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So, Sunday the fan on our 18 year old furnace died; instead of paying the $600 to get it repaired, i opted to buy a new one.

Lennox SPV98UV (i think) 98% efficient / variable speed fan. they installed the air conditioner part with it / and i opted to install the outside unit for the air conditioner at a later time in the summer when it gets humid (still snowing here)

They sold me a Honeywell 8000 series thermostat (i wanted the iComfort thermostat but they convinced me on the Honeywell, which i thought was odd)

Anyways; the last couple days we've been using it, i noticed the house taking a long time (hours) to get up to temp - from 60 degrees to 68-70. Sometimes staying at 63, which is unacceptable.

I called them last night - they said the dip switches may have been set wrong and that they'd come out today to take a look. Me, being me, pulled the manual they left and went to go play with it. I eventually found the right combination of dip switches and the house got up to temp relatively quickly (within a half hour or so)

  1. Why does my thermostat still only use 2 wires? (red and white) I know it has inputs for an external temperature input (which i'm going to buy and install cause i think thats cool) some of them control the air conditioner - but even after those, theres still 5 or 7 spots for wires left. I was always under the impression these wires carried a voltage; are they digital now adays? (ie: transmitting data and not just turning on a relay?)

  2. reading the manuals, the thermostat can control the stages or it can be left up to the furnace. do i want the furnace to do this or will i get better control from the thermostat doing it?

  3. Does anyone have an iComfort thermostat? Should i have gotten this? We have Honeywell 8000s at work (coincidentally). Its nice, but am i getting the full bang for my buck with this combination?

I was upset about the sales process and now that settings were made wrong, i'll voice my opinion tonight when they come (invoice says 95% efficient and i was told i'm getting a 98%, etc...) but now that i have it, i want to make sure i'm saving energy and i've got all the features i think i got.

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So, not only did they come out thursday night; made a few changes and that didnt fix it, they came out friday night, make some more changes and finally it works, BUT. For some reason, when ever i ask a question, such as how many stages do i actually have or what model i actually have, they smile and continue working. So i bought a premium product, but am not getting a premium service. Great, thanks. Last night (friday) Timmy let it slip when he was talking to the other tech that they tried hucking up a 3 stage furnace to a 1 stage thermostat. This is all i needed. I have a 3 stage furnace; acc – lsiunsuex Apr 2 '11 at 15:04
2 hours later and I've successfully installed the Carrier thermostat - using both W1 and W2 terminals for the different stages. Installed the outside temp sensor and verified that everything works. Hope this post helps someone. – lsiunsuex Apr 2 '11 at 19:49
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your answers aren't really answers, they're more of a dialog with yourself(message board style). I'd roll them into the question or add them as comments to the question. – antony.trupe Apr 28 '11 at 12:54
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You should distill your question to the actual questions. The clutter around the questions is keeping people from your actual questions. – antony.trupe May 1 '11 at 23:03

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