My home’s thermostat is located on this wall, and I need to move it to make room for a rather large piece of art. I came upon the idea of simply removing it, and drilling straight through the wall to the other side, and putting it there.
The other side of that wall is inside my kitchen pantry. It is closed on three sides. There is no door – the fourth side has an entrance 3 feet wide and 6.5 feet high. If I moved it there the thermostat would never be in direct sunlight, as it is sometimes now in the early morning. Airflow around it, of course, would be somewhat limited. And if for some unfathomable reason it matters, my cats’ litter boxes are on the floor 5 feet below.
So, according to general principals of… I dunno… construction, design, whatever… is there any reason NOT to do this? I figure it will be the cheapest possible solution and way easier than running a new set of wires to my furnace and fishing them up through a wall somewhere else.
It may be easy to move it there… but the point of a thermostat is to control the HVAC system and whether the new location makes sense is something altogether different.
Thermostats are generally located in areas of the house where they make sense given the specific design. Putting it essentially in a different room might make heating and cooling of the room it used to be in almost impossible.
My suggestion based on the picture would be to move it to the left just around that corner. Does that make sense? So it would be in the hallway on the right wall between the door and the room it’s in now, so still on that same ‘column’ just 90 degrees to our left. It doesn’t look like the sun would hit it to much and I don’t think the airflow would be significantly different. If I’m understanding you correctly, you were thinking of putting it IN the panty. I wouldn’t do that as the airflow is going to be quite restricted in there with all the obstacles (ie food) and it would take quite a bit longer for it to register temprature changes. Also, I’d imagine some of the food items might release some heat as they ripen/decay and that could conceivebly cause problems.
My suggestion based on the picture would be to move it to the left just around that corner. Does that make sense? So it would be in the hallway on the right wall between the door and the room it’s in now, so still on that same ‘column’ just 90 degrees to our left. It doesn’t look like the sun would hit it too much and I don’t think the airflow would be significantly different. If I’m understanding you correctly, you were thinking of putting it IN the pantry. I wouldn’t do that as the airflow is going to be quite restricted in there with all the obstacles (ie food) and it would take quite a bit longer for it to register temprature changes. Also, I’d imagine some of the food items might release some heat as they ripen/decay and that could conceivebly cause problems.
The thermostat controls only the furnace. I have no central air, just acouple of wondow AC units with their own thermostats.
And the art won’t fit on that side wall, nor would I put it there if it did. I bought it for that spot. So the thermostat will move, the questions is where. If it moves even 6 inches to the right, there will be room for the art.
But… there is no slack in the wire behind it-- I already pulled off the thermostat once to see if I could pull through any wire, and I couldn’t. Looking at the picture, the furnace is located to the back and left of the condo, so I either move the thermostate to the left and/or back of the condo, or move it anywhere but run new wiring, or basically spin it in place as per my OP.
And I don’t buy that it was put there as the best possinle location. I don;t think that much thought went into it. First, it’s in the same location in other units of the building, even though they are oriented differently than mine. Second, it doesn’t seem a good idea to me that it’s in direct sunlight, even though only for a short time in the mornings. I’m more concerned about the art being in direct sunlight on the art (it;s an original piece) so I will have to do some ind of UV window treatment.
You don’t want the thermostat in the panty or kitchen.
The basic rules for locating them are - not in strong direct sun, not on an outside wall, and where the humans are.
Fortunately, thermostat wiring is usually easy to extend and move. For I think what Joey P had in mind was to move the thermostat to the left, around the corner, and not the art.
From what I can tell in your photos, your heat is electric baseboards - the thermostat for this may be handling 240V, rather than “millivolt” or 18-24 volts. If that’s the case, you will need to take a lot more care in the wiring.
Guess we’ll need input from the OP to confirm, but I’ll say that the heat is hydronic baseboard from appearance, and also that the existing tstat is a Honeywell T87 hockey puck which doesn’t handle line voltage.
Stat in pantry is a bad plan. Centrally located is the best idea, all other issues being equal. If the 6" relocation keeps you in the same stud bay, adding a foot of 18/3 cable to the existing is a way to handle things. Adding cable and going to another stud bay, closing up access to the first is a bad plan, because you need to preserve access.
Yes, I meant move the themostat. When I said “my suggestion based on the picture,” I meant it was my suggestion based on what I saw in the picture you posted.
It is hot water system. I don’t know what voltage goes through the thermostat, but the wires are realy tiny, so I doubt they’re carrying a heavy current.
Joey P, my apologies. I misconstrued your post as a suggestion to move the art rather than the thermstat, and reacted negatively to that idea. Thanks to gotpasswords for straightening me out on that. Your idea has merit, but I’d like to avoid moving it to a location I might decide to hang some other art. I suppose I can handle that by putting it as close to the edge of the wall as I can get it.
Now I realize I’ve been unnecessarily fixated on getting the thermostat off that wall rather than simply moving it far enought to just be out of the way.
One reason you don’t want to have it in the kitchen is that when you are cooking, the heat will register on the thermostat and the rest of the condo could be cooler than you want. As said before, you also want air flow so the furnace will turn off when the living area reaches a comfortable temp, not when the pantry reaches that temp.
To echo Joey P, moving the thermostat to the hallway may work best. Since you should leave the splices accessible, could you pull the wiring through into the pantry, make the splice to new wiring and run it along the back of the pantry and break through the hallway wall to mount it there? That way the wiring is still accessible but out of sight and out of the way.
The voltage is only 12-24V. It’s probably 20 to 24 ga wire. You can add a length of wire to extend it. Just twist the ends together for about 3/4 inch, tape them up well, and you should be good.
I agree that moving it around the corner would be ideal.
