Multistage Thermostat
If you still have an old mechanical thermostat in your house or apartment, you’re spending too much on your heating and cooling costs throughout the year.
Today I’ll cover the multistage thermostat and how it works.
The multi stage thermostat is designed to work with multi stage HVAC equipment (furnaces, air conditioners, heat pumps).
Multistage HVAC equipment has adjustable capacity rather than just an on/off setting. For example, the furnace would have more than one burner and the air conditioner will have more than one compressor.
They allow you to heat and cool your home quickly, but are also efficient because if they’re simply maintaining temperature, they don’t need all their capacity and can shut down to single stage until it’s needed again.
It’s a lot like how some new cars and trucks have started offering vehicles (mostly trucks and SUVs) that will shut down 2-4 cylinders when cruising on the Interstate since it only needs all the power of an 8 cylinder engine to get going, after that, it’s easy for the engine to maintain speed with four cylinders.
Three Types of Multistage Thermostats
Set Point - The set point thermostat is going to be the least expensive option, but it’s also the most inefficient. It’s operation is simple. If the desired temperature is two degrees or more apart from the current temperature, it will engage all the stages of your HVAC equipment to get your home or business to the desired temperature as fast as possible.
If the desired temperature is one degree away, it will use just one stage.
Time Based - Time based thermostats are good at getting to the desired temperature quickly but they do have one distinct disadvantage – they tend to overshoot the temperature by a few degrees. The thermostat in my old apartment was like that. It was great at warming the apartment up in a hurry… too good, it frequently made it four degrees warmer in the apartment before shutting off.
Dynamic – Dynamic thermostats are the most efficient multi stage thermostats you can get. It keeps track of how long it takes to change te temperature of the run and will learn how long and how many stages it takes to reach the desired temperature.
Manufacturers
The top three manufacturers of these thermostats are LuxPro, Honeywell, and White Rodgers.
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