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Replacing Tekmar 561 with Nest or another wifi stat?

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acustode
acustode Member Posts: 8
in Thermostats and Controls

Hey there, new home in CO, radiant floor heat with 6 zones (great room/kitchen, master bed, 3 additional beds, and garage). Our HVAC guy installed the Tekmar 561 in the living area with Tekmar 518's in the rest of the rooms. Pretty sure there aren't any floor sensors, just air sensors (based on the wiring of the 561 attached). The Watts/Tekmar app is pretty lame in my opinion and while it keeps a good connection to the internet via wifi, the IoT (internet of things) which connects our phones to the thermostat regularly drops connections and the stat needs to physically be messed with to reconnect. We travel and want to be able to have reliable connection from our phones to our home and don't want to have to regularly reconnect/reboot things. We don't need a feature packed smart thermostat which solves all the worlds problems, we just need to be able to easily manage the temps from our phones when we travel. Thinking about the Honeywell Home or Ecobee or even the Amazon smart thermostat. I know the Tekmar is designed/marketed for radiant floor heating, but if we're not using the floor sensor, I should be able to use any 4 wire thermostat, right? And, I assume I'll need 6 new matching stats so I can control each room remotely when we travel, right? Thanks for your help, I appreciate it.

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Comments

  • Big Ed_4
    Big Ed_4 Member Posts: 3,363

    Looks like if you switch to another brand you would cut out the away feature . What ever that is ? That would be the third down green wire …

    Makes no sense to me with out the floor sensor ….

    There was an error rendering this rich post.

  • HVACNUT
    HVACNUT Member Posts: 7,233

    The Honeywell TH6220WF2006/U is a good simple WiFi thermostat. Its a shame there's no floor sensors. I don't know what's powering all the thermostats, but if you're doing more than one WiFi thermostat, it might be best to power them with a seperate 40va transformer and an isolation relay for switching if not already set up that way.

    bjohnhyacustode
  • bjohnhy
    bjohnhy Member Posts: 143

    ecobee or other smart thermostats could work well but you have to check what your system has to power them all. They need more power than the typical tekmar.

    acustode

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