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So I bought a Nest Thermostat off amazon, I read they used batteries and what not and after I purchased it I was looking at the description on amazon and it said it was a built in rechargeable battery (face palm) I have a 4 wire I don't have a common, I was wondering if it's safe or reasonable that,

I have a light switch basically a foot below the thermostat so I was going to install a 40va step down transformer to power the thermostat using the R as the hot from the transformer and the C as the neutral from the transformer, does this pose any issues? I googled it but people seem 50/50 some say it's great some say it's not a good fix and to pull a new wire, but pulling a new wire at this point in time is not an option. If I left the R straight from the furnace and just used the neutral from the transformer would that be worse than setup 1? (Using the hot and neutral from the transformer) as far as I know all the thermostat does is use that power to close and open contacts in the thermostat so it shouldn't matter if the tstat is powered off a transformer, should it?

Sorry for poor phrasing wrote on phone.

Tester101
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Datsik
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  • Can you tell us the make and model so we can look it up? Perhaps the rechargeable batteries can be replaced with regular batteries. – shirlock homes Mar 06 '14 at 12:19
  • There's almost no way to make this look good, and doing it right is more difficult than you might think. If you don't care what it looks like, I say go for it. Just make sure you follow all applicable local codes and standards. – Tester101 Mar 06 '14 at 13:04
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    The Nest batteries are charged by the power from the furmace control system, generally 24V. Nest has a free service that will check wire compatibility and walk you through the wire connection. – bib Mar 06 '14 at 13:27
  • Have you contacted Nest customer service? – Tester101 Mar 06 '14 at 15:16

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