EmersonUP310 Premium 7 Day Programmable Thermostat

I usually don't install any household electronics by myself. The fear of being fried or burning my house down is a constant deterrent. Anyways, I have a heat only system that uses radiant in-floor heating. My current thermometer died and we live so far away that it's hard to get people out for such a small job. Luckily I have a friend who is a plumber who help me through this process. In retrospect, it's quite easy. Fact that I'm here typing this review showed my house didn't burn down and I did not die. So this is for the absolute risk averse man of the house.My unit replaces a Ritetemp thermostat. First, most of these thermostats snaps on to a plate that is mounted to your wall. You have to pull your thermostat off the mounting plate. Luckily, or unluckily, my Ritetemp literally fell off the wall, hence the need for replacement. I noticed that there is no 'c' wire. Just a black and a red wire. This usually means it's a low voltage system. I happen to have a volt meter. I measured the voltage at each wire...really don't know what I'm doing at this point, but clearly it showed only about .3V. My next question is where to turn off the power? I thought I'd have to go to my main panel to turn off the power to the entire section of my house. Luckily my plumber buddy tells me that most are located near the boiler. Sure enough, there was a switch there labelled 'boiler'. I turned it off. Wanting to be sure, I measured the voltage again, and it dropped to zero. Interestingly, my friend said that you don't even have to turn off the power. It's such low voltage that it won't kill you. Yeah, right. And if the wires touch, it just turns the system on at worse. I'm not brave enough to test this theory.OK, with the power off, I took a picture of the existing wire diagram. Only 2 wires, any idiot could remember the order right? Wrong. Take a picture. Trust me. Self doubt crept in and I had to reference the photo to remind myself where things went. My current system has a red wire that goes to the RC terminal. A black wire that goes to the W terminal. Then there's another jumper wire that goes from RC to RH. Next I removed the wires from the existing mounting plate, then unscrewed the mounting plate from the wall. I temporarily placed the mounting bracket from my new onto the old place to see how it looks. #sdfjkd#43.....the Ritetemp is a vertical thermostat, this Emerson is horizontal! I'm in idiot. It still works, but I'd have to paint around it. I guess these things are all different sized anyways. Before I screwed the new plate onto the wall, I had to drive 20 minutes to Home Depot to get matching paint. I painted over the gap from the old plate. Then I attached the 2 wires to the terminal, referencing my previous and very handy photo, then I screwed the plate permanently to the wall. There is no jumper on the new mounting plate...one from RC to RH. This is on the thermostat itself. Then I turned the power back on. Check to see that there's voltage on the wires. Then I removed the plastic sheet at the end of the battery connector on the main thermostat, and the thing turned right on. I pushed it onto the wall plate and it fit perfectly. BTW...mine came with Energizer alkaline, rather than Duracels...if that matters.At this point, I want to explore why I chose this thermostat rather than the more expensive Wi-Fi enabled version. My system does not have a 'c' wire, which according to the Q&A section would result in a weak wi-fi signal. This is also 1/2 the price. But the true reason I chose this model over the wi-fi enabled model is I like the control. I want to turn things up, then down, and when ever I need them. I don't want some freakin algorithm to turn stuff on or off. My weatherman is wrong easily half the time...I do not want that guy to have anything to do with the actual temperature i want in my house. If it feels to warm, I'll turn it down. If it's too cold I'll turn it up. When my wifi goes out, I don't want the thing to go nuts. I don't want some kids messing with my system...trying to fry me by turning up the heat slowly while I'm sleeping. You know the saying. Throw a frog into a hot pan and it jumps out. Gradually turn up the heat and it stays there until it boils...anyway...getting off topic. I like the simplicity of a manual control.Programming this is super simple. Before you start, there's actually a 'installer menu' that can be accessed by pressing down on the menu for 8 seconds. Yeah, I looked at these settings, and they seem reasonable as far as I can tell. I didn't change any settings. Programming and using this thermostat is super simple. Self explanatory really. The display is also good size and very easy to read. It's got a cool backlight which is such a nice thing to have. I used to use a flashlight to see the readings on my Ritetemp.Overall, I like it. It's way simple to install and use. With what little I learned today, I think I can put this together in 10 minutes.

I did not know for sure if this would work for what I had planned, but it works very well. I wanted to change out my manual Coleman thermostat in our RV for a programmable digital thermostat. I was told it would not work by Coleman, but so far works very well after searching several forum on RV on the internet, others have done it. Since it works off of batteries- not having a 24v house transformer makes no difference. Since everything in an RV is 12v thought this could be a problem. This thermostat just passes the 12v thru like it was 24v. The roof air and furnace both work as they should. Change over was very easy. Coleman has 6 wires and only need to use 4 of them. Holes line up perfectly from old thermostat. Installation took less than an hour. Took longer to program than install. Only con is, unless you add an addition switch (which is possible) you have to choose either the high or low fan wire. I just used the high and taped off the low. Only thing else I would prefer is that I would have wanted an option for 2 degree change in temperature instead of just 1 so it doesn't cycle quite so quick. Not a big problem as both air and heat have a 5 minute delay built in. Other con is the directions are confusing on the setup, have to read carefully, default settings would not work, lots of buttons to push to get it all done. Wife is very happy with it, comfort control is very good. Program allows us to save propane at night by shutting down at late hours. Texas weather may be hot and then cold in same day. The auto switch over is very nice.Program allows cold and heat set at what range you want. IE: heat comes on at 65 Air comes on at 75. I have seen on other forums that some motor homes have a slightly different wiring configuration, but will still work,.

Blank screen on a mission critical device. NO WAY! I was able to reset thanks to FULL PAGE in manual about a "blank screen". They are selling a MISSION CRITICAL product with a KNOWN reliability issue. On the plus side, I have the WiFi version of this thermo too. This version WITHOUT WiFI is extremely easy to set up and use the schedule, and the schedule is stored IN the thermostat's memory. The WiFi unit stores the schedule on the web. If WiFi goes down, no way to set schedule...already has happened MULTIPLE times, and the "down" was a FAILURE of the WiFi in the THERMOSTAT; not my WiFi system. I DO have the C wire connected so it was NOt the battery. Company needs to create a NEW product with a schedule stored IN THE THERMOSTAT and accessible via WiFi; like the Honeywell 8000 series! So sending this unit back. I cannot have a thermostat that goes BONKERS with a BLANK screen in the middle of winter at 3AM! I want a thermostat that can have full functionality WITHOUT an Internet/WiFi connection AND access to the thermo via WiFi. How hard is that?UPDATE: Work GREAT after installing new thermo wires; adding c-wire. Been running these since June, Initially I did NOT have a c-wire. Now with a Honeywell zone controller, I have a powered C-wire. Runningthis thermo on 1st floor and the WiFi version on 2nd floor with bedrooms. Thermostats work great. Esp the WiFi version. App is very easy to use, and temp override is a snap; just press the up or down temp button on the thermo or in the app and it will override for an hour. Real handy being able to up the temp FROM BED on a cold night when I have to get up early.UPDATE: Had to drop the rating down one star. One ANNOYING aspect is if one pushes the 'down arrow" button too hard, as when manually lowering the temp, the upper left corner of the thermostat POPS OUT of the wall mount! Effectively DISCONNECTING the thermostat, so one has to be careful of that. I have done it several times without noticing, and found the house with NO HEAT!The fix: Screw a button head or any other with a roughly 1/4 inch diameter head into the opposite corner that pops out. In this case, for the corner with the down arrow button. Leave the head sticking out just enough so the thermo no longer pops out when pressed. Voila!The problem is a design flaw with the TOO SMALL sized tabs at each corner of the thermo that latch the front of the thermo to the mounting base will fail to latch.\; not all just one or two, then when a button is pressed a tad too hard, the thermo pops off the base.UPDATE: These are good thermostats, but the WiFi version is even better. Upgraded to the WiFi and it works great too. However, one unfortunate aspect is while the thermo provides daily usage info, the data is an aggregate; it only shows how many HOURS and MINUTES the furnace was on. This is not very helpful since I can get the same info from the gas company. What Sensi needs to do is allow the data to be downloaded into excel to be plotted to show boiler activity; when it is on and when it is off. This can be used to decrease/increase the flame (ie. on.off duration) and reduce thrashing of the boiler, and energy cost.

I purchased this unit to replace a 20 year old Honeywell unit that worked fine, except that the buttons were sticking.Believe it or not, it wasn't easy to find a DECENT basic programmable thermostat these days! Every manufacturer seems to be focused on fancy WiFi enabled touch-screen gadgets so they put minimal effort into their basic models. Let's face it, once the novelty of playing around with it wears off, how often do you REALLY touch your thermostat?Anyway, I originally picked up an inexpensive Honeywell at the Home Depot to get me through. One thing I didn't like about it was the tiny display was hard to read at almost every angle and the backlight was terrible. Oh well, I guess you get what you pay for? The next model up had a large touchscreen display that I found poorly laid out and overpriced for what it was. I ended up returning both.This thermostat, on the other hand - was exactly what I wanted. Just a basic 7 day programmable unit that would do the same things as my original one did. The display is large, well laid out and easy to read from a distance. The backlight is white, not blue as shown in the online images and can be programmed to stay on all the time (as long as you have a C-wire). The batteries will keep it running when the power goes out as well.Another feature that was missing on the Honeywell's was the adjustable 'Cycles Per Hour' setting for both the heating and cooling modes of operation. The Emerson allows a 'Fast, Medium & Slow' setting for each. Initially the default settings had my AC unit cycling on and off every 10 minutes - which cooled the house adequately but seemed too frequent for my liking, and also did not reduce the humidity levels sufficiently. Switched it to the 'Low' setting and now my unit is cycling at around 20 mins on, 20 off and the house is comfortable.All in all I am quite happy with this unit!

The instructions made it very easy to install, though I got the impression it was supposed to include wire labels and it did not. No problem, just used masking tape. It was easy to set up the initial program, and to do any temporary overrides.

Great features. Easy to install and use. It has a setting allowing you to set what time you wish to reach a desired temperature, rather than when to start heating. Great for waking to a preset temp in the morning.

Great product. It's been installed for almost a year now. No issues.

Bought this for my parents. Was easy to install and program. Nice big numbers to see.