This story is as old as Dagwood Bumstead and the pictures of water spraying out from under the sink and Blondie standing in the background with her arms folded looking exasperated.
But we are not talking about plumbing here, we are talking about adding a new thermostat to the HVAC system. Here is the scenario.
People go down to Home Depot and look at that line of thermostats and the sign says how easy they are to install and they have all these wonderful features and people are thinking about all the money they are going to save.
Yes, the right thermostat can save lots of money by better regulating how homes are heated and cooled…
But what they are really thinking about is all that money they are going to save by DOING IT THEMSELVES.
They don’t have to pay the technician to come out and do it for them. NO, they can DO IT and save money. And who doesn’t want to save a little money right now?
I have to confess, I have tried this myself and I an not a technician but I work at an Air Conditioning company and I am a real handy guy. But it didn’t work. The wires were a different color than the instructions said they were going to be, and there were more wires than expected, and it didn’t work.
Maybe I was confused by the multiple options the instructions give you for connecting wires, depending on which type of HVAC system you have installed in your home. Whatever, it didn’t work and I got to call in the technician and yes, I did get ribbed about it.
Now there is no reason on earth you can’t do this yourself and make it work. But we do see problems all the time. What usually happens is the newly installed thermostat
- won’t turn the cool on OR
- won’t turn the heat on OR
- nothing will turn on OR
- sometimes a breaker opens AND
- often the thermostat is damaged in the process
and then this hapless soul is
- Out the price of the thermostat,
- Out the time it took to install it, and the time it took to figure out it is broke, and the time spent trying to fix it,
- and now they are waiting for cooling or heating until the technician can come and
- they are out the cost of the technician and
- the cost of the new thermostat.
So before you try this yourself, think about it and think about it again. The cost of the installation is not expensive although it is costs more than if you consider your time as free. But only if you get it right. Maybe it makes sense to just save yourself money and aggravation by not doing it yourself.
There are probably a few wives who will read this and feel they have been here and experienced this before. I leave you to your own wiles to either encourage your hubby to add the thermostat or try and hinder the first step towards a disaster. May you have better luck than Blondie.
-Stacey Pearson sales/estimating
