Replacing a Thermostat

Alert: new house renovation post.  This probably is an alert because I haven't even posted pictures of the house yet!!  But I will, I will.  Never you mind.  And of course, I have to post the birthday party bash as well :)  But at least we are all moved in now.  Here is the first project we did, last Saturday.

We bought our house from an air-conditioner man.  So I thought that the thermostat would be programmable, snazzy, high efficiency.  You know, all the amazing things it could be (i.e. programmable from a smart phone??).  No dice.

Ours looked like this:

It is just a set it and go type.  It also had a very large variation in the temperature of the rooms that were not near the thermostat.  What we needed was a programmable thermostat that didn't have such a large swing of temperature.  Our daughter's room would go from 69 degrees F to 76 degrees F, all on the same setting.  That is where the Honeywell thermostat comes in.  We bought the one pictured below, called the Honeywell 5-2 Programmable Thermostat with Backlight.  I have to tell you that I wasn't contacted by Honeywell to write this post or compensated in any way.  I just love this thermostat.  Another reason we chose Honeywell was because in the store, the competitor brand, Filtrete had a bunch of returned thermostats.  I mean literally, every one that was the same type as this unit by Filtrete had been bought at one time and returned.  All the packaging was cut open and taped back up.  I took that as a sign.  We also didn't buy the highest line of Filtrete with the Wi-Fi (smartphone enabled) because of this issue with their lower models and also because it was 2x the cost of this little beauty: $49.99 -- can't beat that!

 Immediately, our A/C wasn't running all the time.  It has a built in compressor protection system and also will work for a heat pump or multi staged units.  I cannot wait to see our electric bill because Florida summers are HOT!  This is the fourth thermostat I've installed and it took 30 minutes.  You simply follow the very easy instructions.

One kink in our project was that when I finished, attached it to the wall, and set it, then we turned it on to test.  Well, the heat and cool air was backwards.  If I set it to cool, then we got warm air and vice versa.  This wasn't a fault of how I connected the wires, they were fine.  So I had to call the 1-800 number provided by Honeywell.  Someone from New Dehli answered.  I'm sure because I asked where they lived, after they helped me work through my problem so efficiently.  Honestly, it was the best customer experience ever.

He walked through everything I had done up until that point, then he walked through the settings on the thermostat.  Because there are so many settings, and it can work for so many different types of systems, it was difficult to know how to configure it the first time around.  And that was where my problem was (so glad it wasn't my wiring!).  And now we have a cool house with an efficient program to help us stay economical with the Florida heat!

**No, we do not set our thermostat to 72 degrees F EVER!

And we used a 10% off coupon for Lowe's at Home Depot!  I love that all the cashiers already know what to do; they don't stare at you with a crazy look on their face.