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Archive for the ‘Thermostats’ Category

If you think you need a new thermostat, chances are that you do. Several homes, especially those in the Midwest, still use mercury thermostats, which are illegal in several states and are hazardous to the environment and potentially, your health. Several thermostats are now made to imitate the round, old-fashioned design of the older, mercury-filled thermostats, but exclude the mercury.

Energy cost is another factor to keep in mind. With heating prices on the rise, several thermostats are designed to save energy by a specific percentage through their accuracy and preprogrammed settings. With settings designed for you, your thermostat won’t get neglected, and your bills won’t suffer. Heating and air conditioning is too expensive to ignore, or at times, forget about. If this is a current problem for your home, you may want to look into a thermostat that specifies saving 33 percent or more of energy. Also, make sure your thermostat is EnergyStar listed.

If changes in the weather, along with constant adjustments to your thermostat, are aggravating you this year, you may need a new thermostat that is more accurate than your current make and model. You should probably be on the lookout for a thermostat that offers accuracy within only one or two degrees. After all, a thermostat is supposed to relay the temperatures to your heating or air conditioning system so you don’t have to guess.

Thermostats are usually nothing to look at. Several are simply outdated and can be easily upgraded for one with a touchscreen or LCD display. Many contemporary models come in blue or green for aesthetic purposes or even offer soft touch buttons for an overall higher design value. Another good reason to upgrade is for lighting purposes. Many thermostats are made with backlighting or, simply lighted displays, so in dark rooms or at night, you can see the temperature along with your adjusted settings.

If parts of your home are perfectly comfortable, while other spots are definitely not, consider zone control with a new thermostat and sensors to access the temperatures from different portions of the house and signal certain parts to be heated or cooled. This way, your thermostat will not just work to direct warmth or cooling power to balance the area directly surrounding it. It will instead be catered to each zone of your house or living space, saving energy and money for the sections that need less heating or cooling, and bringing comfortable results to the places that do. The answer is yes, a new thermostat with zone control capabilities would be a wise choice.

You have a thermostat problem or you want one of those fancy new digital programmable thermostats and wonder if you can replace it yourself or if you need to have the HVAC Guy come and do it for you. The good news is that it really is not all that hard. With a bit of guidance you can easily do the job yourself. Here are some pointers that will help you to get the job done.

One of the most important things that you need to do is to make sure that you get the right thermostat for the system that you have. Find out what voltage your system is before you got to get a thermostat. Also know whether your system is a heat only or a heating and air conditioning system. If your system is a heat pump system then you need to know that also. Hybrid systems that use both the heat pump and a fossil fuel heater are much harder but that can be handled if you know it up front and plan accordingly.

Taking note of all of this information you can now go shopping for you new thermostat. There are many choices to chose from and you usually will want to be in the mid price range. That will get you a good quality thermostat for a great price. If you are vision impaired you may want to look for a digital unit that has a back light. These make seeing the numbers much easier.

Once you find the thermostat that you want make sure to read all of the instructions that come with it. Reading these instructions will save you a lot of time and make your life a lot easier. Mark all the wires with the letter of the terminal that you removed the wire from. You will reinstall the wire under the same letter terminal on the new thermostat.

However before you remove any of the wires make sure that you turn off the power to your heating unit or air conditioner first. If you have both then it would be a good idea to kill the power to both to make sure you have the low voltage all dead. The wires to the thermostat are 24V AC usually and that will not hurt you but you could burn up a transformer if you are not careful.

Carefully remove and mark all the wires, and remove the old thermostat. Securely fasten the new thermostat to the wall and reconnect the wires to the new thermostat, if you are installing a programmable thermostat you may want to pre-program it before placing it on the wall. By inserting the batteries into the thermostat most of them will let you program them in your hands rather then trying to look at it on the wall.

That’s really all there is to changing your thermostat. If you can follow some simple instructions telling you how to read some letters and match wires than you can change your own thermostat.

There are many different systems for providing heat and air conditioning for your home. Choosing the thermostat that controls the functions of these systems is an important decision that will impact the way you regulate the heating and cooling in your home.

You may wish to have programmable options on your thermostat that will allow you to punch in different commands for different times of day. Modern and more expensive thermostats use touch screen technology for easy programming. Generally, most of today’s thermostats have a digital panel that is easy to read. The older, mercury based thermostats are less expensive and are still used today, especially in older systems.

Programmable thermostats are very cost efficient and enable you to set the temperature for differently for different days of the week. Some programmable thermostats allow a different setting for each of the 7 days of the week, while others can be programmed for 5 + 1 + 1, running a separate program on the two additional days. Other programmable systems are 5 + 2; the two extra days programmed the same.

They type of furnace and air conditioner you have will determine the type of thermostat that is right for your house. Determine the type of heating and cooling system you have before you decide on a thermostat. If you have a single stage (or one level) of heat output, or a gas furnace and an electric air conditioner, you should have 6 wires that will need to be connected to a thermostat. This type of heating and cooling is the most common.

Some homes have multi-stage heating and cooling, like a furnace and a solar heating panel. This type of system distributes heat more evenly and has an emergency heat setting, using the secondary source of heat in case the gas is out or the oil runs out.

Heat pumps are a single system that does both heating and cooling. It eliminates the need to have both a furnace and an air conditioner because a heat pump can perform both functions. In multi-stage units, a heat pump is used as an emergency backup because it can produce heat quickly and efficiently. If you have a heat pump, you’ll most likely have 5 wires that will be needed to connect to a wall-based thermostat.

There are also Line Voltage Direct Current Electric Heat, 120 or 240 Volts, Single Pole or Double Pole One units.

After you’ve discovered what type of system you have, you can decide on programmable or manual, digital or not. Deciding on what features you need can be confusing, so a professional heating and cooling company can help you decide what type of thermostat would best suit your household needs.

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