Reviews of Residential Sender

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I have owned the Venstar (Was Totaline) wireless system for over two years now. I recently purchased my third and final Sender unit for my home.

I mounted my receiver near my furnace in the basement. The wiring was simple. It literally connected like any other thermostat. The instructions were clear and it was very simple to understand. Once the receiver was installed, setting up the sender was cake.

Setting up this unit was a breeze. I now have three senders (one for each floor of the house). I chose one as the "master" that received the programming. The other two are slaves on the system so when a user needs to make an adjustment, they just set it and it overrides the other units. It's genius!

Be warned: It establishes a social complexity. You will be fighting with your significant other more often now as each floor represents its own battle over who is cold/warm! he he...

Otherwise, these are great units. My house is 100 years old with a modern heat system. The wireless goes from the 2nd story all the way to the basement with no hesitation.

It's been over two years and I have not had to replace the battery in any of the sender units! Wow!

I am very happy with this system and HIGHLY recommend it to anyone who is considering multi-channel wireless units.

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Would have been five stars but the display is not very bright or readable. But the product does just what it says it will do. I use it in my upstairs guest room/bonue room so guests can take it with them into the bedroom to keep it comfortable. The original hardwired thermostat was in a poor location making the bedroom too hot or too cold and this was easier than runing new wiring. This product of course requires the wireless receiver which also works just fine

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These things work great to solve any problem where you would, in effect, like to move your thermostat without actually moving it, or you would like to have a thermostat in one room sometimes and in another room at other times. In fact, it's hard to believe how well this worked in solving my problem.

Because of all the confusion I had with what components go together and what the part numbers are, etc., I wound up buying directly from Smarthome, although I normally prefer to buy from Amazon. In this case, Amazon is showing a "Residential Sender", PN: T1100RF for $116.99, but you can buy the "Add-A-Wireless Thermostat", PN: T1119RF for essentially the same price ($116.47) at SmartHome and it includes the RF module that plugs into the bottom of the base thermostat. If you buy the RF module separately, it looks like it costs an additional $30 (PN: ACCO434). Anyway, it all gets confusing, or at least it did for me. The parts I wound up buying are:

1 EA, ADD-A-WIRELESS THERMOSTAT, T1119RF (Includes RF Module), $116.47

1 EA, 7-DAY PROGRAMMABLE DIGITAL THERMOSTAT, $90.75

2 EA, VENSTAR OUTDOOR TEMPERATURE SENSOR, $32.50 each

My problem was that I have a large add-on (entertainment) room that is heated and cooled with booster fans. This actually works well, for the entire house, if the thermostat is in the entertainment room, but not where it's currently mounted, in the living room. In general, I would say that the solution to an uneven heating or cooling problem is to put the thermostat in the room that's the hardest to heat or cool and then close the vents to adjust the other rooms.

It's also nice, I think, to be able to take the remote thermostat with you to bed at night and open the vent in the bedroom and keep the temperature controlled exactly where you want it. Or, if you had a new baby, you might want to put the wireless thermostat in the baby's room.

In addition, I bought two remote sensors that I haven't installed yet. These will go in two different areas of the attic to monitor attic temperature and make sure my two attic fans are working.

Complicating things further is the fact that Venstar also give you the choice of using the "Residential Receiver" (PN: T1100REC)with the wireless thermostat (PN: T1100RF) instead of using the "7-DAY PROGRAMMABLE DIGITAL THERMOSTAT". With this option, you evidently don't need an RF module and you don't need to run any wires through your house. If you went with this option, you could mount the Residential Receiver in your furnace room and then use one or more wireless thermostats instead of using a wired thermostat. One problem I had with doing this is that the Residential Receiver doesn't support the wired remote sensors and in my case, I didn't want to put battery operated sensors in my attic and then have to climb up there and change the batteries periodically. Another problem is that if you already have a regular thermostat and then remove it, you're going to have to cover the hole in the wall.

If you are going to replace your current thermostat with the Venstar 7-DAY PROGRAMMABLE DIGITAL THERMOSTAT, one problem you can have is that you don't have enough wires going through your wall to your existing thermostat and the biggest electrical problem you're likely to have is that you don't have a common (C) wire because your old thermostat doesn't need one. In my case, I didn't have a common (C), but I did have an extra, unused wire, in the cable. So, I was able to simply connect the common at the furnace and the problem was solved. Based on my heating and air conditioning installation, I would say that you should have at least 5 wires in your wall for the thermostat to be used as follows:

W White

R Red

G Green

Y Yellow

C Blue, Black, or Brown, or?

(This is the common or return wire for the Red, 24 Vac wire.)

In short, Venstar makes some great products and gives you lots of choices, but if you aren't a do-it-yourself person, you might want to hire somebody to install their stuff for you.

Honest reviews on Residential Sender

Excellent product and service! Works as advertised. Keeps the upper rooms cool and eleminated the dead zone where the old thermostat was receiving temperature from both the upper and lower floors.

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I have a 2 story great room that was always cold because our thermostat was located in a hallway. I installed this along with a Venstar T1900 Thermostat (which also controls the humidifier) and it works perfectly. I put this remote unit on a table in our great room and now finally our furnace is getting the proper temperature reading and our room is no longer cold. Much easier than relocating the old thermostat to a new location. Both units are easy to install and come with instructions that are pretty thorough. I made one call to tech support and got a return call the same day. Overall I am very pleased.