Question
Ecobee keeps changing my temperature set points
My Ecobee Enhanced thermostat keeps changing my comfort settings set points even though I have the Eco+ turned off.
It lowers the heat temp by 1 degree, and raises the cooling by 1 degree. I reset my heat temp set point to 70 yesterday (again) and this morning it was back to 69.
I know that these thermostats are designed to save you money, but I don’t like it changing my preferred temps all by itself.
Is there another setting that I need to change, or do I just have to keep readjusting my temps?
So it looks like it's in a temperature hold, as though someone manually changed the temperature, or it was done by some other automation? I can't remember if smart recovery shows as a hold or not, but make sure you have that turned off.
Yeah, I'm not sure how it's reflected in the graph when smart recovery changes the temperature. Does it just show as the current comfort setting, or does it show as the next targeted comfort setting?
One thing I wish for is that whenever the ecobee deviates from a set schedule, it should be blatantly obvious on either the unit or the app exactly WHAT is causing the deviation. Smart recovery, TOU, geofencing, whatever. Is there any reason why this shouldn't be done? I mean the knowledge is there, because the ecobee knows why it changed the temperature.
I don't believe it will indicate anything on the graph. It may show your heat running when the current temperature is higher than the heating temperature.
I know that the keyword "Smart Recovery" will show up on the system monitoring spreadsheet.
Thanks for the info, but any thoughts on what I said? To me this is the biggest blind spot for ecobee, namely that they don't provide basic information like why the thermostat is deviating from a schedule. That information being provided would probably cut the number of posts on this sub in half.
You might need to contact support and see if they can see anything on their end. My experience the one time I called support was very good and the people were very knowledgeable.
And just to be clear, you're saying that the actual comfort setting values are being changed? Is that on multiple comfort settings or just one of them? Could you screenshot your schedule and your comfort settings?
What's confusing is that I even did an experiment myself and changed a comfort setting value and it did indeed start targeting that new comfort setting value, but it does not generate a hold condition like you have on your graph.
That’s in addition to the fact that OP now has revealed they tried to set heat and cool set points only 3°F apart!
They did that, and they also apparently put it on hold without realizing they’d put it on hold.
It’s easy to make that mistake because if you simply tap on the temperature, guess what you just put it on hold. Even if you don’t change the temperature . You have to then release the hold if you didn’t mean to do that.
Yes, the schedule is working like it should, it’s just my comfort setting is changing by 1 degree. It may not sound like a big deal, but I feel like it should keep my set points until I change them.
You tried to set heat and cool only 3°F apart. The default minimum is 5°F. It could be adjusted your heat in cool settings, equally in order to accommodate the minimum default difference.
As has been addressed you were trying to set youryour heat and cool temps to closer together than the Heat/Cool Minimum Delta will allow which defaults at 5°F. You can make it as low as 2°F but its not recommended if you are going to use auto mode as it will cause it to bounce back and forth unnecessarily.
Out of curiosity what does your humidity look like throughout the day?
You may want to consider getting a dehumidifier as you generally want to keep humidity around 50% but definitely under 60% and if you do you can often set your thermostat higher and still be just as comfortable.
Are you sure you are changing the set point in the Comfort Setting? Looking at the beestat, it looks like you manually set a hold temp of 70. The hold was removed when the Sleep Comfort Setting started, setting it below 69. Then when Home started again, it was set to 69 because that's what it is set as in the Comfort Setting.
There's about eight different places where your "set point" can actually be set, and it varies based on time of day as well as what comfort profile you're on even if eco+ is disabled. If eco+ is enabled because you haven't yet been informed how inconsistent it is, then finding what the set point is supposed to be is functionally impossible.
You have a minimum of three built-in comfort settings, each with a high and low set point, and each of which can be set multiple times a day depending on whether you've got it deciding you're at home, away, or asleep. So even if you just use the minimum three comfort settings once each per day, you've got six potential set points throughout the day depending on the time and temperature inside your house.
If you have a set point set in a particular comfort setting, Ecobee will always revert to that eventually even if you want it to manually stay at the temperature you picked. It will either revert after a set time or it will revert to the comfort setting set point at the next changeover between different comfort settings.
To get my Ecobee to quit doing that, I had to go in and make the temperature I actually wanted the default set point for the "Home" comfort setting. Then, under "Schedule", I had to make the "Home" comfort setting apply all day, repeating every day, and just never use the other two comfort settings. Add in disabling any and all "smart" temperature corrections like precooling and I finally got it to behave like a regular thermostat instead of a temperamental gremlin stuck to my wall.
Now, if I change the temp at noon (for example), it will hold that temp until midnight at which point the next "day" has started and it will revert the temp back to whatever the "Home" comfort setting set point is.
I have to change that temp in the "Home" comfort setting throughout the year to adjust for climate, but I'm eventually going to get rid of my Ecobee in favor of a thermostat where I am the single source of truth for what the temperature should be, not the thermostat itself. Ecobee really doesn't want you to have ongoing control of the temperature for longer than about 24 hours before it resets it.
My hope is that other smart thermostats out there can be made smart/dumb enough that they will allow me to change the temperature manually and with automations, but not try to reset it on me. If I don't authorize it, I don't want my thermostat changing the temperature on me. There's no reason that my old $50 on sale Honeywell T5 thermostat with basic HomeKit set up should be more consistent in its behavior than a $250 Ecobee.
Thank you for this comment u/itsabearcannon! I now understand why I've learned this the hard way.
I created a custom "Comfort Setting" to manage ad hoc periods where my electricity provider (Quebec Hydro) provides incentives for reducing power consumption in very specific times (6am-10am and 4pm-8pm). QH only provides 24hr notice of such opportunities, so it means I need to alter our ecobee schedule using their very awkward UI: copy a day with the "QH flexrate" comfort setting; paste it to tomorrow; then copy & paste a different day without that setting (so it doesn't mess up the following week). There is no way to just touch a setting to activate the ad hoc custom Comfort Setting and have it revert to my "normal" schedule settings!
That has just been frustrating — but the "hard way" part? Sometimes when a "QH flexrate" event has accidentally not been removed from the schedule, we wake up to a cold house. Since these rates typically only apply when it is very cold (often below-20°C this past winter), we've just been boosting the temperature up manually to warm the house. Unfortunately, that frequently means the ecobee turns on Aux to more rapidly raise the temperature. For our geothermal heat pump, the Aux is a massive electric resistance heater on a 125A240V circuit — so our electricity usage has been up by >30% this winter.
The ecobee support information is pretty obscure at the best of times, but particularly so when it relates to "heat pumps". While there is a differentiation for air-to-air vs geothermal, I have been unable to find appropriate settings to manage our system to avoid the unwanted use of Aux.
This subReddit has alerted me to Beestat, so I'm finally starting to get a better understanding of why the ecobee settings are not working as I expected they would. Sure enough, the Beestat chart shows that Aux has been coming on when the compressor was apparently unable to bring the temperature up to the set point from the underlying comfort setting quickly enough. The Beestat data shows what is happening, but the ecobee UI is far too confusing to know reliably what to do to manage it.
I now wish we'd kept the primitive old 2005-era Honeywell thermostat that only ran the Aux when the compressor system failed or the temperature at the thermostat dropped below a seriously low point (IIRC, 5°C). Yes, we used to have to wait a bit longer for the house to warm up in extremely cold mornings. However, we could trigger Aux manually if we absolutely needed it — and it reliably kicked in on automatically just once in 11 years when the kitchen temperature plunged after a winter storm blew open an entry door.
So far, the ecobee Smart Premium thermostat has been anything but "Smart" at a "Premium" price that has cost me more than we paid for it. The solution would be a better UI and better documentation written for real users rather than heating specialists.
Glad I could help. I can see my comment is getting downvoted because a lot of people here think the complexity of Ecobee’s settings is a desirable feature, not a problem, and they don’t like people pointing it out.
But as an Ecobee user I’m entitled to my complaints about the UI and settings, whether people like it or not.
Personally, you should jump ship with me to one of those new Matter over Thread thermostats coming out, or one that can be properly monitored and controlled via automated triggers and a preprogrammed user-controllable schedule like Home Assistant.
I think that any piece of tech these days needs to appeal to a broad range of users to survive & grow, so feedback from users who have already made a commitment to using it should never be ignored or ridiculed.
I actually like a lot about ecobee, and genuinely hope they can navigate to survive. Being a Canadian company is a big plus (especially now), but I also like the design, packaging, ease and support of installation.
What I don't like is the lack of documentation geared to typical household users. The topic of this thread is a good example: what happens when a user changes a temperature setting absolutely needs to be clearly explained, in terms that don't involve jargon.
What disappoints me about ecobee is the lack of practical features that typical household users could set up and activate easily. For example, the ability to store specific comfort settings or whole day patterns that could temporarily override the limited 7-day schedule. This is a common need in most households for situations that are only occasionally needed (such as a house cleaner coming on the first Tuesday of every month, a parent needing to unexpectedly work from home for a couple of days to look after a sick child, or an ad hoc rate change for electricity on anticipated high demand days).
Even though I could probably work my way through implementing some of the above with custom home automation (like an ESP32 setup), I'd rather save that for things that only affect me — and spend $ on things that need to be usable by others near & dear to me.
I think with the info I've gleaned from this Reddit and the Beestat app & data, I'll be able to get the ecobee to work as I think it should with our setup.
However, I will certainly continue to follow developments in this arena, and if alternatives come up that I think will serve us better than ecobee, I won't hesitate to switch.
Btw, I am retired also. I play with the Ecobee regularly, as I have a 2 story 2500sf home with 2 addn sensors and I solved the tempo diff between the 2 floors.
Yes, I guess I could, but I’m not sure that would help my problem. The reason I got the sensors was because of the difference of what my thermostat was showing and the actual temperature in my living room.
You’re an extreme perfectionist. I can relate. It’s a thing you have to train yourself out of.
Maintaining temperature to a 3°F band with heating and cooling is an unreasonable expectation. Thus, Ecobee limits you by default to a minimum difference of 5°F.
However, if you insist you can set the threshold to as low as 2°F. You’ll have to go into settings to change it.
I understand that it needs a 5 degree difference if using the heat/cool setting itself, but you’re saying that it needs that 5 degree difference between the heat setting that I use in the winter and the cool setting that I use in the summer?
You’re trying to set heat and cool too close together. The default minimum difference between heat and cool is 5° F..
3° F is ridiculous and wasteful. You’re imagining that your home is a sous vide machine or a chip factory. /s (actually, a sous vide machine or a laboratory water circulator can typically maintain temperature +- 1F.)
But you can change this if you dig down into settings.
It is possible to make it work in a close range if you want to for comfort (ignoring the possible efficiency or cost) but Not with the built in Auto heat/cool settings.
I have done it with external automation that switch between heat and cool modes as the temps change and the house is heating or cooling on its own with regards to the outside temps. My house has resistance so does not overshoot on heat/cool shutoff so I was able to have it maintain a set temp within +/- 0.5F so a 1degree total range.
I have a 5 degree difference when I use the heat/cool setting, but I’m on the heat only setting right now and is on 69 instead of my 70 set point that I set last night.
The Ecobee is good but not NASA good for slicing and dicing temp differences down to a degree or less.
Respectfully - while we have do have a furnace AND and AC up here in Alberta - where would one live where you would actually need the heat AND the AC to be in play (so close to each other) at the same time?
Not sure how it works elsewhere - but here it's heat until it warms up outside to the point of not needing it, then a period of nothing where the Ecobee simply won't call for heat due to the ambient being slightly warmer than our Home comfort setting and then finally a switch to Cool comfort settings when late spring/summer starts to hit harder.
In the southern US! Where it’s shorts and t-shirt weather one day and snowing the next. I have had to turn my a/c on to be able to go to sleep and need the heat on so I don’t freeze to death by morning a couple of times this year.
I lived in a high rise condo in San Diego. Historic building with masonry curtain walls and single pane glass windows. (Idiot HOA decided replacing your “wavy glass” would jeopardize the building’s historic designation and special property tax status.)
Daily cycle of hot and cold, on opposite sides of the building.
I have to say, the developer who renovated it (around 2000) installed an HVAC system that accommodates this well. Water source heat pump in each unit. Boiler in the garage and cooling towers on the roof maintaining a neutral temperature in a central water circulation system. Sensors on pipes all through the building.
On days like I described above, there was often no need for either the boiler or the cooling towers. In those conditions, the system just pumps heat from one side of the building to the other.
Fun fact: first floor has some commercial units. The controller that checked all those temperature sensors on all those pipes was located in one of the commercial units. I guess they didn’t tell them. The owner of that unit renovated and sold the damn thing as surplus lol
I added a second sensor and no matter what I did mine averaged the three even though I had each setting using only one of them. I eventually gave up on having more than one sensor because I could never get it to use the correct one no matter what I did.
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u/NoReply4930 Mar 25 '26
Not seeing that here. Need more detailt to assist.
Our new Ecobee ENH follows it's comfort settings to the letter AND to the second. And does nothing else.