A Smart Thermostat for the Dining Room

After installing the living room smart thermostat, and seeing how well it worked, and how cool it was to access it from our phones, we bought 2 more Geo Lux [#affiliate]:  one for the dining room/girl cave zone and one for the bedroom zone.  At just under $100/each, they’re very affordable!  We now have smart thermostats in all 3 of our condo’s heating zones.

The wire that comes with the Lux is only 15′ long, so when I first installed it we decided to run the wire along the floor to the nearest outlet [10′ away] while Jim ordered a longer one.  I removed the old thermostat & wired the new one to the wall.  The living room thermostat had red and white wires, but this one had black and white wires.  No problem:  in this situation, black = red.  I inserted the black wire into slot RH, which stands for “red, hot” [versus RC, which stands for “red, cool” and is used for systems with both heating & cooling], and the white into slot W1, which stands for “white, one”:

      

Then snapped the little black plastic cover over the wires, and the thermostat front onto the base, and that’s that!  I also patched the wall with Spackle, as you can see:

       

We plugged the USB cable into the bottom, ran it over to the outlet, and waited for the longer wire to arrive by mail.

When the longer wire arrived, I remove the thermostat from the wall and cut a hole with my drywall saw so I could better access to the space behind the thermostat:

      

I used Jim’s laser level [SO HANDY – shown in top right photo] so I would know where to drill the bottom hole for the USB cable.  I used a 5/8″ spade bit, which made a big enough hole to fish out the nut:

      

Then used the string and nut trick again to thread the USB cable through the wall.  I used a Sharpie to mark the string so I’d know when the nut was level with the bottom hole in the wall, and could fish it out with the magnet tool, then I tied it off on the wires so I could sit on the floor fishing for the string:

      

Once I caught the string and nut with the magnet tool I removed the nut and tied the cable to the string.  Then pulled the string back up and the USB cable out the hole at the top [I decided to use one large nut this time versus 3 smaller ones like with the living room install]:

       

I drilled a hole under the thermostat for the USB cable, using a 1/2″ spade bit:

Then used cable clips to run the new wire along the baseboard, up and over the door into the living room, and over to the outlet.  Unfortunately it was JUST a tiny bit too short!  At 26′ we were sure it would reach:

       

NOPE!!!

So we lived with it like that for a few days while Jim ordered a 3rd wire!  30′ this time – double the length of the original cable.

Thankfully that one was plenty long enough and I could call the project done [my DIY key rack is above it, and our Hogwarts banner is below]:

Here are some updated pictures of our dining room.  We had some friends over for dinner Saturday night so our table was blissfully cleared off, versus being piled tall with stuff, which is it’s usual state.  Darwin helped me get the perfect pictures:

       

You can see the thermostat on the right side, and my Christmas garlands in the doorway between the dining room and living room:

I also have Christmas glass garlands [from Pottery Barn] strung in the doorway between the living room and downstairs hall – Winston’s cage is on the right.  I also set up a few holiday decorations in the front hall on the windowsill I built last year:

       

The USB cable now discreetly plugs into the power strip attached to the wall behind the orchid cactus – all you can see is it’s blue light: