Ecobee3 Lite Smart Wi-Fi Thermostat
Rachel and I just bought a new house (http://bit.ly/rs_housetour) and we’ve been catching up with the upgrades that we want to do for the house! This one here is on upgrading our thermostat. We asked our electrician to set up the thermostat but they weren’t able to figure it out. I took a look at the wiring and it didn’t seem too difficult so I wanted to show you guys what I learned!
Disclaimer: Put safety first! If you aren’t sure what you’re doing or aren’t comfortable with working with electrical stuff, please hire a licensed professional. Your safety is of the utmost importance so just be safe.
Sorry I haven’t gotten around to writing out the instructions clearly yet, so I just pulled the YouTube Transcript to help the people that prefer reading instead of watching a video. I’ll get to it as soon as possible.
YouTube Transcript
what’s good youtube welcome to the
channel my name is dylan and today i’m
going to teach you how to install
a smart thermostat just a quick
disclaimer i am not an electrician so if
you do not feel comfortable
please consult a licensed professional
stay safe
the third misstep that we’re working
with today is the eco b3 light
and the reason why we chose this is just
because it had a lot more functionality
customizability and integrations with
like ifttt
and other apps uh that just made our
lives easier compared to the nest
i do like how the nest looks but just
the ecobee works with our lifestyle
better nonetheless let’s get straight
into
how to install this thermostat there’s a
few tools that you’ll probably need
the main things would be just like a
flathead a phillips
pliers are usually pretty helpful a
drill to help you mount
the thermostat onto the wall and just to
be safe i always like to have a volt
meter on hand just to make sure that you
can check
if there’s electricity running through
the wires
if you have all your tools ready to go
then we can start
taking out the old thermostat and
putting it onto the new one
so when you’re working with anything
electrical the most important thing to
do is make sure you can cut the power
off
some furnaces have this switch right
beside it so you can actually turn off
the furnace from there
while we do have that i don’t really
trust anything
so if i can shut the power off somewhere
else i like to go to the power breakers
you know it’s better to be safe than
sorry so locate your breaker switches
and make sure you can turn off the
furnace whatever you think is connected
to it so just to be
extra sure there’s no power running
through the wires one of the best ways
to make sure that you actually did turn
everything off is uh setting all of the
fans on your thermostat to pretty much
hide so that when you take a look at the
vents you can tell there’s no air moving
around
and you’ll actually hear the furnace not
working once you cut the power off
some of the old thermostats like this
one have a backup
battery power uh so the thermostat still
may be on but it doesn’t necessarily
mean that there’s
power running through the wires once
you’re pretty sure the power is off all
you have to do is take off your old
thermostat most thermostats just pull
right off like this
this one in particular i had to wedge it
from the bottom and i was
scared to break it but just go for it
and it should be okay
most thermostats come off pretty easily
this is the time where i like to just be
extra careful
and actually use the voltmeter to check
if there’s power running through it
because
i don’t want to get shocked so you know
just taking that extra safety precaution
is always nice so the number one thing
is you want to make sure that your old
thermostat was not high voltage
so if you were to see wire nuts or
anything that says 110
vac 120 vac or something you probably
can’t use
a smart thermostat so this is something
that you should definitely check before
you even go out and buy
a smart thermostat otherwise you’re
going to want to be looking for is a
c wire this is not a make or break deal
but it does make
our lives easier so if you have a c wire
you’re good to go in our case
we have a c wire and then the other
thing is the g wire which is the ground
wire
and as long as you got those three
things in check uh you can follow this
tutorial
so once i’ve made sure that all of our
wires were there that were the minimum
requirements i took a picture because
in case i didn’t mess something up or
didn’t know what to do with the ecobee
we can always revert back to the old
thermostat which is pretty important
especially in winter months when you
need to make sure you’re not freezing
in your house so now that i got a
picture of all the wires on the old
thermostat i wanted to make sure that i
could
label all the wires because once we take
that back plate off it’s going to be
hard to remember which one is what
so on most old thermostats there’s
actually labels to where the wires have
gone into if you can see right here
uh there were two labels one said
conventional and the other said heat
pump i don’t know what either of those
are but i’m just assuming conventional
is what the majority of us have so
that’s kind of
what i went with it makes it really easy
to install because they come with these
stickers and you just basically put them
onto the wires
then you’ll be able to label which one
is which once you’ve labeled all of your
wires all you have to do is take off
that back plate and you can start
installing your new ecobee
so the ecobee gives you like this
gigantic wall plate uh you don’t need to
use it but if you did ding the wall
or they cut a very large hole for the
old thermostat
you may need to use this but we just
want a clean simple look so we just put
the mounting bracket on made sure that
it was level and just drilled the mount
onto the wall the next step super easy
you basically just match up your labels
with
the holes that have the same letters to
make sure you’re installing the wires
correctly on the ecobee
back plate uh you just basically put the
wire through the hole on the side and
make sure that it
clips all the way back there’s those
tabs and
if the tabs go all the way back that’s
how you know it’s done correctly
another way to make sure that you’ve
done it correctly is you pull on the
wire a little bit
and make sure it doesn’t come out if it
can stay in there while you pull the tug
on it
then you’re good if not just do it again
and make sure it stays in there and then
once
all the wires are tucked away uh you can
just put on the ecobee
all you got to do is just match up the
metal pins with the holes
and it’ll just click into place once
that’s on there basically you want to
make sure it works
turn on the furnace uh come back to the
thermostat and just
you’ll see a really cool animation go
through the instructions over there
what we have to do here was just install
the app make sure we created a login
set up the wi-fi and then you’re good to
go but other than that
here are some of our favorite features
for the ecobee
the comfort settings that we have are
super helpful on saving on our bill
uh our bill is quite expensive because
the insulation our inner house isn’t too
thick so when we’re asleep or when we’re
away we drop the temperature of our
house around three degrees
and that way you know we’re not heating
up a house that doesn’t need to be
heated
something that i found super helpful in
this is using an app called
ifttt and it’s free so all you have to
do is set up a radius around your house
and whenever you leave that area
it basically knows that you’re away and
it automatically changes that way you
don’t have to touch my phone
and we’re making sure that we’re energy
efficient in this house
lastly ecobee just created something
called eco plus which is a smart savings
way for you to keep your house cost
effective and energy efficient
uh long story short they just basically
use the information from your utilities
company
and just help you save money there’s a
gauge on it just basically
on how the ai will take over your
thermostat
but if you don’t want to activate that
that’s fine as well now that we’ve got
that installed our next steps are
basically trying to figure out how to
hook up a humidifier because i think our
house
tends to lie on the drier side um
let me know if you guys have done that
because any tips and tricks would be
super helpful
other than that let me know if this
video has helped you out thanks so much
for watching this video
don’t forget to like comment and
subscribe and i will catch you guys on
the next one