Honeywell FocusPro 5000 Thermostat Installation

Checking voltage on a digital thermstat

Manuals can be kind of confusing. Hopefully this will clear up some of that confusion as be covering the Honeywell FocusPro 5000 thermostat installation today. The model in these pictures and post are TH5220D. You don’t need to have technical HVAC training to complete the installation process, but you should be handy and have an idea about how air conditioning and heating systems work. The thermostat needs low voltage to work. Low voltage has many meanings, but when it comes to HVAC, it’s normally 24 volts. The 24 volts tells the contactors and relays to open and close. The contactors and relays open and close the circuit for higher voltages to pass through.

The Honeywell FocusPro 5000 is a non-programmable thermostat. It will work for single and dual convention heating and cooling hvac systems, it will also work with heat pumps. So let’s dive into the Honeywell FocusPro 5000 Thermostat Installation process.

Installing Your Honeywell FocusPro 5000 Thermostat

AC repairman checking voltage on a digital thermostatAlthough we are only dealing with 24 volts, we still need to secure the power. Turn the power to your hvac system by simply turning the breaker to the off position. If you don’t know how to do this, just run your hvac system (if it’s working) and flip the designated breaker. Sometimes electricians are bad and don’t label the panel though. If you can here the fan running, and you flip the breaker and the unit immediately shuts off, there’s a good chance you secured the power.

But when we are dealing with electricity we don’t go by “there’s a good chance”. Pull the old thermostat cover off and test the voltage from the red wire to ground. Or you can test the red wire to green, common, yellow, if you are absolutely sure the unit is not running. If you don’t have the common wire to begin with there is not too much that can go wrong, but if the red wire is powered and touches the common wire or any grounded metal, it will probably blow up your transformer.

Hvac Tech and Honeywell FocusPro 5000 thermostat installationNow that your power to the air handler is turned off, you can begin removing the old thermostat. Most of the time this will just be a couple of screws you need to unscrew, simple right? Depending on your old thermostat, you will need a small flat head screwdriver. Remove all the connections and remove the thermostat.

Thermostat wire is brittle. It carries low voltage and doesn’t require lots of insulation. This sucks because in older homes and such when the wire is exposed out of it’s main insulation it breaks down easily and there may be some exposed wiring. Clean that up if this is the case. If you have enough play in the thermostat wire strip it back and cut fresh new wire. Cut back about a 1/4″.

Pull the wires through the center and connect them in the assigned place. For this demonstration I am performing a Honeywell FocusPro 5000 thermostat installation on a 1 heat 1 cool Trane heat pump. So the general rule is Y should be yellow which controls compressor. Red is your main 24 volt power. The jumper between R and Rc needs to stay unless your system has 2 transformers. Green is going to be fan. In this situation Blue is going to O/B because that is my reversing valve wire. I am using Brown as Common because that’s what is hooked up to the common side of the transformer in the system I am working on, yours will more than likely be different.

The most important part about this is knowing if your system has 1 or 2 transformers. The reason is if your system only has one and that little metal jumper is not between R and RC, then the thermostat won’t work correctly. If that metal piece gets lost or comes out and you can find it, just strip about a inch of thermostat wire off and make a new jumper, no biggie.

Honeywell FocusPro 5000 thermostat installation of the face coverTighten all the screws and make sure there are no loose connections. Next step in the Honeywell FocusPro 5000 Thermostat Installation is to put the faceplate on. There are two holes on the bottom of the thermostat, insert at an angle bottom first and push the top to the wall until you feel it ‘click’. Go to your breaker box and turn the power on to the Hvac unit. By default the Honeywell FocusPro 5000 non-programmable thermostat has a 5 minute compressor delay on it. I just turn the fan to the ‘on’ position and listen for the fan to kick on. This tells me that the thermostat is communicating with the air handler. But the Honeywell FocusPro 5000 thermostat installation is not complete just yet.

Just because the thermostat is advertised and labeled as ‘non programmable’, you still have to program it initially to get it to work with your type of central heating and cooling system. Your going to want to look at your Honeywell FocusPro 5000 thermostat installation manual to change the settings accordingly. If you lost your installation manual just go here and refer to page 5.

How to enter Program mode in the Honeywell FocusPro 5000 thermostat installation process. Easy, hold down the fan button and the up arrow at the same time until the screen changes. I made a simple Youtube video if your interested in watching how it’s done.

If you don’t have the common wire hooked up from the air handler then the thermostat will need 2 AA batteries to operate. The batteries can be replaced on the side compartment pretty easily and does not require securing the power to the unit.

Hvac Technician adjusting temperature on a Honeywell FocusPro 5000 digital thermostat

That’s all there is to the Honeywell FocusPro 5000 thermostat installation process. Remember that it comes with a 5 minute compressor delay. You can change this in the program mode but would not recommend it. The 5 minute compressor delay will prevent the compressor from short cycling and will also give the refrigerant time to stabilize.

Honeywell FocusPro 5000 non-programmable Thermostat Review

Honeywell FocusPro 5000 non-programmable Thermostat

At the place I work I have installed more than 100 of these over the last 2 years. Out of those 100 I’ve only had one fail, and it was a dud straight out of the box. That is a pretty good ratio in my opinion. Honeywell makes great products and their support is awesome. For complete literature on the Honeywell FocusPro 5000 please refer to their website here. The buttons are soft, it has a back light, and it looks very modern and slick in my opinion. Besides the initial programming of thermostat, (which is simple after installing over a 100), the Honeywell FocusPro 5000 thermostat installation is very simple in my opinion.

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