Thermostat Wiring Woes
Posted by Wayne
When I was painting our living room in the fall of 2006, I removed the thermostat because it only took a couple of minutes and I’m a perfectionist so I wanted to paint underneath it instead of trying to paint around it. This was mistake to the tune of about $125.
There were about 5 different wires connected to the back of the thermostat, each a different color, and each connected by a screw that was clearly labeled with the color of the wire. These were easy to remove and easy to see where they should connect back to.
I finished painting and reconnected the thermostat. As this was a time of year that we needed neither heat or air conditioning, we didn’t use the thermostat for maybe a month. When the evenings got cold enough that we needed to turn the heat, the heater worked fine, but the blower wouldn’t turn off. I knew this wasn’t right. I took the thermostat back down, made sure all the connections were right, and eventually determined that the thermostat must be broken. We spent the whole winter turning the heat on and off manually so the blower wouldn’t run all the time. Several times I was close to buying a new thermostat but never got around to it.
Winter and spring came and went. When it finally started getting hot enough to need the air conditioner I tried to fire it up but it wouldn’t turn on. After several troubleshooting sessions on the internet I still couldn’t figure it out, and I had to call a pro. A guy from an air conditioning company came and poked around a little bit, took off the thermostat, and after a few minutes with his multitester told me that the thermostat wasn’t wired correctly. Evidently the genius who installed the heating and air conditioning system used a blue wire for the yellow connection and the yellow wire for the blue connection. Silly me! I was putting the yellow wire where it said the yellow wire should connect and the blue wire where it said the blue wire should connect. The air conditioner guy didn’t think I was stupid, but he did charge me $125.
$125 lesson learned: label wires when taking down your thermostat.
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