Installing set back thermostat

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Download our guide for finding the right wood stove insert. Check your email for a copy of our guide to buying the right wood stove inserts. Request A Quote. Someone from Hearthside will be in touch with you within 24 hours. I have it set for 21 degrees before bed and then down to 15 overnight. Someone told me I shouldn't have more than a 5 degree difference because the furnace would have to work harder in order to warm up the house in the morning, therefore making it less efficient.

Any truth in that? The greater the difference between the actual temperature and the desired temperature, the longer the furnace will run, but it will be less than if it maintained the higher temperature all night long. In fact, as soon as your house drops below its normal temperature, it will lose energy to the surrounding environment more slowly.

During winter, the lower the interior temperature, the slower the heat loss. So the longer your house remains at the lower temperature, the more energy you save, because your house has lost less energy than it would have at the higher temperature.

The same concept applies to raising your thermostat setting in the summer -- a higher interior temperature will slow the flow of heat into your house, saving energy on air conditioning. Check out our home heating infographic to learn more about how heating systems and thermostats interact. Programmable thermostats are generally not recommended for heat pumps. In its cooling mode, a heat pump operates like an air conditioner, so turning up the thermostat either manually or with a programmable thermostat will save energy and money.

But when a heat pump is in its heating mode, setting back its thermostat can cause the unit to operate inefficiently, thereby canceling out any savings achieved by lowering the temperature setting. Maintaining a moderate setting is the most cost-effective practice. Recently, however, some companies have begun selling specially designed programmable thermostats for heat pumps, which make setting back the thermostat cost-effective.

These thermostats typically use special algorithms to minimize the use of backup electric resistance heat systems. Electric resistance systems, such as electric baseboard heating, require thermostats capable of directly controlling volt or volt circuits.

This type of circuit Volt can carry more "power" with slightly smaller wires, saving money on wiring costs; copper is expensive. If your wiring is aluminum I would stop right now and hire a professional, do not even disconnect anything.

Aluminum wiring is difficult to work with and can be a fire hazard. A very high quality stranded wiring. The other cable in the junction box goes to my electric baseboard heater elements. How do I know this? Here is some additional information about codes, and color coding at Wikipedia.

Electrical Wiring. Again the circuit must be OFF! This is the incoming Volt circuit. If I measure the other two insulated wires from the other cable I might read something like 40 ohms, this is the cable to the baseboard heating unit s. Please note that many of the original mechanical baseboard thermostats were rated at 22 amps. The ELV1 is only rated at 16 amps. It is possible to have enough baseboard units on one of the old mechanical thermostats to overload the ELV1, please make sure you do not do this!

You can, very carefully, read the amperage of the existing circuit using a clamp on ammeter. You can calculate an approximate amperage, by first doing the steps above to find the baseboard heater load wiring, and then measuring the resistance in Ohms. For the most conservative measure divide Volts by your Ohms reading. You probably should not use the ELV1 on a circuit that reads below 15 ohms.

Please do review the ELV1 instructions and do not exceed the maximum wattage, or amperage, rating. Check by adding all the baseboard units wattages that are in the circuit. You will find the wattage marked on each unit, probably behind the wiring cover. To the right, the new ELV1 thermostat and below a shot of the base plate after wiring it in place.

You can see the ELV1 base plate only has two wires since it is a "single pole" device. This base plate seems to house the actual relay or switch that will turn the baseboard heater s on and off. For this photo the ELV1 thermostat itself is removed from the base plate. Preparing the wires As you proceed with your installation you may note that there is some discoloration or oxidation that remains on the "stripped" or bare ends of the wires from the incoming cables.

It would be a good idea if you have excess wire length to cut off these ends and "re-strip" the ends so you have shiny un-oxidized wire for a good clean connection. An alternative is to lightly sand the existing wire ends with a fine grit sandpaper until they are nice and shiny.

Each wire from a switch red and black was connected to one wire from each cable entering the box. Note: if you have more than two cables entering your box you have some type of complicated wiring setup. You may be able to figure it all out using your ohmmeter, but this article was written for the simple, and what should be typical, case.

And now Honeywell has 4 wire thermostats. These should be "drop in" replacements. No batteries. The Honeywell may be quieter. The is NOT programmable.