Thermostat installation (Drake)

One of the major items that needs to be resolved with the house is the heating/insulation.   We have a gas furnace that heats the house through a baseboard induction system.   That we love.   But the house is not insulated, something we are not as excited about.   At any rate, in an effort to update the house and save some money, we purchased a new thermostat to replace this beautiful relic:

So, I read the instillation manuel, gathered the tools and prepared for the installation, figuring it would be a breeze.   Well, not exactly.   The manuel had a lengthy discussion of the process of finding the labels on the wiring so they could be correctly placed in the new thermostat.  Well, our old one, as seen below, lacked labels, either or the unit or the wires.

Uh oh.  Not good.  I started rooting around the furnace, following wires into different places.   Then I went to the internet and starting researching.   I figured this would be a quick find, but it took a good 20 minutes of internet time and 20 more minutes of researching the wiring in the basement to come to some conclusion, which was that one wire was the R and one was the W.  Here is the fun part.   According to the internet, it didn't matter which one was which.   Armed with this confidence inspiring info (No, really, nothing will happen to heater if you wire the thermostat backwards), I set forth to replacing our dinosaur with this spiffy modern one:

So, really the thermostat was very easy to install.  The only tip that I ran across that bears reprinting is the little trick of wrapping the wires a spare pencil to ensure that they don't slip back into the wall.

 

And here it is in all its eco-friendly, budget conscious, energy efficient glory:

Ahh, isn't that nice.