Looking for automation ideas for a space heater

Configuration
1

My Mom has moved in with us and likes her room at a constant 73 degrees. Since we keep our main thermostat at 70 during the day and 67 at night (with some variation on weekends), I put in a space heater for her on a smart plug with a simple automation that looks at the temperature every 5 minutes and turns the heater on or off as appropriate.

What I’m noticing is that when the main heater turns on in the morning to go from say 67 to 70, the heat being dumped into ther room takes it to as much as 77 before slowly subsiding to the desired 73.

Any suggestions for a refinement to the automation to tamp down that spike?

The thermostat is an Ecobee that is programmed using their app, so there may be an opportunity to tie the space heater’s behavior to that of the furnace.

Thanks

2

First I’ll start off with a warning…

Be careful using a smart plug for a space heater. Most of them aren’t rated for the current draw that a “normal” space heater draws. Just something to be cognizant of.

The anticipatory thermostat thing could be a little complicated.

The way I would handle it is by checking how long on average the heater stays on during that morning spike. Then create an automation to “pulse” the smart plug/heater up to the desired temperature.

For example…

if the heater turns on at 67 degrees and then runs for 20 minutes. When it turns off the temp then spikes to 77.

create an automation that turns on the heater for 5 minutes, wait 5 minutes and check the actual temperature, if the actual temperature is below the desired temperature then repeat the “5 on, wait 5, recheck” action until the actual temp is at the desired temp.

3

Thanks for the caution. I was worried about it too and bought a small oil filled space heater that maxes out at 800W and the smart plug is rated at 15A so I have some margin of safety.

The room temperature begins rising as soon as the main furnace starts up so I should probably set the space heater automation to go off some minutes before that event. With any luck, I can achieve some smoothing of the temperature waveform with a portion of it below the set point and some above.

4

Sorry to hijack your post, but I am trying to do the same thing, and this is my first automation I’m trying to setup.

I’m not sure which action to choose to see my smart switch, none of the options I play with seem to have it as an option.

Getting the temperature I can do with a trigger on device or numeric value option.

5

I use one automation each to turn the space heater on and off by sampling the temperature every 5 minutes. Sample YAML below that you can modify for your setup. If you’re using the GUI, you can choose edit as YAML mode to see what it is generating.

alias: Mom's Space Heater On Below 72
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: time_pattern
    minutes: /5
condition:
  - condition: device
    type: is_off
    device_id: aaa3d95381c2a7a4e2f7f113a16eea32
    entity_id: switch.topgreenermini3_2
    domain: switch
    for:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 0
      seconds: 5
  - type: is_temperature
    condition: device
    device_id: 2d3c5391debdfc0850af5db7c3aa43a9
    entity_id: sensor.master_bedroom_satellite_temperature
    domain: sensor
    below: 72
action:
  - type: turn_on
    device_id: aaa3d95381c2a7a4e2f7f113a16eea32
    entity_id: switch.topgreenermini3_2
    domain: switch
mode: single

alias: Mom's Space Heater Off Above 73
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: time_pattern
    minutes: /5
condition:
  - type: is_temperature
    condition: device
    device_id: 2d3c5391debdfc0850af5db7c3aa43a9
    entity_id: sensor.master_bedroom_satellite_temperature
    domain: sensor
    above: 73
  - condition: device
    type: is_on
    device_id: aaa3d95381c2a7a4e2f7f113a16eea32
    entity_id: switch.topgreenermini3_2
    domain: switch
action:
  - type: turn_off
    device_id: aaa3d95381c2a7a4e2f7f113a16eea32
    entity_id: switch.topgreenermini3_2
    domain: switch
mode: single
2 Likes
6

This might be old news…or might become a topic of interest with winter rolling in so I wanted to add my two cents. I have a similar situation where the parents stay in the basement, the kids room is on the first floor and master bedroom on the top. Heating and cooling has always been a pain. So I got “Flair” vents. They tie in easily with the ecobee and comes with a temperature dial as a hub (that I keep in the basement). The temp is set for the kids room (70) and my wife likes it cold in the master. So now when the ecobee turns on it can open and close vents based on sensed temperature. So my parents can turn the dial to 68 and the vent will close at 68 while the kids room continues to get heat. It worked great in the summer with AC so now I’m trying to find a room heater that I can connect to the flair thermostat (or HA) so when they want it warmer, it will just turn on the heater and set it to whatever they turn the dial to. Once at temp, the vent closes so if the whole house gets heat, their room should be passed by, avoiding overheating.
Sorry, long story, but hope that helps…flair also integrates well with HA showing me room temp (works like having a temp sensor in every room you install one), duct pressure, open/close state etc. looking forward to creating some interesting automations with this.