Home by Building 36 4+

The concept is great: you don’t have to get off your couch to change the temp in your living room, or be home to start the heat. You can do it through the app. The issue however is that the app has a hard time syncing with the thermostats. I have 4 of these in my house and many times the temperature setting on the thermostat is different that the temperature setting on the app for that particular thermostat. Case in point, just the other night I set the heat in my family room to 60, yet when I walked past the thermostat about 20 minutes later it had the heat set to 68. And it couldn’t possibly be a WiFi issue as the router is within feet of both the main hub, the thermostat and my phone. Once this syncing issue is worked out, the app would deserve all five stars.

I’ve had Home by building 36 for four years and I would warn you against using the companies products or apps. First off the interface is not well thought out and editing schedules and scenes is difficult. More importantly the app is being used to take control of my thermostats without my permission and no amount of communication with the company seems to be met with an outreach or acknowledgment by them. If you don’t mind a third party deciding when your house should be cooled or heated and to what temperature then sign up. But if you are like me and want to be in control of the temperature in your home at all times then go elsewhere. After all it’s your house and you pay the bills. There is no shortage of internet enabled thermostats these days by companies that don’t decide what your personal thermostats should be set to.

When refreshing the app (pulling down from top) it takes a really long time to update. I like to use this app to check the temperature on my thermostats in the house but it takes way to long to check via the app. It would be nice if when refreshing it would update immediately. One of the few apps where I would prefer a background app refresh option.