You may have noticed in some of our pictures that we have the old mercury thermostat. We wanted to switch to digital. Sooooo this is the tale of installing digital programmable thermostats...
So a very good way to make your home and your furnace more efficient is to install programmable thermostats. The reasons for this is because, digital is more reliable, you can now program the thermostat for when you want the heat to come on, and since it is electronic and not mechanical, you do not have to worry about the thermostat sticking and bringing the heat up WAY beyond what you had it set for. Let the savings begin!
On a Tuesday night, (No lacrosse practice) Josh and I ventured off to Lowe's to get some Honeywell digital thermostats. After stopping and looking around at some lawnmowers, we made it to Digital Thermostat Aisle. There is a whole array of digital thermostat's ranging from $15 all the way to $90. After doing some research and talking to my uncle about them, I found out that going with one the cheapest was the way to go for our case. This was because we had the thermostats just for the heat and didn't have to worry about getting anything special since it was just a normal furnace. I was nervous that I had to go with a more expensive one since the furnace was older than my dad. Turns out I didn't and went with the $25 ones. The thermostat we got were 5-2 programmable thermostats. This translates into 5 day programmable (the week) and 2 day programmable (the weekend).
So we get home around 8 o'clock at night and I decide that I am going to install the thermostat's now. It does say that it should be done within 15 minutes. Soooo I think to myself, "If I start now, I will be done right before Josh goes to be, even if i go over, he will be reading in bed and it will be ok." So what does everyone think happened? From my last post, you can probably guess that my estimation was WAY off. And you know what. If you guessed that, you couldn't be more right!Let's start with removing the mercury thermostat. It was a little nerve-racking removing the first one from the wall. I was nervous that I would pull too hard and the capsule would break and I would have hazardous waste all over the place. Thankfully, after a little twisting and pulling, I was able to remove the thermostat from the wall. Next was disconnecting the wires. This step was pretty simple, just take your flat head screwdriver and unscrew until the wires come loose. (NOTE: Please make sure to turn off the thermostat on your breaker. This is powered and you will feel a small shock while using the wires. I unfortunately found out the hard way.)
Now, you follow the instructions that came with the new thermostat and input the correct wires into the appropriate slots. As you can see here, there were between 5-7 wires but only two were connected to the thermostat (remember this, it will come in handy). So after reading through the instructions, they wanted me to connect four of the wires. Yellow to Yellow, White to White, and so on. So after completing the wiring, I was ready to test out this new thermostat. I turned the heat up to 80 degrees and... NOTHING! So I reread the instructions and just could not figure out what was wrong with the installation. Since there were a few more wires that I didn't connect, I figured that I would connect those to the appropriate connection (brown to brown, blue to blue, and so on). So after connecting those extra few wires, I again turned the heat up to 80 degrees. NOTHING! I was stumped, so I decided to go with the original two wires that were connected, which as you can see in the above picture were yellow and red. So I disconnected all of the wires and connected the red to red and yellow to yellow. I again turned the heat up to 80 degrees. After hearing the furnace go on, I thought that I have finally have figured out this stupid furnace. But after feeling the baseboards in the room, I figured out that the furnace was on because Josh was in the shower. So after over an hour worth of work on the thermostat that was supposed to take 15 minutes, I still wasn't done. So what was I to do? It was time to take a break, think about what I was doing wrong and maybe something will click. So I took that break and watched some TV in the den. Since it was now after 10, Josh was in bed sleeping and Lindsay was in bed doing homework, so working on the upstairs thermostat was out of the question. Good thing there was a thermostat in the den that I was able to work on. So I opened up the new thermostat and again followed the instructions. As I was taking off the old one, there was something different about this one. The two wires that were connected were red and white. Yea, that's what I thought. The last one was red and yellow. So I followed the instructions and put red to red and white to white. Then I screwed it to the wall and connected the thermostat to the Base. Turned the power back on to the thermostat and then pushed the heat up to 80 degrees. Then guess what happened, the thermostat TURNED ON!!!! The instructions were right, it really does take 15 minutes (when the right color wires are connected to the furnace).
So after basking in the glory for a minute I was determined to finish the first one I started. Since there was a yellow and a red, I decided keep the red connected to the red but to connect the yellow wire to the white. That seems like the right logical thing to do, right? Well anyways, after connecting that I put the thermostat on the base and turned the heat up to 80 Degrees and guess what happened. The furnace clicked on and the radiators became hot FAST! I finished the last one a few days later. So after a few hours of work, I completed the thermostat project and am still alive to tell the tale! Overall, this wasn't too bad of a project, just hope that the wire's are connected the right way and it will actually take 15 minutes!
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