Heat, Heat, Heat...

So the cold season is upon us once again, and I am still grateful for Rudy on the installation of the furnaces.  It's amazing how much of a difference a warm house can make.  One thing I may upgrade soon is the thermostat.  We currently have a programmable thermostat from Honeywell, but I often put it on, "Hold," to turn it on and forget to turn it off when we leave the house.  Depending on what this next PG&E bill looks like, I may be replacing it with a smart thermostat, like the NEST,  VERY soon. 

"Space By The Lamp!"

Only my sisters will understand that the title of this post relates to the heater. My mom's house has a heating vent in the living room by the lamp, and every time it was turning on, someone would call it, so they could lay by it and warm up.

A few weeks ago, we walked into my house and noticed it was REALLY hot in there. It seemed like the heater had been left on all day! I looked at the thermostat, and it should have been off, but it was on. Odd. I contacted the contractor, and he said he didn't have the heater on at all, but would come by to check on things to make sure nothing was wrong.

The next day, he told me it was broken (duh). I disconnected it from the wall, and patched up the giant hole. The two black and black wires still stuck out.

On a trip to Home Depot, I decided to pick up a thermostat. There are a TON of thermostats! 5 and 2 days, 5-1-1 days, 7 days, with an atomic clock, with the outside temperature, lighted, digital, old school (twist), etc. They ranged from $20 to $90. I decided to get something simple and cheap. The $30 Honeywell looked fine.



It was digital, programmable, and didn't seem to be too complicated. I took it home, opened it up, and there were FIVE slots for wires! I guess because this also worked for places with air conditioners, it had hot and cold settings. What made things even more complicated, my old thermostat was labeled Y and O. This one had a Y, but no O. It had an Rc, Rh, W, Y, and C. The Rc and Rh were connected by a jumper. Why? The instructions didn't elaborate. I tried hot tapping them, but because the voltage was so low, there was no immediate reaction! Great. I decided to leave it alone until I could drill the holes necessary to mount the thermostat.

My Uncle came over today with a concrete drill for the plaster. We marked the holes, drilled them in, and mounted the thermostat. Oops. I forgot to look up the wiring! We tried a few things, none of it worked. Googling on our phones was difficult to read, so we just left to go eat. I looked it up on-line at my mom's house, and found this blog. R and W were the wires I needed to connect, he said.

I drove over to the house, connected the R and W, closed up the unit, and turned on the heat. Within seconds, the heater turned on!