Question

Best thermostat for Savant?  We bought a new to us house last year.Best thermostat for Savant? We bought a new to us house last year. It’s 7 years old (7000 sq ft) and I want to slowly end up with full automation. I like what I hear about Savant but I’m not yet to the point where I 100% know what I’ll want to go with. In the meantime I’m upgrading things in the house and need to make sure I do so in a way that allows for Savant (or others? ) in the future. I’ve bought new garage door openers and called a random Savant dealer to ask which ones to use. I also upgraded our Pentair pool control system from the old plastic remote to the new WiFi / phone app version so it should be compatible. I also upgraded the alarm system to a commercial Honeywell system. Now I need to replace thermostats. There are 8 of them so I don’t want to make the wrong choice and waste money replacing them later! Any advice? @maul8

Answer 1

Savant’s SST-W100 is solid, the new CLI-8000 is good as long as your using external temp sensors. Lutron RA2 thermostats are solid. Select Aprilaire units work very good, based on other dealers. Nest and Ecobee are both a no go with Savant. Z-Wave units through Vera work good as long as your mesh network is built correctly and signals are adequate.  

Comments

@maul8 yes control would still be available from the thermostat. Just no communication to Savant if the Host goes down.  

Answer 2

What’s best to consider is how that device will be used after a control system and that your investment moves forward into another control system you may choose in the future.  

Comments

@maul8 the Savant ones will operate in standalone mode but not with another control system by itself. If your doing lighting control I would use a thermostat that’s part of that environmental ecosystem like Lutron RA2. Otherwise I would choose the Aprilaire 8820 all day.  

Answer 3

If your hiding them I would focus on solid integration over esthetics of the HVAC interface and touchscreen. Cause at the end of the day the Savant UI will look the same.