The Thermostat on the wall of my place is not in the best location; too close to the middle of the wall;
can it be easily moved a a foot to the right of the wall? I’m not sure how much dry wall or wires are involved.
It should be easy to do. The wires are low voltage. Fixing the old hole would be the most work. Can you take it off the wall and look inside the cavity? (Take a picture if you need to unhook the wires, so you know which colors hook up where again.)
Do you mean move it a foot, or do you mean move it several feet, to a foot from the edge of the wall?
It depends. Will you have enough wire to move the stat. Besure to have the power turned off before removing any wires, and besure when reconnecting to get the wires back on the correct terminals.
What I do not understand why brother to move a stat a foot?
having it on a wall away from corners would help it get a more realistic reading.
you might be able to move it, though running a new cable (or starting from the attic or basement where the cable goes into the wall) to a new location might be much less work ( regarding making and patching holes) if you are moving it out of the current stud cavity.
It’s on the wall five feet high, three feet from the corner. My place is small so I want to put a bookshelf there and am afraid the thermostat will be in the way.
I have no idea how the thing works or how hard it would be to move it
It’s attached to the wall with a couple screws, and there will be two or three or four wires that go through a hole in the drywall. Probably not a box behind it, just the wall cavity. It’s low voltage, low current, so try removing it from the wall without unwiring it, and see what’s going on behind it. All you should see is the wires going into the hole, with at least a little slack. Maybe from there, you can see what you’d need to do.
If it’s an old one with a mercury switch, make sure you don’t break the mercury tube.
I think the only important things are:
Has air flow around it (which is why you want to move it if you want a shelf there).
Doesn’t have air from a furnace vent directly blowing onto it.
Has the wires attached correctly (so take that picture if you need to detach the wires).
Mounted level if it’s a mercury switch model.
That’s it. (There’d be more if you were replacing it, since you’d have to get the right kind, but you’re not doing that.)
Chances are to move it a foot means a different wall cavity. Studs are 16’’ on center. In an interior wall, it is empty space, drywall on the 2 long sides and studs on the short ones. If you have unfinished space below it, chances are you can drill a hole a foot over and run the wire up where you want it. You can make wire fishing tools out of coat hangers.
Remove the thermostat and look at the wires. You will have red, white, green, yellow, and maybe others. Or heat only, only 2. They are attached to terminals marked R, W, G, Y.
After verifying a lack of wires, pipes, ducts, and who knows what else, cut a hole where you want the new thermostat. Make it as big as you can and still mount the thermostat over it. Next, pull the wires out of the old hole in the floor. Often you have a double joist, the floor, a 2x4 base plate. The wire goes up through a hole between the joists. You can try just pushing the thermostat wire up through the new hole in the floor. You may be able to fish it out through the hole in the wall. More likely, you will need a couple of coat hanger wires with hooks on the ends and fiddle around until you snag one with the other. Use the coat hanger wire to pull the thermostat wire up to the new location and attach the wires and the thermostat. Repair the old hole.
Complications: House on a slab. Check if the wire comes down from the attic. About the same process except a double 2x4 at the top of the wall.
Wire too short to reroute. Splice more on or run whole new wire.
Finished area above and below. Make a big enough hole in the drywall to drill a hole in the stud and run the wire into the other cavity.
Line voltage thermostat. Common with electric baseboard heat. You have 2 heavy wires in a cable. You are working with non metalic cable or even conduit. A little more complicated. Post back if so.
And if it’s an old one with a mercury switch, you should probably replace it with a modern poison-free programmable one. Your electric or gas company may have a program where they’ll replace it for free, which is great because you not only save twenty bucks or whatever for a new thermostat, but they’ll take the old mercury-laden one away and dispose of it properly, so you don’t have to worry about it.
[To be clear: an unbroken mercury switch won’t hurt you at all. But you may as well get rid of it so you don’t have to worry about it getting broken at some point in the future]
I thought you were going to get a handyman to mount the pot rack and other things in the apartment. If so, you might ask him or her to relocate the thermostat. Although this may be something that you can handle on your own. (BTW, if you have access to the furnace to which it’s connected, you could also replace the thermostat with a wireless one, although then you’ll need to change the batteries regularly.)
Simply because you’re asking the question, I would say no - it’s not going to be “easy” for you.
At the very least, you would have to remove/disconnect the thermostat, locate the wall studs, drill a new hole in the drywall, move the wiring from the original hole to the new hole (the most difficult part without having access to the wiring in the wall), and then reconnecting/mounting the thermostat in the new location.
You might have 12 inches of space to the next stud, if you’re lucky. If not, then you’re looking at probably tearing out a larger section of drywall (about 2’x2’) in order to gain access to a stud, drilling through that stud, passing the wiring through the new hole in the stud, maybe splicing in some new wire if the wiring isn’t long enough, possibly mounting a cross-brace between studs in order to attach a new drywall piece, obtaining a new piece of drywall, mounting the new drywall, taping/mudding/priming/painting the new drywall section, and connecting/mounting the thermostat in the new location.
At the most you would need a hole big enough to get your hand in.
No, this is much easier than people are making it out to be. (Whether it’s easy enough for you depends on your handyman skills.)
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Find a new location that is not behind your bookshelf. Choose one that is lower down on the wall by the distance that you are moving it horizontally. So that the wires that reached the old location can reach to the new location. (But it it gets too low, it might possibly make your heating/AC odd – the thermostat is 3 feet from the floor; it will respond to the temp at that height.)
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Cut a hole in the drywall at the new location, through that drill a hole through the stud between the new & old locations.
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Carefully mark (or photograph) the thermostat, so you can reconnect the wires correctly. Disconnect the wires & remove the thermostat from the wall. Tie a length of string to the wire cable.
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Using electrical fish tape (or a wire coat hanger bent to have a hook at the end), stick that through the hole in the in-wall stud, and carefully wiggle it around until you catch the wire cable going to the thermostat.
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Pull that back out, bringing the wire cable through the hole in the stud and out to the new thermostat location.
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Mount the thermostat in the new location and re-connect the wires. It should be working now. Then (only then) cut the string and pull it back out from the old location. If you don’t have that string there, and you happen to drop the wire cable down to the bottom of the stud cavity, you’re sorta screwed!)
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Repair the drywall in the old location, sand, paint, etc. You might be able to skip this if it’s behind a bookcase.)
I agree. Quite easy if you have unfinished area where the wire comes from the HVAC. Even if not, You may be able to fish it through as you describe through a hole the thermostat will cover. Buy a bigger thermostat. I have a Lux TX9000TS programable. It is 4 1/2 x 7 inches.
I bought a thermostat that has a remote sensor (google Hunter 44668). Just replace the thermostat then put the remote sensor where you want it. You do have to pay attention to it and make sure that it is, indeed, using the remote sensor, but you don’t need to be cutting holes in your wall and pulling wires.
FWIW, the thermostat should be mounted in the path of air to the return air vent.
- A lot of people are assuming the wires come up from below. They may be coming down from above. So the OP needs to ensure they pull out the existing thermostat & understand where the wires are coming from before cutting a new hole. Or at least they need to do that if they intend to use the existing wire length rather than splicing in an extension.
As an aside,it’s also possible to drill a hole horizontally through a stud to get to an adjacent bay. It can be tricky doing that through a small hole in the drywall. But depending on exactly where the existing hole is, a horizontal thrugh-stud hole may be a lot easier than re-pulling wiring from above or below.
Folks also neglected to mention firebreaks. These are horizontla breaces placed between two studs. Most fire codes specificy one per stud bay either fairly low (knee high?) or fairly high (head high?) in the bay, and alternating between bays. That menas that for wires conming from either above or below, a firebreak will be in the way in at least one of any two adjacent bays.
2. As folks have said, in almost all cases the power in the wires to a thermostat is low voltage & therefore not much hazardous to people. But … Any momentary short between any two wires may blow up part of the HVAC unit’s electronics; usually a multi-hundred dollar mistake.
Ensure you turn off all the circuit breakers which power the HVAC system before you even take the cover off the thermostat. A knowledgable pro can cut some corners here; a rank amateur should not.
All of this is no big deal for am experienced DIYer. The only way you get to be an experienced DIYer is by spending a little too much money and waaay too much time developing your skills & tool box one messed-up project at a time.
Usually there is a fuse on the control board that blow if you short the thermostat wires. Otherwise you may burn up the 24 volt transformer. A cheap and easy replacement unless it is part of the board.