Flying From ‘The Nest’ Learning Thermostat For Now

UPDATE:  Molly returned to the vet clinic Saturday morning for another IV antibiotic treatment. The good news is she is doing much, much better and she is back home and only has to return for a follow-up check next Wednesday. She will continue to take antibiotic pills for the next 5 days while home. She is happy and active again.

The big worry was Molly wasn’t eating and refused to even try the low-fat canned dog food. She wouldn’t eat it at the vet and she wouldn’t touch it when we brought her home Friday night. It was worrying as Molly had not eaten a thing in almost 3 days.

Saturday morning, the vet suggested that Paulette go home and cook a chicken breast for Molly, cut it up and bring it back to see if she’d eat it.

That worked like a charm as Molly devoured the chicken in no time flat. We left the chicken at the vet’s while she was having the IV and they said they’d feed her more every 2 hours. She loved it. All Molly needed was a “little home cookin’”. She’ll be on a diet of chicken and white rice for the next week or so – maybe longer. We’re very grateful to all the staff at the Mill Bay Veterinary Hospital for their tremendous care, compassion and the excellent medical diagnosis and treatment provided to Molly!

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As much as I was looking forward to purchasing and installing a Wi-Fi enabled Nest Learning Thermostat, further research has led me to put this idea on hold at least for now. Reading up on the Nest I discovered that it, like all Wi-Fi enabled thermostats, requires a common ‘C’ wire to bring constant power from the heating and cooling equipment to the thermostat so it can power its Wi-Fi system. I took the cover off of our old round Honeywell mercury based unit to find 2 heating wires but no C wire.

A Typical case:  Y1 = Cooling;  W1 = Heating; C = Common;  Rh = Power

Nothing’s ever easy or straightforward when it comes to home improvements it seems. What would be the fun in that, Mr. Murphy asks?  After discovering the lack of a C wire I spent many hours this past week learning more about thermostat wiring than I ever really wanted to know!  I had no idea that today’s thermostats had not only black or red and white wires now but also blue, green and yellow required to run A/C, heat pumps, fans and all kinds of stuff we never had a need for in our home.

With only black and white wires, no continuous power for the Nest thermostat

Although it’s possible to run the Nest Thermostat with just 2 wires it’s also possible it could lead to unwanted problems. When we’re down south for the winter the last thing I want to worry about is heating problems. I’ve read all the reviews, articles and stories I could find about the Nest without a C wire and I’m firmly convinced that the C wire connection is an absolute necessity for safety and peace of mind. It’s needed to guarantee continuous power to the onboard rechargeable lithium-ion battery.

Honeywell has rushed out the Lyric thermostat to compete with the Nest

So, how do I get a ‘C’ wire from our furnace to our living room thermostat location? The easy way would be to call a heating tech and have him do it for $100 – $150. I like that idea but since it’s summer and we don’t need heat for a few months I thought I may as well have at look at this job myself. After turning the furnace power off at the main breaker, I went down into our crawl space and made my way over to our electric forced air furnace and opened the main panel to have a look.

Our old inefficient Mercury based thermostat has to go!

I did manage to find the 2 wires from the furnace control panel that wound there way over to the wall and then up to our thermostat. So far so good. But, the rest of it was a concoction of wires, connectors and all kinds of strange looking things. I know somewhere in that mess there’s a Common C connector but nothing I could see at first glance. No manual either. Looks like I may have to find one and see if I can figure this all out (or just call a heating tech)! Heck, I’ll give it a try!

Depending on how things go we may end up with a Honeywell Programmable

You may be wondering at this point why I’m even bothering with all this especially since our old Honeywell Thermostat has been working for over 30 years now. The main reason is the old mercury based thermostats are notoriously inefficient. A new digital thermostat can save as much as 30% on annual heating costs. So, no matter whether I get a Nest Wi-Fi thermostat or even a Honeywell programmable one I first need to upgrade our wiring to current standards.

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