Thermostat Installation and Replacement in Ypsilanti and Southeast Michigan

A thermostat is the cheapest part of an HVAC system and the one that causes the most unnecessary service calls. About a third of the no-heat and no-cooling calls we take in Washtenaw County in the week after a holiday weekend trace back to a thermostat somebody installed from a box, with the wires landed by color instead of by function, or without the common wire the new unit needs to stay powered. The furnace is fine. The air conditioner is fine. The thermostat is browning out and dropping the call, or it is configured for a heat pump when the house has a gas furnace, or the installer landed the fan wire on the terminal that powers the compressor. We install thermostats correctly the first time, and we fix the ones that were not.

Most of what we install now is smart: Ecobee, Google Nest, Honeywell Home and Emerson Sensi. All four work well on the gas furnace and split-system AC that most Southeast Michigan houses have, and all four qualify for DTE Energy's smart thermostat rebate on the electric side, which usually brings the equipment cost down meaningfully. The catch is power. A smart thermostat needs a continuous 24-volt supply through a common wire, and the four-conductor cable that was pulled through a 1960s ranch in Garden City or a 1990s colonial in Canton often does not have a spare conductor. We solve that with a proper C-wire from the furnace, a spare conductor reassigned at the control board, or a power extender kit when pulling a wire is not practical, and we do not rely on the power-stealing mode that causes the furnace to click and the Wi-Fi to drop.

Configuration is the half of the job people skip. A two-stage furnace needs its second stage wired and enabled so it actually runs on high on the coldest nights; a variable-speed system needs its dehumidification call set up or the house will be clammy in July; a heat pump with a gas furnace backup needs the balance point and changeover temperature set for a Michigan winter or it will run the heat pump into the ground at 10 degrees. We set the equipment type, the staging, the cycle rates, the humidifier integration where there is one, and the schedule and geofencing that make a smart thermostat worth owning, and we walk you through the app before we leave.

We also replace plain thermostats for people who do not want anything connected to the internet. A good non-programmable digital thermostat is more accurate than the mercury-bulb round unit still on the wall in a lot of 1950s Westland ranches, and a programmable one with a sensible schedule saves gas without any app at all. The right thermostat is the one that fits your system and the way you live, and that is the conversation we have on the visit.

A thermostat install is a flat-rate job, usually under an hour when the wiring is sound. When it turns out the thermostat was never the problem, which happens, the dispatch fee covers the diagnosis and we fix whatever actually is, from a blown low-voltage fuse to a shorted wire in the basement.