Why is it most (not ICS) thermostat manufacturers have to make product information so confusing? My old thermostat was located in a hall way in the front of our house. When it ran the heat or AC the front of our house would get nice and warm or cool while we sat in the back of the house sweating or cold. We needed a thermostat that would sense the temperature from a remote location, and also be adjustable from the same remote location. This is exactly what this thermostat doesthe reciever unit mounts where your old hard wired thermostat went, and the remote blue screened transmitter unit you can put anywhere in your house and it will sense the temperature from there sending the data wirelessly to the reciever. Installation was a snap. The installation video they have on their website is really cool. I mounted my transmitter on a wooden base which I can move to my back bedroom or any other room we might be using, it can also be wall mounted.
Sorry but I have to rant about Totaline and Honeywell. I found their websites to be very pretty but completely uninformative about exactly how their wireless thermostats work. They seem to have remote temperature sensors which can be mounted various places in your house but to change temperature you still need to go to the reciever unit mounted where your old original thermostat was, not real convenient. Honeywell had some kind of convenience remote control unit but it only changed certain settings. Most of the sensors and recievers were sold a la cart and I never did figure out what combination of devices I would need. It apperared the cost would be $300-$1000 just for the parts. Niether site has a customer service phone#, all I could find were some PDF's explaining to the professional installer how to calculate his profit margin! Wow. This is a classic example of a relatively simple job that most homeowners can install themselves and Honeywell and Totaline want to make it seem so complicated that you need to go hire a professional installer. Forget it.
I installed my ICS TS820 Wireless thermostat about 3 months ago in about an hour, and I really took my time to make sure I was hooking up the wires right. The transmitter is still on the 1st set of batteries and going strong. so far the unit has worked flawlessly. Finally we can be comfortable in any room in the house. The controls are so intuitive I didn't even have to read the manualThanks ICS. My old Totaline I used to have to get the manual and reading glasses out any time I wanted to make a change.
PROS: Low price. Intuitive controls. Cool blue screen. Easy installation. Programmable for individual settings for each of the 7 days of the week. Copy/paste function. Perfect for houses with standard central AC and heat. Thermostat is very accurate.
CONS: This unit does not have an auto changeover from heat to AC, you can only have either the heat or AC on. I had this feature on my old Totaline but never used it so I don't really consider this a fault, just pointing it out. It would be nice if there was an outside air temp sensor option. It would be nice if the reciever unit at least had a digital readout on it for the temp at the reciever location (It only has indicator lites on it for on, off, etc).
CONCLUSION: Everything considered I would highly recommend this unit. My cons are not really faults, just would be nice's. There are some lower priced wireless thermostats out there but if you read the fine print either they are not programmable or the sensor is hard wired right where your old thermostat went (which in my mind accomplishes nothing). Frankly I don't think there is anything on the market that comes close. Finally we have comfort back in our house.
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I feel very fortunate to have returned this item. It turns out that as a consequence of having some reception problems in my home, I found this product has some serious design flaws that could end up costing someone a lot in wasted energy.
Here's the main problem. The device has all the sensing and smarts on only the remote unit. The base unit that controls your heater or AC only listens to that remote and if it doesn't get any new commands, it just keeps doing whatever it was doing last. That means if there is any interruption or failure in communications, your heater or air conditioning could remain on for a long long time.
Here's how I came to realize this problem. I was testing the unit in my home after I first installed it. I found that it didn't seem to have the range to work in the room where I needed it. So, I tested the range in the hallway where there would be clear line-of-sight between transmitter and receiver. Even there, I could only get it to work at a range of about 10 feet. (After I returned it, the folks at ICS claim to have tested it to work at a much longer range, so maybe there was some interference or something in my house.) Anyway, at this limiting range, the remote unit was able to turn on my AC unit, but then it never switched it off. I bumped the temp setting up and waited about 20 minutes, and still nothing happened. Finally, I brought the remote unit closer to the base unit, and it switched off.
Imagine now that you are away on vacation and the battery of the remote unit gets a bit low. Maybe a signal is strong enough to turn on the heat but then nothing else gets through to your base unit. Next thing you know, you get home and your house is like a sauna and your heater has been running nonstop for days. This didn't happen to me, but it seems it could with this design.
My recommendation would be to avoid this model and go for one that has a temperature sensor in both the base unit and the remote. Also, the main control should be in the base unit and not in the remote sensor. There are a few out there that do this. They may cost a little more, but I would think in the long-run they are worth it. After sending mine back, I purchased one from White Rodgers. In my opinion, these guys got it right.
There are a few other problems with the TS830 that are worth noting. First, the touch screen display is rather low contrast and the back-light is dim. Matters are made even worse because the screen easily gets smudged when you touch it. It has a special mode where you can clean it without activating any commands, but who wants to always have to clean their thermostat display? Like I said earlier, I also had problems with the communications range on the unit. I have experienced no such problems with my White-Rodgers unit White Rodgers 1F85RF-275 80 Series Wireless Remote Sensor Kit.
In summary, while I'm out shipping costs for the round trip, I still consider myself lucky. I ended up avoiding future headaches. I'm very pleased with the White-Rodgers unit I purchased instead of this one.
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20% of the time it would hang either on or off. Running the thermostat through the manual setpoint mode would usually free it up and it would go back into normal operation. This makes me think the receiver was in range (30 ft. line of sight) but somehow missed the change output signal. The receiver should send a confirming signal back to the transmitter and if it fails, the switch output state signal should be re-transmitted. I got the feeling this was a open loop one way system. It would also loose communication completely and the whole system would need to be powered down and reset. At that point we decided to return it. Amazon return policies are great. UPS picked it up at our home the next day and our account was credited 3 days later. We used this remote thermostat to control a Harman P-43 pellet stove at the far end of our small ranch style house. When it worked it worked very well.
Honest reviews on ICS TS830 Wireless Thermostat for AC & Heating systems
I have spent a considerable amount time looking for a solution to relocate one of our old thermostats and ended up buying this unit. I had it over a year now and it works great! The interface is straight forward nothing complex. Programing it is a bit of a pain, but I did it once and never had to do it again. Most importantly our baseboard heating system is about 150ft and a floor away from the control unit and the wireless works without issues!!! The design saved me lot's of time I would otherwise had to spend running control wires in the walls to relocate the old thermostat. I would buy this unit again, no questions! The only reason I knocked off a star was due to the complicated initial programming, but for most that will be a one-time event.
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This product was exactly what I needed. My original thermostat was right next to the washer / dryer and involved heating / cooling the entire floor in order to cool the bedroom where we spend our time. I closed the other vents but that was still a lot of wasted energy, so I picked this up to go to in the bedroom. Install was a breeze, it took probably 10 minutes to get everything mounted. Programming took about 15 minutes (I was confused how the copy function worked), and then I was running my bedroom at a reasonable temperature w/o cooling the entire floor. All told, under an hour to replace and be fully operational. The temporary / quick adjust temperatures is very easy to figure out and it received the girlfriend seal of comprehension
Issues All of these are quite picky and more notes so that you know you're not the only one w/ the issue.
Holding the settings button in the top right for (5) seconds is difficult. The touch screen is finicky about that so it took several minutes to get it to register.
It took me a week to get the LCD unit to snap into place. I kept pushing it back and the last clip wouldnt go and I was afraid I'd break it. Finally I put a screwdriver behind the base plate to keep it from flexing and it popped right in.
If you touch it at night the LCD is BRIGHT.
