Smart Theromastats Aren't

After the joy of Saturday there had to be a balancing act on Sunday.

Our thermostat had gone T.U. over the winter - that's Thermostat Unresponsive, of course.

So I went ahead a bought a NEST thermostat - checking their website for compatibility and even got a nice energy saving rebate.

Per their website, with the 4 wire setup I had, it should work.

Well, not so much.

Overall the install was pretty easy. Between the instructions and YouTube videos it's pretty hard to mess up installing a NEST.

When I first installed it in the winter it started constantly cycling the furnace fan on and off.

It turns out I needed a fifth wire, a C wire. While NEST says it's thermostats doesn't require a C Wire, they typically do. Unfortunately, most of these "Smart" thermostats whose manufacturers were dumb enough not to think that most houses do not have a C wire and wouldn't an onboard replaceable battery (just like the thermostats they're replacing) be a smart idea? Thse thoughts apparently never crossed their minds.

And therein lies the problem.

The thermostat is located over the slab. the wiring to it may very well go up to the attic and then down to the furnace but we can't seem to trace it as it doesn't immediately go up from the thermostat but down and then around somewhere.

Even better, at the furnace the wire bundle has a fifth unattached wire that doesn't make it up to the thermostat - oh, and did I mention the wire colors are completely different and the ones at the furnace don't even match standard coloring schemes? Someone clearly spliced and connected the thermostat wires somewhere, likely behind the drywall and I'd rather not rip apart the house to find it just to try and run a C wire to have a thermostat.

So one solution proposed was to disconnect the G wire on the furnace and move it to the C wire terminal on both furnace and thermostat.

This worked well through the winter but guess what we found out the first day it got hot out?

The A/C will not run without a G wire.

I've tried both the Venster Add a Wire and the Lux Products Power Bridge add a wire solutions which are supposed to fix this issue, and both failed in weird ways. Venstar would not provide consistent power to the NEST and the A/C would not respond at all, but the fan would run - constantly when the NEST was plugged in, and the Power Bridge would provide lots of power but the NEST reported the G wire had a problem and would not work.

I've spent more time running up and down stairs, flipping breakers, and adding and removing wires to the furnace and testing the thermostat more times than I can count, and it took abut 4 hours plus yesterday trying without success to make the to make the add a wire solutions work, complete with the fun of some old furnace wires breaking, requiring me to strip new ends and expand my vocabulary, a lot.

I now have a plug-in 24 Volt adapter on order and we'll see if adding that as an external power source and moving the G wire back to G lets this thing finally run right.

So yes, if you don't have a C wire, I'd have to recommend holding off on getting a smart thermostat as they're not smart enough to handle the lack of a C wire.

Yeah, it's an annoying first world problem all right.

High Efficiency Furnace My Foot

The high efficiency furnaces of today seem much more temperamental than their less efficient but far more forebearers.

They apparently become extremely efficient when they are not working as 0% of no energy used being wasted is well 100% efficiency, which is good, right?

I swear this thing breaks down at a minimum at least once every two years - and that is with a maintenance/furnace inspection done every year - and typically it is a control board or pressure switch that fails. This time for variety it was a bearing for a motor. Let's hear it for the Consumers Energy Maintenance plan.

So, the furnace guy came Friday at 11 pm and pronounced the motor that drives the exhaust for the furnace has a bad bearing and thus doth not work and is nailed to its post. This makes the entire furnace not work accordingly as failure to clear carbon monoxide would be a bad thing. Said part was of course not in stock and the only warehouse open Saturday didn't have it so we're expecting the repair to happen this evening.

To say the house is a touch chilly is an understatement, but thankfully it remained above freezing the past few days even as it was a darn cold wind last night.

A Cold Home Night

Adding to my Home enjoyment, last night at about 6 pm one of the furnaces conked out. The one that heats the bedrooms, basement and about half the house. From the code its flashing its either the igniter or the pressure switch as it is not firing up any more.

It was working fine right up until I said "You know, why are we paying for the Consumer's Gas Home Appliance plan as everything is working?".

Luckily, I did not cancel it and we have Consumers Gas Home Appliance plan and they will send a furnace guy over.

Unluckily, they were all busy last night dealing with higher priority things like house fires and gas leaks, so as of now we still have no heat in half the house.

So I'm now at work waiting to get a call that they're on their way and I'll dash home to meet them. If I don't get service by this afternoon I might as well cancel the plan, call my friend who does HVAC stuff and get it fixed.

Tell me again how these high-efficiency furnaces are supposed to make everyone's lives better - they certainly don't seem as durable as the old standard furnaces.