Smart Recovery Issue
Recently I've noticed an issue with Smart Recovery on the Ecobee thermostat that controls my upstairs heating/cooling. Since this area of my home is normally unoccupied during the day the comfort setting is set to away with a cooling set temperature of 82F. Typically smart recovery will kick in an half an hour or so before the home setting to cool the upstairs rooms to the desired temperature for comfort.
Recently however I have noted that smart recovery is kicking in many hours in advance of the 'home' temperature being required and at set temperatures well below the cooling 'set' temp (see first attachment). Furthermore, it seems like the cooling cycles, i.e. it reduces the temperature by a few degrees, switches off and then when the temperature rises cooling kicks back on.
I talked with ecobee support and they suggested that something must have changed that is allowing more heat into the upstairs area and hence the thermostat believes it is going to take longer to cool. In addition they delete the 'database' that smart recovery uses to decide when to cool however this has made no difference to behavior. They also suggested turning off smart recovery however this seems to defeat the purpose of having a smart thermostat!
As a temporary solution I have found that putting the thermostat on temporary 'hold' one degree F above the cooling set point serves to prevent the system kicking on in the middle of the afternoon (second attachment). However not only does this mean that I have to manually reduce the temperature before bed but also, once again, negates the benefit of having a smart thermostat.
My suspicion is that ecobee pushed a new firmware or algorithm to the thermostat and that is what has upset the smart recovery feature. Has anyone experienced similar behavior or issues in the past couple of weeks and, if so, did you find a solution?