One of my thermostats recently died after 10yrs so I started looking for a "smart" thermostat. After browsing the web I concluded I'd try the Nest (crowd fav) and the Ecobee3 (newest model but ecobee seems to have a very good reputation online). I wanted to share some of my initial thoughts between the two since there isn't much out there yet. Before buying these stats I realized I needed the 24v common wire connected and luckily our house was wired with 6 strand wire and all I had to do was hook up the 5th wire to the C terminal. This made life easy for me. I bought the Nest from Lowe's so I had that immediately. The Ecobee3 was bought direct a week later and it was 2 day shipping. The Nest had more heft and solid feel. It felt like it was worth the $250 whereas the Ecobee3 is very lightweight plasticy cheap feeling like my existing stat was. It was a bit hard to believe it was more then the Nest. I did have some cosmetic damage on my Ecobee3 and am in the process of exchanging the unit with them. Installation was similar on both. I had 5 wires and both units started right up after I turned the power back on. Ecobee3 has more initial questions than the Nest if I remember correctly. Once setup the Ecobee3 definitely has more things configurable for your HVAC system vs the Nest. The Nest app is smoother to operate. Ecobee3 app is a little clunky but has more settings to customize. Ecobee3 doesn't show the energy savings/usage yet but it says that feature is coming soon. The one thing that really interested me was the remote sensor on the Ecobee3. This stat is on our 2nd floor. We primarily occupy 2 bedrooms and if this thing can average the two rooms to better even out the temperature that would be great. We have tried adjusting the vents but there is still quite a bit of difference. Its a bad time to review these stats right now because my HVAC system isn't really running much. Just a tad at night to keep the house warm. I've decided to keep the Ecobee3 and return the Nest based on the more configurable settings and the remote sensor with comfort in mind.

Are there no details in the installation manuals of both which will answer this? Carrier's website may offer some guides to compatibility, as may the controller's manual - it may specify compatible sensors. In essence, all electronic temperature sensors are thermocouples but there may be a lot more to it, so there's no simple answer without you doing your homework. It sounds as if you have hot and cold spots in your house, not surprising with the wood stove....if the furnace tstat wants to turn the furnace on, it suggests parts of the house ARE cold enough to warrant a heat call. Assuming you can select "fan run" on your thermostat (not "fan auto") which will make the furnace fan run all the time, why don't you try that? You'll get far more air circulation, which is what you need, and improved air filtration etc which isn't a bad thing with a wood stove.

Sarschlos... Retrofitting can be a pain but it may be worth looking into if you really want to do it. Not everyone is comfortable taking chunks out of walls only to discover the ceiling joists run the other way. You could do some research or get an estimate. If the plan sounds like something you can do, go for it. Like I said, you can save a lot doing it yourself but also need to be willing to fix any mistakes you make. Sometimes the pros are a better choice. You could still do same set up with the components in same room, hiding the wires somewhere to come out the wall where your components are just like monkeyjac did. Worst case scenario, you can hide wires in corners of rooms. I ran a speaker wire by digging a tiny crack in corner of room. Crammed wire in and filled with caulk or joint compound. Painted and you cannot see it at all. Once I hid the wire using that plastic tube stuff and ran it along the baseboards. Monkeyjac... Thanks for adding the technical terms to the set up. My dh is the one who knows all that stuff. I just come up with the ways to hide the stuff. I am the official drywall/texture person on any project. I have become really good at fixing holes in drywall. Not necessarily because we have accidents but mostly out of having to move fixtures or such. I must say that your cost was not too bad hiring the job out. One thing we decided to do when moving tv to over the fireplace was to recognize that a potential new owner may not like the idea. So we left the original port for the components we had in the entertainment center on wall all nice and neat. We have a sofa in front of it. We figure this way any future owner could still put tv wherever they wanted. They would put a picture or mirror over fireplace and use an entertainment center or they could have tv over fireplace. They could even leave tv over fireplace and keep components in same room. Options are always a great feature when designing something. These days you really need to appeal to as many potential buyers as you can.

I have two Honeywell Vision Pro series wireless thermostats and your description matches what I have. Furnace companies like Bryant don't make thermostats and use other suppliers like Honeywell to make and label such products for them. I'll guess that's what you have. Anyway, these thermostats communicate wirelessly (using a radio signal) to the unit you've photographed that gets mounted near the equipment. You've called this an ECM (equipment control module), they have other names too including EIM (equipment interface module). . The heat/AC equipment gets wired to this (as if it were the thermostat), then it communicates with the thermostat using a proprietary RF signal. Your two wires to the thermostat supply power only. Some Honeywell units can operate solely on battery power so that no wires are needed at all. The easy replacement would be to buy a new ECM and continue to use the existing thermostat. If they're incompatible, then a new thermostat to match the ECM would be required. An ECM is about $50 if I recall correctly. I had these installed when I had new equipment installed too. It was done to avoid the expected difficulty of pulling a 6 wire bundle in two different places (two systems) through a complicated set of walls. That was two years ago, the stats and EIMs are working flawlessly. A bonus is that they have an internet interface too and it also works quite well with remote access from smartphone/tablet apps or even using a browser.