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Using Recovery Mode on my Lux Thermostat

I've had this Lux programmable thermostat for years, and it's worked perfectly great for me.

But this week I just learned about enabling Recovery mode, and it both works great and should save me more money.

What is recovery mode?

Normally, a programmable thermostat is a device that is used to turn on the heat at a user-specified time in order to meet a user-specified temperature.

In contrast, a recovery mode programmable thermostat is a device that ensures that a user-specified temperature is met at a user-specified time.

The difference seems subtle, but in the real world, recovery mode makes a big positive difference in terms of living comfort and heating efficiency.

When using a thermostat, it can take a variable amount of time for your heat to come up in the morning.  Let's say you want to be up and about a 7 AM with a house temperature of 68 °F.  When should the heating system come on?

Well, that depends on your heating system, how cold it is outside, and how cool your house is.  If it was warm last night, with a low temperature of 67°F, it will take only a few minutes of heat to get to temperature.  But if it is cold, say down to 60°F inside and 20°F outside, it could take an hour for the heating system to suitably warm up the place.

A thermostat's recovery feature automatically figures out when the heat needs to come on in order to reach the programmed temperature at the right time.

I generally want to keep my house at 68 °F during the day (from 7 AM), and I set the thermostat to 60 °F at night.  I don't want the heat to turn on at 7 AM - I want the house to be 68°F warm at 7 AM.  With recovery mode, I just program my thermostat to "68 °F at 7 AM", and from there my thermostat works to make sure that's true.

The thermostat uses the current temperature, the goal temperature, and the recently recorded speed of the heating system to figure out when to turn on the heating system.  Today the thermostat might calculate that the heating system needs to come on around 6:42 AM to reach 68 °F at 7 AM.  When it is much colder next week, the thermostat might determine that the heating system needs to be turned on at 6:35AM.

In all, this means that the thermostat will work as efficiently as it can in order to keep my house at the right temperature for me.  All this in a $50 thermostat.  Pretty nice.

Update:

Recovery Mode is working perfectly on my Lux thermostat.  Now that it's really cold out, the thermostat turns on the boiler one hour before my morning settings.  That's the maximum amount of time the Lux will pre-start the boiler.

Out in these parts, with my heating system, my building, and brutally cold weather, an hour isn't enough time.   But it's better than no additional time.

I currently set the night temperature at 64 degrees.  By setting it at 65 or 66 degrees, the house would get to temperature in less time.  It's rare that the boiler comes on over night, and when it does, it is generally colder than 10 °F outside.  At that point, my energy savings plan goes out the window.


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