One of the major problems caused by guests at short-term rentals is related to the heating/cooling system and guests making changes to the thermostat that disrupt or prevent successful operation.
In our Recommended Devices section, we recommend the ecobee Smart Thermostat Essential for a number of reasons detailed in that article. But the most important features relate to physical security and the ability to control and lock out certain functionality without the use of a secret PIN.
This article will walk you through how to configure any ecobee thermostat for a short-term rental, with the recommended settings and information on how they work.
Device setup
This article doesn’t get into the details of the physical device installation or configuration, it assumes that you’ve followed the setup instructions that came with the thermostat, have it up and running, connected to your WiFi and paired to the app.
If you need assistance with these steps, there are great instructions on Ecobee’s web site.
Configuration
Follow these instructions to configure limitations to changes that can be made from the device and the app itself.
- Open the Ecobee app
- Select the thermostat you wish to control
- On the main screen, click the “More >” link
- Click the settings gear in the top-right
- Choose “Device Settings”
- Set the “Heating Range” to the allowed range you want anyone using the thermostat (or app) to be restricted to. We commonly set this to “50-72”
- Click “Save”
- Set the “Cooling Range” to the allowed range you want anyone using the thermostat (or app) to be restricted to. We commonly set this to “68-85”
- Click “Save”
- Click the <- back arrow to return to the previous menu
Access Control
To get to the Access Control settings, you need to use the Ecobee Web interface, which you can do on a computer or on your phone.
- Login to ecobee.com using the top-right “Sign-in” menu item or the “Sign in” option under the hamburger menu top-left on mobile
- Click “View Full Details” on the bottom
- Click the “Settings” block
- Click “Access Control”
- Click “Enable” at the top, and additional settings will appear
- Enter your pin that will be required to make any changes to any settings categories that you check below.
- We typically recommend checking the boxes for:
- Schedule
- Vacation
With these settings in place, no thermostat settings can be changed, nor can vacation or schedule changes be configured without a pin. Guests will still be able to adjust temperature, within the restrictions you setup above, and set the thermostat on hold if they desire. But they will not be able to change the schedule or adjust anything else.
