May 102013
Honeywell RTH7500D Conventional 7-Day Programmable Thermostat
- Large backlit display and soft-touch button interface
- Precise temperature control of +/-1-degrees F with auto change from heat to cool.
- Exclusive Honeywell Smart Response technology with filter change reminder and low battery indicator
- Fahrenheit or Celsius temperature display with 12 or 24 hour time display
- Backed by a one-year limited warranty
Keep your home comfortable and cash in on energy savings with the RTH7500D 7-Day Programmable Thermostat from Honeywell. Designed for quick installation and offering simple push-button controls and an easy-to-read screen, this thermostat lets you control the temperature of your home without having to make constant manual adjustments.Keep your home comfortable and cash in on energy savings with the RTH7500D 7-Day Programmable Thermostat from Honeywell. Designed for quick installation and offering
List Price: $ 89.99
Price: $ 49.95
A non technical homeowner’s experience in installing and using this thermostat.,
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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programming difficulty,
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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Wiring can be tricky,
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.
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