Interesting concept, but a moot point, if he's replacing it


"John Gilmer" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
oups.com...
I have line volt thermostats for each of the baseboard heaters in my
condo. The thermostats are old analog and ugly. I want to replace
them with electronic thermostats. I pulled one of the old thermostats
off the wall to check the wiring. A single pole should have 2 wires,
while a double pole has four. My thermostats have 3 wires plus a
ground. One red, one black and one white. On the electrical panel,
there are 2 breakers for the heat, so I'm assuming it's 240 volts to
the heaters. I've looked for hours on the web, and I can't find an
example wiring diagram that matches what I have. Any ideas or
suggestions? The mini wiring diagram on the old thermostat shows it to
be a single pole with one wire to line and one to load. No mention of
the third wire at all, making it rather useless.

This is a complete WAG but ....

Your thermostat may have some kind of "heat antitipater" circuit built in.

The white wire may provide the return path to power going to an internal
heater. If so, the thermostat should have a definite voltage rating
(120
or 240) since the resistor would get 4 times the power at the higher
voltage.

The easy way to check this is to label the wires, remove the thermostat
and
do some checking with a VOM. If my WAG is correct then at a very high
setting the Red and Black should be connected (zero ohms) and the white
wire
would have something on the order of 40 k ohms to either red or black. At
a
very low setting the red & black will be disconnected from each other but
there will will be the 40k reading between white and ONE of the two
colored
wires. The colored wire that's always connected to the resistor is the
LOAD side.