Thermostat help needed

Curious on this one too. Would a small electric heater just to heat the bedroom and bathroom work better for you?

 

All the old style mercury therms did was act like a simple switch on and off. I assume the newer ones do too, but maybe not. If they do then yes, you can parallel wire in a second therm and put it in a different area. Then, the therm that is set the highest will fire the furnace.

 

I was thinking that too. Those quartz units work well and aren't hot to the touch... so child safe.

 

It sounds like the new t stat is closer to the oil blower than the old t-stat, why not just run the new t-stat to the blower?

 

If you have a timer on your existing thermostat, you can set it to come on at the time when you need it and have it set at a higher temp than usual.

 

Makes sense about the dogs. I was blinded by my house having thermostats in every room. Darn electric heat.

 

You could put a second thermostat in and install an A/B switch to toggle between the two.

 

It's a switch that allows you to choose separate devices in a circuit. I don't think you'd need to be an electrician to figure it out.

 

This exactly. You are going to need to turn the power off to the old one, for the new one to work. You cannot have 2 tstats on the same circuit in my limited HVAC knowledge.

The switch is basically like a boat battery switch (best example I could think of. ) So you can switch from 1 battery or the other.
The tstat is low voltage wiring. 4 wires if I remember correctly. You need to find the hot, and install a switch on that wire that will determine if the power goes to the old tstat, or the new one.

 

Ok, I had to google search because I am considering this also. Looks like you CAN install 2 tstats in parallel, but only 1 will work at a time. Lets say tstat1 is set at 70. tstat 2 is set at 75. When running heat, its going to shut off at 70, not 75.

you can do 1 of 3 things from my whopping 10 minutes of research.

1. Zone system. Expensive. Must replace equipment. Not worth it IMO.
2. Install 2nd tstat in new location and a toggle switch to determine which tstat is used at the current time.
3. Install new tstat in old location, but get one that has another sensor and mount this in new location. These units then AVERAGE the temps between the 2, and control the furnace with the AVERAGE temps seen between the 2 sensors.

 

3 sounds cool. Remote sensor is really what he's after.

 

If you had a buddy who could take 10 minutes to look at what you have, it sure would help. I have done what you proposed... using 2 thermostats, wired in parallel... but, it was with the older mercury 2 wire thermostats. When we wanted to control the heat in one spot, we'd just turn the other one down. No AB switch. The higher set thermostat controlled the furnace.