How hard is it to replace a thermostat

[Hobby_Man22]

I have a few questions here.

1. Will a wifi thermostat let me turn the heat/ac on an hour or so before I get home so it's hot or cold when I get there.
2. can I adjust the on and off temp? For example the house hvac kicks on when the temp changes 1 degree and then heat/cools 1 degree then shuts off. The thermostat in the shop is a basic one that kicks in about 2.5 degrees, if it did what the thermstat in the house did it would be cycling on and off all the time. Can this range be adjusted typically?
3. Is it a matter of just matching up the correct color wire to the right hole to wire up one of these thermostats?

 

[jayoldschool]

Yes to all. I use a Sensi.

 

[Super Mech]

Subscribing as I’m looking for the exact same thing. Hopefully a low temp version that I can get down to 45* for when I’m not there.

 

[MJO]

You can do just about everything with the wifi thermostats, installation is easy, take a picture of the wire connection before taking off the old one just in case..... Some of the wifi thermostats require 5 wires, if you don't have 5 they come with or you can buy an adapter that will let you use 4 wires if that's all you have.

 

[Hobby_Man22]

Which ones have 5 wires? The newer systems?

 

[gtae07]

It's not particularly hard as long as there's enough slack in the wire. Whoever built our house didn't quite leave enough

 

[CoogarXR]

Some older houses, the colors don't match. Take a picture of where the wires go on the old thermostat before you disconnect it. Just match the terminal connections to the new thermostat. Like whatever color wire is on "W" on the old thermostat, connect it to "W" on the new one, etc.

My in-laws house, they used some incorrect wire that had totally different colors than standard. And I've seen this in mobile homes too. One mobile home I did, the wires were not colored, they were all black, lol.

 

[jayoldschool]

One of the cool things about Sensi is that it includes wire labels and an app to ensure you hook everything up correctly. Take a pic of your old wires, and it's foolproof.

 

[Terry D]

5 wires is usually when includes the common. But not always. Stats come with stickers to put on the wires so they get connected ro the same terminals on the new stat. There will be a letter, example RH, W, G, Y, C on the terminals. Just put the matching label on the wire before removing it.

And of course, if whoever originally ran the stat wire, color coded it correctly, you can go by colors

RH. Red
W. White.
G. Green
Y. Yellow
C. Blue or black

 

[finn]

My shop took maybe ten minutes to install a nest. I had to repurpose an unused green wire from the old two wire mercury thermostat for constant power for the Nest, but that was uneventful.

The house was a different story. The radiant heat had a pump control panel that included a Danfoss thermostat and relay system with proprietary, non standard color codes. I ended up pulling new, non stranded thermostat wire (Nest doesn’t like stranded wire), and installing a conventional Taco relay, bypassing all of the Danfoss relays and controls.

Not difficult, but it took a while to accept the fact that it wasn’t plug and play. I ended up losing the function where the pumps are cycled regularly to keep them from seizing in the off season.

 

[Black300zx]

If you have a fairly predictable schedule and get home at roughly the same time every day, a basic programable tstat should do the job just fine. If you get home at 6 typically, simply program the setpoint to change to your desired temp at 5ish on working days.