My geo buddy put in our heat pump and thermostat. He said programmable thermostats don't work with these systems because of slow recovery. But I need to have it cooler at night so I am turning it down at night and up in the morning 3-5 degrees, seems to work ok.

A setback will, more than likely, work. Most stats will, however, bring on the aux. heat strips with more than a 2* setback. Electric strip heat costs a lot more than Geo to run.

Bergy

If you wish to do a setback strategy you should stage recovery (say 1*/hour) to avoid auxiliary use. 3-5 degrees is ambitious for a properly sized geo system and may cost you more to operate with that strategy (in other words it might be cheaper to block the registers to your bedroom).
I like the ecobee stats for other features such as email notifications if too much auxiliary is used. Bill has written extensively on them.

In fact, I'm extensively seeing how the Ecobee tstats manage the set back temp to ensure cost effective start up.

What I'm seeing is, for heat pumps (air and geo) the Ecobee tstat, during night time set back, looks at the settings for how much 1st stage will be allowed, and 2nd stage allowed, before Aux turns on, then looks at outside temp versus inside temp, then continuously figures how much time is required to recover from the current set back temp without using any Aux.  If the time required to recover is greater than the settings allow, then the set back temp setting is continuously modified during the night to ensure that when recovery starts, it will complete at the set point time without using Aux.

In other words, you can set a set back temp of something ridiculous, like 50°F (like I've done for experiment purposes), properly config tstat staging parameters, and then rest assured that the tstat actually will not allow ambient to get down to 50° during the night.  It will let ambient only drop an amount that it knows it can recover from with Stage 1 and Stage 2 and no Aux.

If there's currently not much margin between heat pump capacity and what's needed for the structure at the current outside temp, then the Ecobee tstat will not allow a setback temp to drop much below ambient, even if a 50° (for example) set back temp is programmed in.

What this means is past advice to not use set back temp settings with heat pumps can be ignored with Ecobee tstats.  Nest has the same capability.  The Ecobee tstats will manage to a unique and variable set back temp each night.

BTW, all of the above is new learning for me so it's possible I don't have it quite right yet.  I am seeing data that supports the above, as part of my own experiment (4 Ecobee tstats all set with 50° set back temps for the moment).

See another thread I've started that comments on a lot of what I've learned of the Ecobee tstats.

Best regards,

Bill

I like the Honeywell Prestige HD, it has specific settings for geothermal as far as recovery is concerned and you can change the lockout temps for staging the system with no auxillary heat. It also controls HRV, dehumidifier and more if you need and can be viewed online with a redlink adapter.

Sky you should try an ecobee.