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I purchased two of these thermostats through the Amazon website and installed them just before the start of the Memorial Day weekend. I am very pleased with both thermostats, but I did encounter a problem during the install of the upstairs thermostat. Although I had flipped the breakers labeled for the upstairs and downstairs heat pumps to the off position at the panel, the upstairs heat pump was still receiving power, because I blew a fuse in the heat pump during the install. Obviously this problem was caused by a lack of due diligence on my part ensuring that the power to the heat pump and to the thermostat was really off. My wife and I went without air conditioning to the upstairs of our home for approximately 30 hours before a service technician arrived to find and replace the blown fuse.
If you have a volt ohm meter, I suggest that you verify that there is no power to the thermostat prior to the install. In doing the install yourself, you may find that you are at the mercy of the wiring provided for your old thermostat. For example, on our old downstairs thermostat, there was no common wire. When the heat pump (air conditioner) is on, the lead for the furnace is used as the common. When the furnace is on, then the wire for the air-conditioning is used as the common. Without a common lead as a reference, it was not possible to measure the voltage to our downstairs thermostat when neither the air conditioner nor the furnace is running. This led us to believe that we had no power to the thermostat even after we had switched the breaker back to the on position after the install. However, the thermostat worked fine. The service technician explained to us that in the original wiring to our old thermostat, the common was missing and that was why we could not measure the voltage.
I called the Honeywell support number on the back of the thermostat installation manual, and a technician located in New Deli answered immediately. The technician was friendly and knowledgeable.
Two messages that may appear on the thermostat after you install it may lead you to think you have made a mistake when nothing is wrong. First, if you have a heat pump and the word "Wait" appears on the thermostat display after turning the heat pump back on, then this is normal. As a precaution the thermostat waits five minutes before cycling the heat pump back up after it has been turned off. Second, if the word "Recovery" appears on the display when you first turn the furnace or air conditioner on, this simply means that you have the Smart Response Technology set to on, and your thermostat has turned on you air conditioner or furnace to reach the target temperature that you set in the schedule.
With my old mercury-based thermostats, I could not be certain that the correct temperature was displayed. Nor could I be certain of the actual temperature that I was setting the thermostat to. If I left the thermostat set to a high setting while we were away on summer days, then the house would not cool off before bed time after we got home. All of these problems are solved by our two programmable Honeywell thermostats, and I saved over $40.00 by buying the thermostats through Amazon rather than Home Depot.
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Easy to install and programming buttons are easy to understand. It is the display that is difficult to understand. Be very careful about the check mark before the days of the week. When you make a temperature input it will apply to EVERY day that has a check mark and erase what you previously inputted. You have to cycle through the days twice to eliminate the CHECK marks for the other days to enter in data for just one day.There is room on the display to show you all your heating or cooling temperature settings for each day of the week, but they neglected to provide this so it is very difficult to review your inputs to be sure they are right and to correct for CHECK mark errors from above.
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This review is from the perspective of a novice. I replaced an 11-year-old thermostat with this one yesterday morning.Installation was not a breeze as the claim on the product package would like you to believe (i.e., "designed to install in 15 minutes or less.") We have a 5-ton split central unit with the condenser outside of the house, and the coil and a gas furnace in the attic. Matching the wires to the new thermostat was not that straightforward. Our old system has 5 wires but the Intallation Guide only shows an example with 4 wires. After failing a few configurations, I finally gave up and called for technical support. The puzzle was then resolved.
Programming was mostly simple and easy but not always intuitive. You do need to read the Manual to figure a number of things out. An alternative may be the 8500 Touchscreen model, which seems to have more intuitive programming based on reviews from Amazon users.
Overall, I would recommend this thermostat. Just make sure that you do your installation during office hours when technical support is available from Honeywell.
Honest reviews on Honeywell RTH7500D Conventional 7-Day Programmable Thermostat
First the negative...The Installation Guide needs revision. I spoke to Honeywell about this and other complaints and hopefully these issues will be changed. BTW, they were very nice.
First problem: To set the system preferences is says to press the left button and then hold the middle button down for 5 seconds. It didn't work. It will work on older models, but on the newer ones they changed the operation of the unit so that pressing a button first turns on the backlight. Once the backlight is on, then press the buttons again to get the desired response. This isn't mentioned in the manual.
Second problem: Since I am retired, I don't need the "Leave" and "Return" settings. There is no way to cancel these. Of course, you can set the time for these to match the "Wake" and "Sleep" times, it just seems like added work and is not intuitive. Some of the lower priced models have the ability to cancel these settings.
Okay, now for the good...
1) It keeps the temperature very consistent compared to my old thermostat.
2) If I want to change the temperature I can do so and the programed schedule will still function normally at the next preset time, or I can put the temp change on permanent hold. This is great for those days that your bones feel a little colder than normal.
3) The display is bright and clear. I like being able to see the actual and set temps at the same time.
4) Once the unit is set up, operation is very simple.
5) For those that need it, it can automatically run your heat and cooling through the day to keep your temperature at a constant setting. Think Hot days and Cold nights! I suppose you could also use this to lower the temperature at night for better sleeping.
6) The Smart Response Technology allows you to wake up to the temperature that you want or to go to sleep at lower temperatures.
7) This unit gets its power from the furnace and only uses the battery as a backup. This eliminates the worry about having the battery die while you are away for a protracted period of time in the winter. I'm not sure why this would need a battery back up because if it looses power, it's because your furnace has also lost power. I suppose it's for people that want this controller, but don't have the right wires available from the furnace to power it. It also has a lithium battery to protect its memory?
8) This unit also has automatic daylight savings time adjustments.
Summation...
All in all, I really like this thermostat and would recommend it to anyone or everyone. I'm glad I bought it.
If you don't mind just running off of batteries or don't need 7 day programming, the lower price models are also very nice.
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