Thermostat Question

[iceman31]

I have recently finished my 24 x 26 garage project and it is insulated with R20 in the 6" walls and R40 in the ceiling. I heat my garage with a 50000 BTU natural gas heater. I have a wall thermostat which is a two wire dial type unit and it works fine, but is not very accurate. I have now purchased two digital thermostats for this garage and can not get either of them to work. One is a Garrison 52-2544 and the other is a Honeywell RLV4300. Any thoughts as to why they do not work?

 

[Milton Shaw]

Your original thermostat was probably a thermocouple powered tstat, instead of a 24 volt thermostat that the newer ones are. Does your heater have a transformer, if it doesn't there is no low voltage to run a digital thermostat.

 

[iceman31]

Electrician installed the wiring. It is a Reznor Heater and the literature says that it has a transformer for 24 volt controls, not sure what to look for. Took electrician 3 months to finally finish the job, scared it may take him another 3 months to change something if I need it changed.

 

[55 carman]

On your new tstat do they have battery's ? If so you should be able to hook your existing two wires one to red the other to white. All your doing with the stat is completing the circuit on the call for heat opening the circuit when temp is reached. Hope that helps. Ron

 

[iceman31]

No batteries on either model of the digital thermostats.

 

[tgb]

If they do not have batteries you need to have a common wire in addition to your r and w circuits.

 

[Rookie2]

My digital t-stat came with a resistor to power the t-stat when the contacts were closed i think, needless to say i went back to the old style.

 

[nehog]

The Honeywell is a line voltage thermostat and will not work in this application. The other thermostat I can't look up but it may also be a line voltage thermostat.

I would suggest going to HD or Lowes and getting a new thermostat that is designed for this application.

 

[mygarageone]

I have recently finished my 24 x 26 garage project and it is insulated with R20 in the 6" walls and R40 in the ceiling. I heat my garage with a 50000 BTU natural gas heater. I have a wall thermostat which is a two wire dial type unit and it works fine, but is not very accurate. I have now purchased two digital thermostats for this garage and can not get either of them to work. One is a Garrison 52-2544 and the other is a Honeywell RLV3100. Any thoughts as to why they do not work?

One of the reasons the old stat was reading wrong could be the heat anticipator
Or the temp sensing pointer could be out of adjustment , which can also be corrected. Most times it.s something simple to fix.

 

[Rookie2]

What Mygarageone said ! go back and adjust the old one !

 

[dave67fd]

How are you determining that the thermostat is inacurate?
Where is your thermostat located in relationship to the heater and is it on a inside or outside wall?

 

[BigJ5]

I have recently finished my 24 x 26 garage project and it is insulated with R20 in the 6" walls and R40 in the ceiling. I heat my garage with a 50000 BTU natural gas heater. I have a wall thermostat which is a two wire dial type unit and it works fine, but is not very accurate. I have now purchased two digital thermostats for this garage and can not get either of them to work. One is a Garrison 52-2544 and the other is a Honeywell RLV4300. Any thoughts as to why they do not work?

You need to adjust your cycle rate or your heat anticipator on your old dial type unit, that is if it is a Honeywell T87. Most people buy thermostats that are only good for paper weights. Spend around 50 dollars for a decent one and you can dial in the cycle rate for the unit heater. This is firing cycle rate, this will heat "accurately". Make sure you buy one that is good for a 24V system and a GAS appliance, and read the manufactures recommended location to install the stat, many f-up such a simple thing.

Also, You clearly did not read the packaging The honeywell thermostat you bought is for an ELECTRIC baseboard heater. For the time it would have taken to just read the information on the packaging you could have saved yourself a lot of aggravation.

 

[iceman31]

When I set the thermostat to 12 Degrees Celsius it will run until the actual temp in the garage reaches 20. That leads me to believe it is out by approx 8 degrees. When I set it for 5 degrees it actually stays at about 13 degrees. When I set it as low as it will go the temp in the garage stays at approx 8 degrees. I would actually like to set it to keep it at just above freezing when I am not in the garage. Both digital ones stated they were good for fan forced heaters and two wire hookup. The thermostat i am using is a White Rodgers similar to the 5570-099.

 

[6768rogues]

I have a Reznor and I use a regular non-automatic setback mercury thermostat. I wanted to be able to turn the heat down to 40-degrees and the thermostat only goes down to 50, so I mounted the thermostat out of level. Then I turned it on, waited a day for the temp to stabilize, and marked the true temperature on the wall with an arrow to where the thermostat lever was. A few times doing that and I labeled where 40, 50, 60 and 70 are. Been working fine for 20 years.

 

[iceman31]

That is basically what I am doing with the White Rodgers manual thermostat that I have. The lowest I can get it to go is 8 degrees Celsius or 46 Fahrenheit.