Playing with the Breakers

Last week, I really outdid myself - I installed a programmable thermostat by myself! I will admit, I did call my friend Katie to get advice from her husband Steve who is an electrician, but it only took one 10-minute phone call and the instruction manual!

Since my house had the Model-T thermostat from when the house was built (1985 - ya know, the one with the little matchstick thing marking the temperature and you just nudge it one way or the other to adjust the temp - very primitive), I thought it was time to get a new one that I could program, as to save money on the high energy bills with this crazy summer heat (but actually, my winter heating bills were higher than the summer cooling bills - go figure!).

Anyway, I bought the thermostat (it was on sale at Lowe's - just when I was thinking about buying one - must be a sign) and it took about 5 days of psyching myself up to actually cut the breaker and do it. I really should've done it about a month ago when it was not hot yet since you have to shut off the breakers to the A/C unit in order to install it.....which means that for every minute you cannot figure out the new thermostat's wiring, it's a minute that the house is getting hotter. I tried to get all of my materials, tools and resources together before I hit that breaker, but once I did, the pressure was on!

I took off the old thermostat and found a convoluded mess of wires and screws with weird letters next to them. They weren't in a nice neat little labeled row like the new thermostat....NO - they were all over the place! I am convinced that you should have to have some sort of surgical license to install thermostats. I felt like I was playing the game "Operation"!

Anyway, after a nervous call to Steve when I was confused on some of the wires, I figured everything out and re-wired everything in the new thermostat. Then it was the big moment........I flipped the breakers back on.......and then I had to hit the "ON" switch on the thermostat and pray that the unit kicked on (I knew it would start right away because the house was heating up and it surely had some cooling work to do!).

MAGIC - it kicked on immediately with some wonderful cold air! YES!!! Another home improvement victory for the novice! That's just one more notch in my toolbelt!

I'm seriously going to start hiring myself out pretty soon here.......