I need a thermostat that I can lock and or control for a house my relatives live in.

Long story short:

I pay the bills on it but last month the electric bill was $550 for a 2800sq ft house that had a new a/c installed this past June. The thermostat is currently set to 68 but because the temp sensor is in a hallway, the actual temp is much cooler. I just took some temperature reading from around the house and it's anywhere from 68 (in the hallway) to 63.1 the kitchen.

Unfortunately tmy relatives have not shown they are able to live within their means and adjust their habits. So now I have to make changes for them.

Im really looking for the cheapest halfway decent thermostat I can lock and control from my home. I would also be open to a dumb hotel style that has upper and lower limits that will give them some more freedom of control. Any ideas?

I hope the ecobee works like a charm but even then MY suspects are

• duct opening in attic ... ala my church-in-the-day that was sucking attic air into the RA duct ... DUH with similar energy bills while I served as Building & Grounds officer
• running or leaking the WH hot water down the drain, which a water bill would prove
• OPEN fenestration during HVAC runs ala familes with little tots as if brought up in a barn
• BitCoin operations in progress

Let us know their hijinks later!

Tough situation. Is your arrangement papered up on a lease with utilities? If not, the arrangement needs to change and the responsibility of the utilities needs to be put back on them. Accountability will get squeezed out of them that way. I know, family, easier said than done as I have been there and done that. But, I suggest finding a way to draw a line, and make them be responsible if it's crossed. This will be much easier than a wi-fi thermostat and engage in thermostat wars from afar with family

tgivaughn said:

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I hope the ecobee works like a charm but even then MY suspects are

• duct opening in attic ... ala my church-in-the-day that was sucking attic air into the RA duct ... DUH with similar energy bills while I served as Building & Grounds officer
• running or leaking the WH hot water down the drain, which a water bill would prove
• OPEN fenestration during HVAC runs ala familes with little tots as if brought up in a barn
• BitCoin operations in progress

Let us know their hijinks later!

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I know it's not the hot water heater because although the water usage is higher than when I lived there but not totally unreasonable. The hot water heater is only 3 years old and it's a smart water heater so I can see the usage and power it draws.


Want to take a guess what the energy usage was the last 2 months?





July-3731 kWh
June-3467 kWh

nai06 said:

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Oh boy, this could be an entirely separate thread but here is the gist

• Father in law had surgery in 2023 and had a catastrophic complication and nearly bled out on the table. He has been unable to find reliable work since then
• Mother in Law is retired but came out of retirement to work part time at the local YMCA to help make ends meet
• Sister in Law is in her late 40s and hasn't worked since December 2015. No real reason, she's just been bumming of her parents ever since.
• SIL claims to have health issues but won't go to a doctor and believes her faith will heal her (I think it's mostly in her head).
• FIL and MIL have refused to hold SIL to account or make her accept any responsibility
• We pay all the bills on the house including the mortgage and everything is in my name.
• We have no paper lease so if I want to evict them, it's pretty straight forward (I want to evict my SIL).

Its even more complicated than that, but it's kinda messy since it's family. They were able to pay some bills initially as both FIL and MIL are drawing social security but that hasn't happened in several months.

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I've been a part of some messy family & family business situations and I can relate the difficulty of that comes with all of that. If you are trying to be least confrontational and solve the problem, then you need to do what you need to do be the thermostat king. Passcode on the tenant side to change temps, limits about how low of temperature it can go (and how high on the heating side), or lockbox around it. I would look into one that can Be programmed with limits and you have to enter a password or something to override those limits. Way to love you family amid it being hard and tenuous. All the best.

Feel for you. In a similar situation in general that won't end until MiL passes, whenever that is.

As to the thermostat, Ecobee is a pretty good answer. Can do a passcode, can be controlled remotely, has sensor so maybe you can even out the temps a little.


Another less in your face option, may be to find one that has a code to the settings. Then you can set the minimum and maximum temps allowed but not lock out changing it within the allowable range. Pretty sure this exists, but don't have a brand.

Moral from your situation and mine and, I am sure, many others to those reading this for fun - do not ever, under any circumstance enter into this type of tenant relationship unless you are financially and emotionally in a place that they can do pretty much anything to the property and never pay you a dime and you won't care. Even having a lease won't help, as the family part still trumps it.

Having made the same mistake, I cannot see how this ever works out well.

To be clear I always assumed I would be paying the bills on this place. We were paying my inlaws bills at a rental house before this. I moved to Kansas and moved them into my Texas house. My SIL is basically living for free with her parents. I don't want my MIL and FIL to be homeless because t don't really care about my SIL. They just allow her to live with them. Moving forward I will probably rent a 1 bd apartment for my MIL and FIL and then rent the Texas house out. If they want to let my SIL crash on their couch, fine with me.

I've give my SIL a deadline of December 1st to find a job and start contributing otherwise I start the eviction process.

Quote:

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AirBnB guest set the heater to 82 when the outside temp was 16 degrees

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Few things more idiotic than that.

OP, I'm afraid you don't want my opinion here so I won't give it.

91AggieLawyer said:

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Quote:

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AirBnB guest set the heater to 82 when the outside temp was 16 degrees

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Few things more idiotic than that.

OP, I'm afraid you don't want my opinion here so I won't give it.

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We probably have a similar opinion

Thought I would share the end of the story experience. And how, for me at least, it puts things into perspective some.

MiL has probably been ill for some time and just didn't know due to her general poor condition. But a few months ago she started having severe right shoulder pain. After a couple go rounds of ER and painkillers and no definitive diagnosis, a particularly caring or just better ER doctor made a connection that severe right shoulder pain can be a symptom of tumors on the liver. That relatively quickly led to a diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer that had spread to at least the liver. Don't think they looked much further, as that is enough. Less than 2 weeks after the official diagnosis, she passed yesterday.

She and I were not particularly close, but we got along well. Terrible watching my wife go through this. Still incredibly irritated at the siblings that live there and abused the kindness - we will give them until after the holidays to find other residence before we list the house.

But at the end of the day right now regarding my MiL, all I can think about is that I wish we could have been able to do more for her. We really could not have done much more financially, but I wish that we could have. Or that we could have done what we did with less frustration and irritation. The whole situation is hard on a relationship, but when it is irrevocably finished and over, I sure feel bad that I had those feelings.

I hope your situation is improving or at least getting more bearable. Just thought I would share. Did not really expect to feel this way after so long wanting to just be out from under that burden. Now I would gladly bear it longer.

Here's your way out: list your house and the house they are in. Tell the in laws you have to sell both houses to pay for the new bigger home you and your wife need. Sell the in law house, but don't ever sell your house. Tell them that some complications arose before you could close on the new house and yall are now saving to try again in the near future.
You're welcome.

nai06 said:

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tgivaughn said:

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I hope the ecobee works like a charm but even then MY suspects are

• duct opening in attic ... ala my church-in-the-day that was sucking attic air into the RA duct ... DUH with similar energy bills while I served as Building & Grounds officer
• running or leaking the WH hot water down the drain, which a water bill would prove
• OPEN fenestration during HVAC runs ala familes with little tots as if brought up in a barn
• BitCoin operations in progress

Let us know their hijinks later!

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I know it's not the hot water heater because although the water usage is higher than when I lived there but not totally unreasonable. The hot water heater is only 3 years old and it's a smart water heater so I can see the usage and power it draws.


Want to take a guess what the energy usage was the last 2 months?





July-3731 kWh
June-3467 kWh

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Jesus!

The highest my ~3200 SF 2-story home in Houston this summer was 1,788 kWh in August. I did hit 2189 kWh last August.

The highest I think for my house that I could find (August the year before I bought it) at like 4,400 kWh. I have replaced both HVACs and the windows since then. I cannot imagine how I'd get to that much power consumption.

Oh and changed all the lights. They had 75W incandecent lights EVERYWHERE. I reduced ~1.75 kW of lighting power.

~egon

To answer op's question, I recommend Ecobee and use the remote sensors as needed.
I also used some plumber's putting to plug the hole behind the thermostat to get a more accurate temperature reading.

Edit: one downside may be if you have a newer fancy unit, swapping out the thermostat may affect how the system runs if advanced configuration is not done. For one of my units, swapping out the Trane thermostat for the Ecobee was far less efficient and lower comfort (way more humid).