This is a fantastic thermostat, and at time of purchase it was the only one with a high enough wattage rating for our application. It's been installed for over a year and has survived one cold winter and a cold fall so far, keeping the temperature in our living/dining/kitchen area very stable. The thermostat is driving 2 in-wall Cadet fan-forced heaters that warm about 500 square feet. We like how the thermostat scales the electricity to the temperature, so if it's very cold, it will send more power to the heaters. You can even hear a slight difference in the fan speeds when they're running full power. The unit itself gets quite warm during operation, particularly if the heaters are working hard--according to the manual this is normal.
The advertised timing cycle is somewhat misleading--it doesn't turn the heaters on every 15 minutes, rather they come on about every 3-4 minutes in cold weather, and the running frequency is apparently recalculated every 15 minutes based on how quickly the room is heating. This sounds annoying--it was at first, and it took us about 2 weeks to get used to the fans coming on more frequently. But, once the house temperature stabilizes, the heaters will only stay on for 30-60 seconds or so (per cycle), and we really like that because you don't get these huge spikes and drops in temperature. The thermostat itself doesn't click at all. It's completely silent--so if you had baseboard heaters, the cycling would likely go unnoticed, unless your lights dim.
The programming features are nice, too. You can set it to warm up the house just before you get out of bed--fantastic if you have trouble waking up in cold weather--and you can set it to dial back at bedtime, or when you're away for work. There are only 2 temperature settings (sun and moon) but a total of 4 time periods per day, and these can be different every day of the week, so there's lots of programming flexibility. There's a vacation mode, too, which we've used occasionally.
In theory, it can save power. In practice, we scale back at night (64 to protect the pipes if it freezes) but we also really like waking up to a warm house in the morning, and heating the house fully at this hour is not efficient. We haven't noticed a significant change to our power bill.
Pros: Works well, very easy to install (shut off the breaker first!), flexible programming, keeps program and time through short power outages, warm house in the morning!
Cons: Somewhat expensive, cycles heaters frequently (which you'll eventually get used to), no backlit display, & hasn't significantly influenced our power bill.
Other Thoughts: Hidden dip switches under the panel may need adjusting for fan forced heaters, and/or 12 hour time format--save yourself some time and check these before you screw it into the wall :)
Bottom line: If you're considering a line-voltage thermostat, this is the one to get.Get more detail about
Aube by Honeywell TH106/U Electric Heating 7-Day Programmable Thermostat.
