Hello all,
I just received my Vera and other goodies, including a $99 Foscam camera and a $260 H264 from IPCam Central. I have to say that they’re support guy was extremely helpful with the configuration of my cameras and router, answering my emails at midnight and spending 2 hours this morning walking me through a bunch of Linksys stuff it would have taken a long time to figure out. My experience of the cameras so far is that the Foscam has an excellent image and responds a little quicker to commands than the H264. I considered buying the Panasonic pre-configured but decided to get 2 for the price of 1 and stick my neck out. I’m glad I did.
Anyway, that said, I still have a problem with my Wayne Dalton thermostat that I could use some help on. Vera controls it just fine, but I haven’t connected it to the furnace yet. The instructions are very clear that you MUST have a three wire feed. I’m replacing an old mercury stat which is basically a plain switch and has two wires to my oil burner. Fearing that I might “let the expensive smoke out” of the WDTC-20 I bought a cheap honeywell programmable stat and wired it with the two wires to C and RH. Works perfectly. Am I safe doing the same with my WDTC stat? I sent an email to WD support but no reply yet - as I see from other posts, they don’t seem to be up to the same support quality as IPCam.
You need all three wires as this is a powered thermostat. All the Zwave thermostats are powerd and require 24 volts., not just switch the circuit.
You will neeed to run a new wire.
When I was faced with this, I had the HVAC guy come out to do his annual maintenance on my system last fall at this time. I asked him to pull the wire and he charged me like $20 to do it.
Now my house thermostat is right above the furnace, so it wasn’t that complicated. He did the wiring in the furnace, but I had to wire the thermostat. He stayed until I knew it worked.
I had the same situation. The old thermostat just switched one leg of the 24 volt power just like a light switch does. Since my furnace was close to the thermostat, it was easy to pull the wire to get the other leg of the 24 volts from the furnace.
Seriously, call the WD support line (1-866-545-5765). You must have a common and a hot connection to the 24v transformer on your furnace. If you don’t, the WD thermostat my work for a day off the batteries in the the thermostat, but it will die soon after. There are ways to get a common connection if you can’t do it off the furnace using a doorbell transformer, but the support line can walk you thru what you need to do - she is very helpful and knows her stuff (assuming it’s the same person I talked to who was the only person to ever answer when I called multiple times, even on a Sunday!)
Ok, so I’ve got a passive hot water system with a Taco control system. Each room has its own hot water loop, each room has its own thermostat. The thermostats are an LCD and circuit board, connected by a 2-wire conductor to the Taco control system. Each thermostat is basically an on/off switch for a heating system (no cooling involved, no fan control, etc).
Normally the Taco control system supplies 24 volts to the thermostat over the 2-wire conductor. When the thermostat calls for heat, the voltage drops (to about 1 volt), the Taco control system senses the voltage drop and opens a solenoid value to send hot water to the room requesting heat.
Given that the thermostat normally has 24 volts supplied, I wonder if the Wayne Dalton would work with just a 2 wire connection? Pulling new wires to each thermostat would be a large job. I suppose an alternative solution would be to supply 24 volts from a separate transformer connected to a 120 volt power source close to each thermostat.
(Why do contractors install 2 wire cables for anything? Why not just pull Cat5e? Arggggh.)
I have Taco controlling 4 scenes of in-floor heat and had to rerun 3 wire to all 4. A call to Taco will help with where to connect the common on the Taco box. Yes it was a frustrating experience running the 3 wire.
I believe what is actually missing is the 24VAC return wire that goes to C on the Tstat ( should check this to be sure). If you thermostat is running a zone valve, the 24VAC is there, and powers the zone valve when the circuit closes. You need to have a reference ground there, so the Tstat will be powered when the heat contact R/RW is open or closed.
None of this really matters when you consider you still need to run a wire between your furnace controls and the Tstat to get the thing to work. But please make sure you connect to the correct side of the 24V transformer and verify that it should be connected to the common terminal of the Tstat.
Just went through this on Saturday but I was lucky, I did run the extra wire when I wired the Tstat, so all I needed to do was connect in in the boiler room.
Anthony
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