Are you looking at thermostats? You're You know, shopping around you're wanting to replace your current thermostat and you're overwhelmed with all the information out there. There's so many options, so many different types of thermostats, so many thermostat Brands these days. and so I want to do a real quick video to give you a few things to think about before you select your thermostat of choice. and at the end of this video I'm going to reveal my favorite thermostat on the market.

It's been my favorite thermostat for several years now, but before we get to that, let's go through a few things before you select a thermostat. I think the first thing everyone looks at and I think it's important. You know some people don't but I do think that this is important and that is what does it look like, right? You know you're looking at all the different types of thermostats. some of them have, you know, little spinny dials like the old Atari games.

Uh, some of them have touch screen, some of them have. you know, different colored screens, some are black, backgrounds, some are green, some are. You know all kinds of different things that you you can look at and of course different shapes on your wall as well. So you know I do think that it matters in my opinion.

Maybe that's the heating and air guy inside of me. Maybe it's that my wife is sort of a hobbyist interior decorator and she's always you know kind of pointing out things what looks good in a home and what's not. and of course sometimes I show my ignorance with that when we're talking about that stuff. You know, if you're selecting a thermostat, if you're spending the the kind of money you're spending in some cases on these thermostats, you obviously want something that you know looks good in your home.

That's probably the first thing a lot of folks look at is what does it look like in the old days? Your number one decision for the longest time was did you want to stay with the old school mechanical thermostats? You know, the lever style or dial sort of Deal or did you want to go digital? But these days it seems like you know ninety percent of the ones out there are digital in some way. And so when you're selecting your thermostat, you need to make sure that the features that you you want not only the ones that you want, but it also can work with your current system. So not all thermostats are the same. You can't, just you know, pop one off the wall and pop another one on there.

In some cases, because you know it may not have the capability, it may not do the amount of stages you have right? You know, some thermostats have like a 3H 2C on the box or you know, some variation of that, right? And so you want to make sure that it has the amount of stages that you have that it can do what you need it to do Some thermostats are meant for heat pumps, some aren't, that's going to matter. If you have a heat pump outside, you need to have a thermostat capable of you know, sending voltage to that reversing valve, being able to operate that heat pump correctly regardless of the type of backup heat you have. And then of course there are what we call dual fuel systems where it's essentially a heat pump outside and your backup heat is some sort of fossil fuel, whether it be gas or oil or something like that. And because of that, what it will do is monitor the outside temperature and lock out the outdoor unit, switching it to burning that fuel if it's too cold outside for that heat pump to work.

So you know you need to make sure that thermostat has that capability being able to measure the outside temperature. In the old days we had something called Fossil Fuel Kits that would do that for you and you could install different types of thermostats. but these days you know instead of having this whole nother component that you have to, you know install and maintain and you know repair if it goes bad. These days they have thermostats that are capable of doing all of that without the Fossil Fuel kit.

One thing to point out is if you have a communicating system so if you have you know one of the big Brands you know if you have say a carrier train Daikin Whatever you have some sort of communicating system that you know it's higher end. It doesn't have as many wires. they technology that it uses to operate is totally different than you know a lower end system and there's reasons for that that we're not going to get into in this video. But the main reason I'm pointing all that out is if you have a communicating system then you have to stay with a communicating thermostat.

You can't just go and grab any old thermostat Off the Shelf at your local hardware store or you know on Amazon and expect for it to work with your you know high-end systems. In most cases, folks are okay with that. They like the capability of having a communicating system, but just realize if you for whatever reason don't like what the thermostat looks like or maybe it's malfunctioning and you're planning to replace it, you have to go back with a communicating thermostat. You can't just you know up and change that.

So just a few other things to point out: Some thermostats have accessory terminals. I'll have folks comment on our channel from time to time. They'll comment on different videos and point out hey, I replaced my thermostat. The old one had these terminals.

They had dry contacts to be able to operate my humidifier or some other accessory and a new thermostat does not. and that's something you might want to take a look at as well. So if you do, look at your old thermostat and it does have some sort of terminals that controls accessories, you want to make sure if you're selecting a new thermostat that it has the ability to also take care of those accessories. But other things are as you're looking at thermostats.

some of the extra features that thermostats have today. Maybe you want some of these features? Of course, you know, years ago when thermostats started coming out with the capability of scheduling. you could put in a schedule put in there when you leave for work and when you get home sort of deal. and the thermostat would operate differently if you weren't going to be home, saving you money, saving you energy.

Some thermostats today have Geo fencing or some some variation of that. They might use other verbiage, but basically the thermostat knows if you're home or not and some thermostats have capability of talk commands so you can walk through your door and say hey, turn to this temperature whatever technology it uses to do that. Some systems use your home system technology, you know Amazon's Alexa capability or Google home assistant. There's seems like there's a handful of them now, but you know just some sort of commands that you can just say what you want done.

Uh, it's kind of crazy that we have those capabilities today. probably back in the 70s. They would make movies about stuff like that. you know? I Remember back to the future of the guy having you know the capability of doing all these different things in the room and communicating through what we would call a zoom call today.

But when that movie was made, it was just cutting edge. It was just crazy, right? But just before you go, let me point out a couple more. One is some thermostats have alerts that it will alert you if something is wrong, if it's gotten below a certain temperature or above a humidity level, or whatever the alerts that you set up are. Of course, communicating systems will be able to tell you if something's wrong with the system and you know and some cases tell you what's giving the thermostat the error code and things like that.

And then another thing we've seen catch on here recently is they have thermostats with iCloud settings These days where you know someone can remotely dial in, whether it's your heating and air contractor. Maybe it's the manufacturing rep from the company that made the system. Maybe they want to dial into it. Maybe you want to be able to, you know, dial into it if you're not home and see what's going on.

but just these thermostats that have these ways of you being able to dial into the thermostat and see what's going on real time and do that remotely and that's you know. catching on more and more we're seeing more and more companies do that. Last thing before we wrap up: I said I would share with you my favorite thermostat of all time. and you know I don't know if that's going to change soon because they are coming out with all kinds of new thermostats, new technologies.

but after all these years, I still have my favorite I'm going to put a link to it down in the notes if you want to get one, but I'm still a fan of the touch screen. Honeywell 8000 WF You know? So I usually get the 8321 or 83 something WF get the uh, the Wi-Fi capable one so you don't have to worry about red link. Not that there's anything wrong with red link, but most homes if you don't have all the other extras that Red Link offers you, then you know getting that. Honeywell 8000 WF And part of the reason I like it is, you know, does it have a lot of the bells and whistles? A lot of the other thermostats on the market today have? No, it doesn't have some of those features, but what it does have is it's very reliable and I can usually pair it up with tons of different.

You know if I have somebody down in the middle of the night if they have no AC as long as it's not a communicating thermostat in a lot of cases, I'll be able to get them back up and rolling with a Honeywell 8000 regardless of the type of setup they have. It can do dual fuel or you know different stages and things like that and it just has all those capabilities. But it can also operate with just a standard old-school oil furnace with no AC just a regular old or a boiler or something like that. Just something real simple that this thermostat can operate with.

and again I'll put a link to that down in the notes for you to be able to click on my favorite thermostat. To this day, it's still the Honeywell 8000 that's Wi-Fi capable And so tell me what your favorite thermostat is. Are you in the market for a thermostat? Are you looking at different ones and you? maybe you like the looks of one over another? Maybe you know, found a thermostat you like, but it doesn't have the capabilities that you need. Uh, one thing to point out that folks have to deal with is your thermostat currently runs off of batteries.

You have to worry about that, you know? So that's another thing that I didn't mention before. So just little things like that I'd Love to hear your thoughts comment down below: what's your favorite thermostat? Maybe you're a nest fan? Maybe you're an ecobee fan. Love to hear that and why. Thanks for watching hit that subscribe button.

We'll see you next time.