White-Rodgers Thermostat with Wireless Sensor

In one of my previous posts, I talked about my adventure with changing humidifier filters. That went relatively well. This time I embarked on something more ambitious: changing a thermostat.

But first, a background. We live in a two-story house, and the temperature, especially in winter, is never exactly the same upstairs and downstairs. It’s usually colder upstairs than it is downstairs. In the daytime it’s not a problem, because then we’d be downstairs where the thermostat is. But during the nighttime, you’d have to bundle up a bit when sleeping. We don’t really mind in our bedroom, but in our son’s bedroom it’s a little different. Because his room is much smaller (about 9 ft by 9 ft) and because his door is closed while he sleeps, the room gets warmer much faster than the rest of the house. So for example, if it reads 70 downstairs, it might actually be 72 or 73 in his room.

This would be uncomfortable for him, because aside from the fact that he wears head-to-toe fleece pajamas, he also sleeps better when it’s colder. If the air becomes warmer, he’ll wake up and his sleep will be interrupted.

We considered different options to remedy this, and what we decided to do was to replace our house’s thermostat with one that has a wireless sensor. We would place the sensor in his room, so whatever temperature we set, we know that will be the temperature in his room.

I did my research online, and I actually had to learn some basic concepts before I can figure out what to look for. For example, I learned that there are “single-stage” and “multi-stage” thermostats. What the stage means is how many sources of heat/cold it can support or control (for example, if you have forced air and you also have oil, then you require a two-stage thermostat). We only have a single stage heating and cooling, so that’s what I searched for. I found two products: the Robert Shaw 9701i2 and the White-Rodgers Thermostat and Wireless Remote Sensor Kit.

Since the thermostat that we currently have is a Robert Shaw, and because the Robert Shaw option only had a single-stage (which is all I need and was also cheaper), I chose to get the Robert Shaw thermostat along with the remote indoor sensor. But when I got the merchandise, I discovered that it wasn’t what I needed. Yes, the sensor was indeed remote (separate from the main thermostat), but it was wired, not wireless. To use it, I would have to drill holes in the wall, which was too much work for me. A valuable lesson learned–”remote” does not always mean wireless!

So I returned the Robert Shaw and asked customer service to replace it with the White-Rodgers one. This was a bit more expensive because it supports multi-stage, but it’s the only one available; I guess not a lot of companies make thermostats with wireless sensors. Once I got it, I removed the old thermostat, making sure to mark all wires and double-checking with the manual where they match with the new one. The wires are color-coded, but the colors between brands don’t always match, so you have to make sure which wire goes to which terminal. Once this is done, it was smooth sailing; setting up the schedules was easy and the only set up for the wireless sensor was making sure it was getting a good signal. That same night we got to use it in our son’s room and we didn’t have to worry about the temperature

Today marks my official entry into the world of the 21st Century. Sure, I’ve done a decent job of keeping abreast with technology–a lot of it heavily influenced by my day-to-day interactions with information technology. Web 2.0, texting, voice transcription: some technologies that were just a few decades ago considered science fiction but I now utilize on a daily basis.

But as life(style)-changing as these technologies may be, I have never really treated them as “ground-breaking” advancements; to me they have been more like ingenious inventions that have proven to be very useful. Nothing major.

Well, until now. For me, nothing speaks science fiction or 21st Century as Artificial Intelligence. And when you speak of AI, Robotics can’t be very far behind. Once you embrace these technologies, then to me you have severed the last of ties that still bound you with the 20th Century. That is what I have done today. I have welcomed into our home a 14″x18″ box that represented the future:

Roomba Package

Yes, I am now one of the proud owners of a Roomba. I have done some research and if what I’ve read is accurate, it will prove to be a time saver for what we intend to use it: day-to-day cleaning. Nothing thorough, but just decent cleaning akin to the nightly sweeping we used to do in the Philippines. Having also seen the nice deal they had on this model in Buy.com, I decided to take the plunge.

Opening the package, I can’t help but feel a whiff of excitement, like a child opening a Christmas present that he knows is impressive but is a bit unsure of what it actually does…

Roomba Package Contents

Inspecting the main unit, I saw this sticker, which made me realize even more of the wide-reaching potential of this technology:

Roomba Sticker Note

I can’t wait to test it.

Once you buy a house, you begin a journey of endless learning about everything related to home maintenance and improvement. Some are easy, like changing light bulbs or painting rooms. Some are tedious, like mowing the lawn and maintaining a garden. And these are just in your living spaces.

If your house has a basement, it would typically contain the innards of your house: the water pipes, the furnace, the water heater, the sump pump and maybe even a water softener. Some of the things I’ve had to do since moving into the house is to change the air filter every three months, and to top off the water softener salt every so often (it varies depending on water usage).

Something new I learned recently relates to the furnace. Our heating system, being forced-air, causes the air inside the house to become very dry. Because of this, some models (such as the one they installed in our house) come with a built-in humidifier. You can set the amount of humidity from zero to 40% also on the thermostat. One day I was curious how all of this worked, and I discovered it was quite simple. When you turn on the humidifier, water is coursed, from the top downward, through a mesh that looks something like this:

Humidifier Filter

The mesh is installed such that the hot air passes through it. The main purpose of the mesh, then, is to disperse the water so that it easily evaporates into the hot air, which is blown into your living space. The higher the humidity setting, the more water is coursed through the mesh.

What I’ve also learned though, is that having hard water will eventually make the mesh (which is made of thin slivers of aluminum) brittle and fall off. Worse, the mineral deposits will build up and will actually block the air passing through, making your heater work harder.

I knew that I needed to replace ours, but I didn’t know what to look for. I tried Googling “humidifier mesh”, and when I got some hits, I eventually ended up on Amazon and some other web sites with some products. Other things that I learned was that the size was not standard, so I had to make sure to get the correct one, and that some are also treated with an anti-microbial coating to prevent bacteria and mold buildup due to the moisture. Seems like a good idea considering that the air passing through will be the air that you breathe in!

Mission accomplished for today. Maybe next time I’ll learn how to insulate the water heater.