RLV4305A1000 5-2 Day Programmable Thermostat for Electric Baseboard Heaters

I have been using this thermostat now for about a month. If you have the skill to change an in wall light switch, you can install this thermostat. I use mine to control an oil filled roll around type radiator style space heater. You cannot use this thermostat, or any other external thermostat if your heating unit has a built in electronic control. Manual contols only! (switches & turnable more or less heat knob). This thermostat is completely quiet, fairly easy to enter settings, (read the instruction sheet until you understand) and controls room temperature within a degree. The room temperature showing on the display is not as accurate as the temperature control cirquit, and is an unimportant aspect of this very accurate controller. Want dead on RTD type reading? Triple the cost of this thermostat! Mine reads 2 degrees high. So I set it at 70 instead of 68°. What is important is the industrial accuracy RTD tyle lab calibration temperature sensor on my night stand.(I'm a retired Energy Management/Automation controls Engineer with 38 years experience) This thermostat works very well. 15 second cyle, 15 minute cycle? Fan, no fan? This thermostat uses one or the other methods to control the electric heating element. The 15 minute cycle is used with heaters that also have fans in them. It runs for upwards of 15 minutes and cycles off to maintain the temperature. The 15 second cycle only controls the heating element. It uses a solid state switch (triac) to pulse the heat element on or off to closely ccontrol the room temperature. At near setpoint, this unit pulses power at 1 second on, 14 seconds off. If the room is way below setpoint, the heater will be on continuosly untill the room temperature approaches the setpoint, then starts by pulsing 14 seconds on, 1 second off, all the way to completely off at setpoint. This is standard electric heating (no fan) control with much higher accuracy. Been around for 30 plus years, but very expensive untill the past few years. This kind of pulsing is harmless to heater elements. I used a shallow surface mount wall box, surface mount wire/cable wall guides (2), mounted box 5 feet above a wall outlet, used a 20 foot round, 3 prong extention cord. I cut the extension cord long enough to push the male (the part that plugs into the wall) up into the wall box, then pushed the remaing cable up the second channel guide into the wall box, connected the two white wires together and used appropriately sized twist caps. Connected the thermostat wires to each individual black extension cord wires. Thermostat is not polarized. Mount the thermostat to the wall box. Plug the extension cord from one of the cable guides into the wall outlet, the socket end of the extension cord is for the room heater male plug. Turn the heater switch(s) to high, heat knob to max. Many oil filled heaters cannot reject enough heat on high without overheating the unit! So manufacturers put overheat cutoffs to cycle the element off until it cools. JUST GREAT! This derates the heater from 5200 btu's to about 3000, maybe. That 1500 watt heater is really 800/900 watts. The specs. are on paper only. Solution: A 7 inch metal cage, fully rotatable 3 speed table fan. 1 programable timer. Place the fan on a side of the heater, angle it up towards the upper portion of the oil filled heater. Plug the fan into the timer, the timer into another wall outlet. Match the timer schedule to the thermostats schedule. The heater can now output all its heat indefinately. One on/off cycle should be adequate. Clean the fan on a regular basis. DO NOT CONNECT ALL FOUR BLACK WIRES TOGETHER AS ONE BIG TWISTED CONNECTION. Reader assumes ALL liabilities! How I did mine, and posting on Amazon reviews, is not to be taken as an instruction or direction on how to install, wire, or use this product with an electric heater. If you are not well versed in electrical theory and application, consult someone who is.

Firstly lets quickly get this out of the way. This is a LINE Voltage thermostat. The simplest way to describe this is -its a light switch.. just switches on when it hits the temp to kick of or off. So if you're seeing 3 or 4 super thin wires this isnt the right item for you... That being said - my home is basically a hot water boiler hooked up to 2 zones and zone control is either powering on or off these water circulators. Its just a simple 120v line. I replaced two analogue mercury style thermostats and hook up is straight forward and dummy proof. The first thing before you start the replacement ... TURN OFF the Power at the breaker! This is line voltage or 120v will be uncomfortable.. or if you're 240v... yeah don't want to touch a live wire there.... The thermostat is NOT polarity sensitive. That means you can join either the hot or neutral to either black wire - complete the circuit and shove everything back in. For me I used standard Wagos rather than nut connectors and replacing both thermostats was a breeze. I did have an issue with the FIRST one I bought from a big box store. The unit kept on rebooting which every 4 minutes throws out a 2.5 and 11.9 code. I tried to search what these codes mean but on the 2nd and replacement installs I noted i get these codes ON boot but the working ones just never showed those codes after boot. The Amazon shipped unit worked flawlessly and I was able to return to the big orange box store with no issues. So for anyone with LINE voltage heating or cooling - this is a great thermostat to program your wake up away and sleep ranges for the temps in the home. Better than 1 setting regardless of there is a human home or not. Super Easy DIY - just work safe! have fun!!

Since first purchasing an electric house 28 years ago I have searched from time to time for programmable thermostats to no avail. Recently I had a thermostat go wonky and I looked to replace it. Lo and behold I came across these and was overjoyed. So I ordered one. It went in easy, worked right away and I was happy. So I went and bought two more. Opened the first box and there was no hardware. Not a big deal as the hardware is two wire nuts (although you need three to install these) and two M2.5 X 0.45, 6mm long Phillips screws. Wire nuts I had, screws not any that were long enough, and neither did HomoDepot. So I e-mailed the manufacturer and after more then a week had not heard back. I gave up on them and started a return and ordered a replacement. In the meanwhile I went to install thermostat #3. It had the hardware, but it didn't work. Completely dead. OK, I'll use that hardware to install therm #2 (which I had not yet returned) and return #3 instead. So now I had two working and one going back. Then #4 arrived and that one had spastic fits. It powered on, the display went crazy and that was about all. So now another one has to go back and orders placed for two more. In total I purchased six thermostats and to be totally honest, of those two were brand new and four were amazon bargain basements. But it was one brand new one that was DOA, and one bargain basement that went haywire. And two in total that had no hardware. And in case you forgot about customer support, they did finally respond almost three weeks later and told me what type of screw I needed to go buy. I could tell them what to do with that screw but I've got better things to do with my time. The moral of my story, if you get one that works you are golden. I just hope they stay working. They do have a 1 year warranty but make sure you save the box, I have a feeling that's their loophole.

I've not had this installed all that long, but the installation was straightforward, and it's working as expected. It's replacing a similar product, from a different manufacturer, that did not make it through it's third Winter of use [and only came with a 1 yr. warranty]. So far, I'm pleased. If it lasts five Winters, I'll really be pleased. One thing I do want to say: there were some reviews complaining about how difficult it was to set up and program this thermostat. If the least thing you do with any product is read the Instructions, you might have a bit of trouble with this. However, if you could read "Jack And The Beanstalk" to you child, and understood the story, read the instruction sheet and you can program the thermostat in 10 min. or less.

Easy to install, but instructions not the greatest. Worth buying to help reduce heating bills by automatically controlling heat settings.

Installation was very simple. The programing instructions are a bit difficult at first and the screen is a bit small (for older eyes). Apart from these two minor observations I would highly recommend this device as a first rate replacement for a "dumb thermostat"

This programmable thermostat is amazing and works so well with baseboard heaters and easy to install

Holds set point temperature very precisely, cycle time seems short when really cold outside but that is because of its precision in holding the set point, cycle time gets longer as the outside temperature gets warmer because the inside temperature does not drop below set point as fast. I also like the Auto function which allows you to set it to stop and start the electric wall heaters at certain set times when you are sleeping or away.