I picked up a Honeywell VisionPro 8000 on ebay for $98 this week. I have been looking for a new thermostat for quite a while now to solve a difficult heating situation at our condo: The downstairs is always about 10 degrees cooler than the upstairs. If we run the fan continuously, the temperature will eventually normalize between the upstairs and downstairs. The problem is that running the fan all the time is annoying (loud, especially when trying to sleep) and costly.

Almost every thermostat on the market has a physical fan switch, which means that it isn't very flexible (either "always on" or "auto"). What I've been looking for, and what the VisionPro 8000 has, is a programmable fan. The VisionPro actually goes one step further and has a "circulate" mode where it randomly runs the fan 35% of the time. So now the fan is programmed for "always on" from 6-8am, "circulate" from 8am-6pm, "always on" again from 6pm-11pm, and then "auto" from 11pm-6am (which means it will only run if the heater turns on).

It was really hard to find this thermostat. Home Depot and other retail stores don't even carry it yet (only available to "installers"... or people with Internet connections). Once I knew what I wanted, ebay was far and away the best price around.

So far so good... our downstairs is warmer!