2 days ago

Emerson / White-Rodgers Thermostat P210 turning on too frequently? Here's the fix:

If your Emerson/White-Rodgers P210 thermostat is turning on too frequently, don't fret – it could simply be that you have the Fast Heating Cycle Rate turned on in the thermostat's configuration settings! Sure, frequent furnace cycling could be caused by faulty sensor readings, incorrect temperature settings, drafts in the room, a malfunctioning HVAC system, low battery power (if applicable), wiring issues or a problem with the thermostat itself (which are the answers I found when googling it) but thankfully it was none of those things for us – it was simply the default thermostat settings! Read how we fixed our problem below...

We installed a new Emerson / White-Rodgers Thermostat P210 to replace an old 20-year old Lux programmable thermostat, as the old Lux thermostat's button connections weren't responding very well anymore so it was difficult to change the time or day programs – the old thermostat worked, but we just couldn't easily make time adjustments easily. So we finally decided to replace it and found a new Emerson / White-Rodgers Thermostat P210 at our local True Value. We installed it, and it worked right away. For the first couple days, however, we noticed that the furnace was turning on and off very frequently, every 5-10 minutes, and only ran for about 5-10 minutes. While it was very cold outside, this was different than when we experienced with the Lux Thermostat – which would only kick on the furnace every 20-45+ minutes, depending on how cold it was outside. While the new White-Rodgers/Emerson thermostat was keeping the house consistently warm, we were worried it may wear our our furnace faster and use a lot more gas when cycling it on and off so frequently at, it seemed to be coming on up to 6-8 times an hour! We thought that the new Emerson / White-Rodgers Thermostat P210 was defective and was triggering our furnace to turn on too frequently, HOWEVER, after reading the whole manual, we found two default settings that we adjusted that fixed our problem of having the furnace coming on too often.

How to program your Emerson/White-Rodgers P210 thermostat to come on less frequently:

On page 21 of the Emerson/White-Rodgers P210 thermostat directions manual, there are two settings in the Configuration Menu:

# 1: Select FA or SL (Fast or Slow) Heating Cycle Rate – ours was default set at FA (fast), so we changed it to SL (slow) and now the furnace runs way less frequently and stays on longer when it is running. The thermostat now turns on our furnace every 20-30+ minutes instead of every 5-10 minutes as it did in the FA (fast) setting, depending on how cold it is outside and what temperature we have it set on. This is because it has a higher cycle temperature variance allowance, 1.5˚ F instead of just 1˚F on the FA (fast) setting. This means that it won't kick on when it's still at the temperature, where on the FA setting it was kicking on even if we had it set at 68˚ F and the current temperature was at 68˚F. I suppose the FA setting could be said is more "consistent" but the fact that it turns the furnace on and off a lot more frequently to hold it at a steady temperature most certainly causes a lot of extra wear and tear on your furnace and likely consumes more gas. They say that the FA (fast) setting is more commonly used for gas furnaces, whereas the SL (slow) setting was more for hot water/steam systems, however, the SL (slow) setting is better for our gas furnace. You can try both and see what you think. I think having our furnace come on less often is better. The temperature still stays consistent without having to strain the furnace, though it cools off an extra half degree before kicking it on. That's how I like it.

# 2: Turn OFF Energy Management Recovery - This was also set "ON" as the default, and it meant that the system would try to heat up the temperature prior to our programmed times to bring up the temperature before the set time. I am not sure why you would want this, if you want the heat to come on 10 minutes before you get up, then you can just program it this way. This setting makes it come on even earlier than you programmed it, which I think should have been set to "OFF" as the default. Anyway, we turned this off, too – at first we couldn't figure out why the furnace was coming up before our programmed time to increase the temperature, also making us think it was defective, when in fact, it was just this "Energy Management Recovery"that was set "ON" as the default. Now that it's off, the heat kicks on at the exact time we program it to.

Here's the Emerson/White-Rodgers P210 Install Manual PDF:

Adjusting these settings fixed the problem of the Emerson/White-Rodgers P210 thermostat turning our furnace on too frequently. I wanted to share this here as I couldn't find ANY info on this online, and we were thinking it was just defective until we read these configuration setting details in the manual and realized it was setup to run more frequently by default.

While this isn't website design related, it is important since I do my website design work from home! ha! I wanted to share this here to help any other people who may be experiencing the same issue.

This also leads me to my last word of advice: READ THE WHOLE MANUAL! 😂 My husband is always good about this, whereas I, am not so much. But we found this solution to our short-cycling furnace/thermostat issue in the setting configuration.