Welcome back everyone!
Today we’re going to be talking about upgrading your thermostat. If you’ve been keeping up with my posts, you’ll remember that last week we talked about how to keep your home nice and toasty by upgrading your old forced air heating system with a boiler heating system.
Regardless of if you decided you wanted to replace or keep your forced air heating system, you’re going to need a thermostat to control and adjust your home’s internal temperature. Today, I’ve made your search a little easier by compiling a list of the best thermostats on the market. These are rated the best on a series of different things, including user-friendliness (interface), aesthetic appeal, and overall performance. Remember, if you’re looking to upgrade your old thermostat with something better, make sure you check www.plumbersstock.com for deals on the thermostat you like before you consider buying it somewhere else. Without further ado, let’s get started!
3. The Radio Wireless Thermostat with Wi-Fi Capability from Homewerks
You’re looking for a fantastic and affordable little thermostat, right? If so, this is the one for you. Though simple in use without all the crazy and expensive bells and whistles, this thermostat from Homewerks offers a variety of cool little features wrapped in a white, pleasing-to-look-at package.
This thermostat provides ultimate control by offering a compatible app for your smartphone, tablet, or laptop which allows you to adjust the temperature from just about anywhere. It also comes with a 7-day programmable mode, which allows you to set a temperature for every day of the week. You may not see the innovation in this, but imagine you’re planning on being away at church until noon every Sunday. You can program the thermostat to start heating or cooling your home by 11:45am, so by the time you get home, your house is at the ideal temperature.
This thermostat also offers quick and easy installation, so you don’t need to be a professional to install and start enjoying your new thermostat.
2. Honeywell Prestige 2.0 Comfort System
Do you have a fondness for Apple’s Siri? If so, you’re probably in love with the idea of someone learning your personal mannerisms and habits and always treating you to things they think you might enjoy. We call this sort of thing “adaptive learning” where, over time, the person (or machine) learns about you and uses this knowledge to always try to please you as an individual.
If you’re into that sort of thing, this thermostat will be perfect for you. Retailing at a lower price than the NEST, this thermostat uses “interview-based programming” to ask you questions about your heating and cooling habits. It then programs itself to take the best advantage of your likes while conserving as much energy as possible.
The Honeywell Prestige system, like the Homewerks thermostat, allows you ultimate access and control by letting you control it from your smartphone, tablet, or laptop. You can even view things like indoor temperature and humidity, as well as outdoor temperature and humidity (results may vary depending on your heating/cooling system).
Unlike the Homeworks thermostat though, this system requires professional setup and installation.
1. The NEST
If the thermostat world had a sweetheart, it would be this thermostat. Retailing at a pricey $250, this thermostat comes pre-loaded with a bunch of exciting and innovative features.
Similar to the Honeywell system, this thermostat uses adaptive learning to pick up on your heating and cooling habits. However, unlike the Honeywell system, this thermostat learns by itself after it’s been in use for about a week. With the knowledge of your personal habits in memory, this system then creates a specific program to meet your likes in the most energy efficient way possible. Like the two thermostats listed above, this system also allows you to control it from anywhere using an app on your smartphone, tablet, or laptop.
Here’s where to cool innovation really comes into play: this thermostat isn’t’ just a thermostat which monitors and adjusts your temperature—this is a thermostat that measures things like surrounding light, humidity, and motion to sense whether or not you’re home, how many people are home, and then adjusts the temperature accordingly. For instance, using the same example as in the Homewerks thermostat, if you’re not home on a Sunday morning, the NEST will sense that and adjust the temperature.
As if that alone weren’t enough, if you have multiple NESTs in your home, they will communicate through wi-fi and coordinate heating and cooling schedules for the different rooms.
If you’d rather just program the heating or cooling schedule yourself, you’re free to do so by pausing the NESTs “Learning Mode.”
All in all, this thermostat is the jewel of the thermostat world and ranks as number one because of its beautiful design, innovative ideas, and practical uses.
A Plumber' s Daughter 
Just got a new Lochinvar Knight boiler installed. It’s not behaving properly yet. It looks like the old thermostats are too old and the wiring might be shot somewhere. Would like to replace them with a wireless thermostats that will be compatible with the new boiler. We have three zones. Can you recommend what works with the Lochinvar?
Hello there!
I’m sorry I didn’t respond sooner, but if you’re still looking for a new wireless thermostat, first I have a quick question for you. Does your Knight boiler have one or two wires to plug into the thermostat? If it has just the one, you might be able to work with the NEST wireless thermostat. Since the NEST incorporates a lot of new technology, like motion sensing, humidity control, and wifi, it requires a common wire to power all the technology. The older and cheaper programmable thermostats, probably like the one you used to have, ran on AA batteries usually, and so these old mercury thermostats needed no real power, just a basic “open and close” switch.
Unfortunately, boilers are just a little bit trickier to control than your basic forced air system. Thankfully, you seem to be okay with looking at multiple wireless thermostats, instead of a main central thermostat. Honeywell does pretty well with this sort of thing, so you may want to check out the Honeywell Prestige IAQ lineup. Ecobee may also work with the three zones (as far as I know, one Ecobee won’t control all three zones, instead it has to be one Ecobee per zone).
Hope that helps!