Programable Thermostat kinda long

I was asked to go and try to find out why the Electric heat in our church wouldn't work. Previous guy seems to have given up. The 10 heaters in the auditorium are controlled by one thermostat which activates four relays. Someone replaced the original line voltage thermostat with a programmable thermostat. After staring at it for an hour, I finally read the instructions that came with the thermostat and it states "not for use with relay controlled heaters". I don't know how long the relays have been turning on and off. I put a DPDT thermostat in and it works fine.
BUT who would want to get to church two hours early to turn up the heat. The question is does anyone know where I can get a programmable thermostat that will work with this system???
PLEASE don't tell me to get rid of the electric heat you would not believe the low price of electricity in this area.
Another question, the wiring in this 35yr old building has been declared UNSAFE buy the same guy who gave up on the thermostat because it is not up to the current code. I certainly hope it doesn't have to be brought up to code because my house was wired in the early 1950's and I have no intention of replacing my pushmatic circuit breaker panel. Please tell me it is not required to upgade to present codes. All the wiring is in metal conduit. I Know in this county, you have to bring everything up to present codes if you gut the place and do major work even to the point of increasing 2X4 studs to 2X6.

You should be running along shortly- moderator is pretty good about keeping the trolls out.

Can"t that circuit be controlled by a timer that activates it two hours early?

Don't worry his mom and dad will be home soon and they will not let him play with the puter then.

Rick

We messed around with the heat in our church like that. Finally decided to bite the bullet and leave the heat up. Now the plaster doesn"t crack every winter,and the gas bill seemes to be the same. A long time ago we put ground water heat pump heat and cooling in our local school. The guy who engineered it. told us if we wanted the electric bill to be what he had estimated. We had to leave the thermostats alone. We had to put metal guards over all the thermostats, then our electric went down. Vic

Dave I don't know what kind of programable thermostst you had but I would install a Honeywell visonpro TH8110 on this system and it should work fine. It would give you seven day four time periods per day. This would allow two hour early warm up on Sunday, set back during the day and warm up Sunday night. The rest of the week could be set back to a lower temp or you can program a differant setpoint for other days. Google honeywell visionpro and you can read the installation and set up instructions on line. This would give you more control than with a timeclock. These thermostats are rated for a one amp load. If the other four relays exceed one amp load you might have to install an isolation relay and let it carry the load.
If this building was inspected when it was built it should be up to code unless someone has changed a bunch of wiring and didn't know what the were doing. DH

The way I'd wire it is to put a24V relay in place of the line voltage thermostat and then you could use whichever programmable thermostat that you wanted. A fan relay center will give you 24V for thermostat and aline voltage relay

(quoted from post at 14:20:20 01/11/12) Can"t that circuit be controlled by a timer that activates it two hours early?

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I'd be lookin at that also.... But I've been accused of bein a cheapskate......

We turn ours down to 50 instead of letting the church drop below the dew point or lower into freezing temps .i agree on the stat covers. Most women and half the men have only two positions for a stat. #1 as high as it will go #2 as low as it will go.

Our friends up north had a ground source heat pump installed a couple of years ago and their contractor told them the same thing! I do not understand why you could not use a programmable thermostat with it, if it has enough capacity. Did your contractor give you any reason for leaving the thermostat alone? If it has a little extra capacity it should be able to warm it up when required.

The TH8110 is a 24v t-stat. The OP said he is using line voltage. Try the TL8230

One of the beginning admnistrative sections of the National Electric Code states (I'm paraphrasing, from memory) that if an installation was installed to Code when it was built, and as long as no unsafe or dangerous condition has developed, that the authority having jurisdiction IS REQUIRED to leave it, and to continue service, and not require it to be upgraded to a later code.

You might be money ahead to contact one or more local professional HVAC contractors and ask if they would look at it and write an estimate to make it work as you'd like it to. They should be willing to do that at no charge, or they will steer you in the right direction if they can't do the work.

You could be surprised how simple the thermostat fix might be with the latest equipment.

Good luck.

All the timers that I have are on a 24 hour cycle, I don't think they want to warm up the church every day.

Not that I can help with your heat problem but I have been putting programmable t'stats in my church over the last two years. If we had bought the same amount of oil last season as we did three years ago, at last years prices, we would have spent $4,000.00 more than we did. So it is worth it to figure it out and do it.

Remember the 7 day ones for chicken barns? Actually, I think one of the earlier answers was better- the specific Honeywell Tstat.