Mysa, Mysa

Last December at Treasure Island, I swapped two of my ancient manual analog thermostats for Mysa smart thermostats (see photo). The changeover included a few surprises, but generally I’m happy with the new units as their second winter approaches.

The Treasure Island vacation home is heated with four Cadet electric wall heaters each with its own thermostat. They are capable of keeping the place warm but seem to run continuously in doing so and drive up an already high monthly power bill.

Because the place is unoccupied during the winter, I used to turn off the thermostats completely or set them so low that the heaters rarely ran. The result was an emergency trip to Treasure Island to adjust them each time Western Washington was hit with a cold snap. This wasn’t ideal, but it was better than stressing out over possible frozen water pipes.

The Treasure Island house is not a smart home, but it does have year-round Wi-Fi in search of an off-season job to do.

So last winter when my utility company made Mysa thermostats available through its energy conservation program, I ordered two of them. As smart thermostats, the Mysa units can be controlled remotely by a phone app when connected to a Wi-Fi system. Although they are designed for electric baseboard heaters, they work equally well with wall heaters. The best part was the price: $1 each including shipping. It was more of a giveaway than a rebate.

Mysa is a Canadian company that sells smart thermostats for baseboard heating, mini-split heat pumps, and electric in-floor heating.

Installation was straightforward. My handy friend Doug did the electrical work while I set up the Mysa app. We installed them in two places—the living room and loft—and left the old manual thermostats in place in the bathroom and bedroom.

Two things surprised me about the conversion process. First, initially the units read high by about 5 degrees F. That doesn’t sound like much, but it took some getting used to. However, Mysa has great customer support, and they assured me that a firmware update was coming. Eventually it did. They are more accurate now. That’s a good thing because the large digital temperature display makes them readable from across the room.

The second surprise was how easy it is to use the Mysa app. I thought having multiple smart thermostats in one house would be complicated. It isn’t. The app is designed for that with both thermostats shown side-by-side on a single screen. As a bonus Mysa sends me a monthly energy report in email.

There are numerous smart thermostats on the market. If you are thinking about upgrading, Mysa is a brand to consider but do your due diligence and read all of the reviews.