This is a quick video to show what thermostat we chose to purchase to control our Suburban heater after we installed our Houghton/RecPro AC unit.
Before, our Dometic thermostat controlled both the Dometic air conditioner and Suburban heater functions. Our new AC unit has a separate remote. After installing it, our Dometic thermostat gave an error code.
If you upgrade your AC unit to the RecPro (Houghton) AC, you cannot use the original Dometic thermostat. The “brain” of it is actually in the main Dometic AC housing. So, you need a different plan.
I wanted to have a digital readout and not those old mechanical thermostats (at least make it look like we’re in the ’90s). Hope this helps if you’re looking as well!
WHAT WE BOUGHT FOR THIS FIX 🛻⛺🛠:
Splice Blocks – I bought these from Home Depot but they had a 10-pack (not this 100-pack) but can’t find it online. Best bet is to ask your local hardware store. These just seemed to work easier than butt splices for us.
Heater-Only Thermostat – There are not a ton of options to choose from, so this is the one we went with. Quick tip: If you’re trying to get the backlight on, hold the up and down arrows!
This new thermostat is simply behaving as a switch to turn on and off the thermostat based upon the temp it reads.
Lucky for us, all it needs is power. You get that by simply splicing into the previous power connections at the AC housing.
Thermostat Wiring at the AC Unit
Once you have already removed the old AC unit, you will have some wires you didn’t need for the Hougton AC.
The wires in the brown casing route to where your old thermostat was located (assuming you have a Host camper – yours might vary). The speaker wire is your power and ground.
Connect one side of the speaker wire to the red wire (in the thermostat brown casing) and connect the other side of the speaker wire to the white wire (in the brown casing). Since this portion of the thermostat is just a glorified switch, which one you chose won’t matter, so don’t sweat it!
Wiring at the Thermostat Controller
At the thermostat, you then just:
- Connect the power (Red) to the RH post and
- Connect the ground Ground (White) to the W post
Hope this helps get you going!
Our Camping Locations⛺🗺️📌
We’re sharing our camping and other locations on iOverlander (boondocking, etc.) and Campendium (established campsites).
✅Penpac RV – not the typical place to stay overnight, but it’s saving us a TON of money. I started looking at long-term hotels and Air BnBs in the area and we’d be paying well into the thousands for the amount of time we’re likely to spend here. Not the prettiest of places, but the price is right! And hopefully we’ll get started on the camper shortly!
Our Journey Map⛺🥾🗺️📌
We also have a currently free map on Google with all of the places we’ve stayed along with the related video and links to more detailed reviews on iOverlander , Campendium and Google Maps.
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