will keep an eye out for any issues.

Curious. It’s been awhile since I used that DTH. I can’t remember. Does it report the thermostat temp using the sensor inside or does it report the average of the sensors included in that mode (when looking at the thermostat device)?

As for data, I have data. Tons of it on the ecobee site.

I have mine doing both. I actually have two entries under “Things” for each thermostat itself. One is the usual device entry that has all the stuff from the custom DTH and the other is a remote sensor one, but for the sensors in the thermostat itself (motion and temperature). The device one shows your usual average temperature of the selected sensors in the program you’re currently in and the remote sensors one just shows the temperature for that thermostat itself.

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I found a way to key off of temperature change when there is a problem, however there is nothing I can do about it.

This statement matches my data too. Plus ecobee support thinks this is also the issue.

While the cavity behind my thermostat is sealed at the top and bottom, they think that there is air flow coming through the hole behind the thermostat.

They suggested a solution using plummer’s putty as shown in the picture.

They did say that spray foam or fiberglass insulation could be used, however they found that they often make it worse because if an imperfect seal is obtained, the air passes through faster causing wider swings in temperature.

I don’t know if this has fixed my problem, but I did try the plummer’s putty trick tonight. They said it should stabilize relatively quickly and within 24 hours be able to tell if the problem is solved (or the next step is replacing the thermostat).

Will be interested to hear how it goes. My previous Honeywell had no issue so don’t see why the Ecobee should.

My old thermostat didn’t either. They said it had to do with the placement of the sensor within the device itself. I guess (and hope) I’ll know tomorrow.

I had my doubts, but my problem has not occurred since making the modification. This might be worth a shot. The sensor in the thermostat does appear to have stabilized.

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Interesting. I don’t have the same issue but seeing this makes me want to check and plug that hole! ocd much!?

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