Lutron Touchpro Controllable Dampers

[schalliol]

I have installed Lutron TouchPros without incident, but I wondered whether anyone here has installed them for multi-zone locations. I see here that it is possible with additional equipment not available from Lutron (Zine Controller), but I'm not sure what would be needed or how it would work in RR2 software/programming. I imagine you need additional TouchPros and they just communicate to turn on the hearing/cooling and control the dampers. Programming I would think would be just like they were for independent units.

Does anyone have insight? Thanks!

[dinom]

You are correct. In a zoned system, you have a zone controller that interfaces with each of the thermostats, and also with the HVAC unit and the zone dampers. I have a unit from Honeywell called the HZ322. As far as the Lutron thermostats and the Lutron software is concerned, it looks like independent units controlling its own system. So really no real difference in the way you program or wire it, except instead of wiring the thermostats to its own HVAC unit, you wire them to the single zone controller, which has multiple connection points, depending on the number of zones supported or used.

[schalliol]

Thanks very much, dinom. Do you use the HZ322 with the TouchPro or with other Honeywell thermostats? It sounds like a good way to go. Thanks!

[dinom]

Right now I have 3 Honeywell VisionPro 8000 thermostats, which are almost 100% identical to the TouchPro units as far as wiring to the HVAC and zone controller.

I just ordered my first TouchPro from Lutron and should have it this week. After I swap it out with one of my 8000 units, I'll let you know how it goes. But I know it will work fine.

[schalliol]

How'd it go? Are you going to get another two?

[dinom]

There was a mix up with shipping. Should be here on Thursday. I'll let you know once I install it.

[schalliol]

Did you get around to this? I'm also wondering whether you could use a zone controller and use one TouchPro and one HVAC Controller and wireless sensor. I'm thinking that the latter would be an easy retrofit solution (whether you want to use a seeTemp or not.

[dinom]

Sorry I keep forgetting to update this thread. Yes, it works perfectly with my zone controller. Also, I can't imagine why you couldn't mix a TouchPro and a HVAC Controller with a zone controller. I believe you must use a seeTemp with the HVAC Controller.

Dino

[schalliol]

Very good. Thanks! What makes you think you need a real seeTemp? I thought the seeTemp was really just a display. I wonder if you could at least program a seeTemp that doesn't exist, like I do with some scenes and just use it in the iPhone app...the seeTemp is cool though.

[dinom]

I think you're right. I remember now you don't need the seeTemp if you are using integration (either iPhone or 3rd party).

[rdgerken]

I'm kind of lost on the HVAC integration. I have a Bryant Evolution 3 zone system. The Lutron doc says their thermostats are compatible with proprietary zone controllers (bottom of page 10 in the choosing the right thermostat guide), but I can't see how that's possible. I'm pretty sure the evolution system uses some sort of communications bus between the thermostats in the different zones. Also, wouldn't I lose all the smarts of my HVAC control system (Humidity control, UV Light, diagnostics, etc?)

[beotownsend]

I'd recommend getting an HVAC specialist involved; best piece of advice that I ever got from Lutron (and I'm an L3 guy too), is that HVAC is not DIY. The thing you have to realize with the Lutron system is that the sensors take an average of the entire home; they don't have any unique zoning capabilities by themselves. So even if you had a 3rd party zone controller, the Lutron system doesn't have the ability to send a discrete command to tell that controller which zone is at; say 65 Degrees and which one is at 73. It just tells the 3rd Party Controller "House is cold".

The work around, as I have a similar project to this, is to use multiple HVAC controllers; provided that your zone controller acts like its 3 separate virtual furnaces. The programming will allow for this. You can assign different SeeTemps to a specific controller (i.e. floor 1, floor 2, floor 3), and you can also assign the wireless sensors to specific controllers as well. You can have a max of 5 wireless sensors in the setup (I'd have to check if adding a second main repeater also expands this as well).

Yes, its not the cheapest solution ($1800 bucks or so). I'd consider looking outside of Lutron for your thermostat solution; at the end of the day while its slick to have it all integrated, it might not be worth the trouble.

[rdgerken]

Thanks for the tip. Yeah, I think you are right... I was hoping to integrate everything all together, just for convenience, but Bryant has a new wifi enabled touch thermostat that is built just for this system. It is very capable in it's own right, for external access, Android / iOS access, etc. I think I'll just go this route for about 1/3 the cost - and also keep the full feature set of the HVAC system. It would have been nice to bring it all together, but it's not something I'm messing with constantly anyways... just wanted to be able to get in remotely and adjust the temp on occasion.

[beotownsend]

If its WiFi enabled, you may be able to access it via port-forwarding, VPN for sure

[schalliol]

VPN doesn't require wifi. I think you may be right that if you are on another WiFi network that port forwarding will work, but if WiFi is enabled and you're off of a wifi network, I don't believe port forwarding will work