october? must be time to replace my broken thermostat!

RoosterBoy

surely septober would be the month to return them :)) ok ok ... you could wait till Neveruary :)

Taylor_4

october? must be time to replace my broken thermostat!

This is the second year in a row this has happened....Is it just me?

I have steam power. I replaced the plumber-installed thermostat for FHA (!) with a Honeywell T860202000 (reading from the back of it). This has settings for steam (gravity) heat and setback.

Last year, come the fall, the batteries were run down, and when I replaced them the thing was inoperable. Display shows operation, but no temperature displaying. Putting it into test mode, nada from the boiler. Take out the wires and hold them together (switching off the circuit in the intervening), boiler fires up, so it's not the boiler.

Bring it back to the supply house, they replace it (I have to check my credit card statements now to see if I got the refund). Now a year later, we're right back where we were last year!

Supply house tried to say, and will try again this year, that it got knocked out by a thunderstorm. Now, call me simple-minded, but we do have thunderstorms now and again, doesn't affect any of the other electronics in the house. Are you telling me that whenever the skies rumble, I need to get down on my knees and beg Thor to spare my $200+ thermostat? I mean, ****??!!!

Can anybody suggest a better thermostat? Or a diagnosis of what's going on?

And how come this expensive POS only runs on battery power and cannot steal power from the boiler?

carol_3

Starting at the end of your message, the POS, as you put it can't power steal. That's a separate technology from battery powered, and the T8602 is indeed battery powered. I'll send a message off to the engineer to see if we can get more info than the supply house has.

Taylor_4

Sorry if my \"POS\" comment caused offence

...my frustration bled through.... I'm just surprised that such an expensive thermostat cannot steal power when it seems like the cheapos off the shelf at HD can (like the one I had before).... Does Honeywell not have the technology?

In any case, thanks for looking into this for me....

carol_3

No offense at all at the POS comment! In the T8600 family of thermostats, each model has a separate way to power. Power stealing is the T8600. The engineer and I both think that it's odd for the batteries to die in a year. They usually last longer than that. Engineer is also thinking that perhaps it was hit by a power surge of some sort. Regardless, what you're seeing isn't normal. If you'd prefer power stealing, take it back on warranty and ask for a T8600 instead of the T8602. They cost the same so it shouldn't be a problem. Warranty is one year FROM DATE OF INSTALLATION, not from date of purchase or date of manufacture.

Taylor_4

Thanks for looking into that!

"Power surge" sounds consistent with the thunder storm hypothesis. But I still say, surely they make these things more durable than that, that a summer thunderstorm can reliably blow one out once a year.

An alternative hypothesis: This is a 1929 house, don't know how old the insulation on the wires is, but it's pretty ragged (ragwire) coming out of the wall. Eventually when I redo the basement I plan to fish a new wire down there, in the meantime I've wrapped electrical tape around the conductors coming out of the wall. In the meantime is it possible there is arcing somewhere in the wall due to deterioration of insulation? But I expect we'd see the boiler firing up erratically if that were the case.

But none of this explains (to me) the too-rapid drawdown in battery power. And the fact that failure follows battery depletion.

Thanks for the recommendation on the T8600!

carol_3

If you can't get the warranty replacement you need, let me know.

Taylor_4

Thanks, still working on it

Waiting to hear back from supplier re replacement, who needs to talk to distributor.

Supplier thinks there's something wrong with home wiring, so I'm going to get an electrician in to take a look. He does not carry 8600, says too many problems with incompatible boilers [boiler is Utica PEG150C]. Also distributor may not agree to replacing 8602 with 8600, and may not agree to a second replacement when he feels the problem is mine, not the thermostat's.

Now I've had 2 thermostats before this, both power-stealing, one cheap with no setback, another for FHA (plumber's fault). No problems with either. I would expect *less* problems with battery-operated than power-stealing....