A friend moved to an apt and gave me his high speed fancy Thermostat honeywell rth6580wf .  I tried to hook it up and i can get it to have power but thats where it pretty much stops.

This is my old thermostat/wires;


And this is what the new 1 has;


This new setup, It is not battery operated, so it says i need a "C" wire.  My old setup doesnt have 1, but from what I read on the website, I can put the "G" wire into the "C" slot and it powers it, which it did.  
I hooked up;
the old "RH" to the new "R"
the old "Y"(yellow wire)  to the new "Y"
the old "O" to the new "O/B" (which is also the "W" ??? )
the old "Y" (white wire) to the new "W" and the new "Y" (which is also the "O/B" ??? )

So i am sure the "screw up" has to be something with the Orange wire and White wire.

The only other thing i noticed is there is a copper wire tucked into the wall, i am guessing thats just a ground.  Is that suppose to be plugged in somewhere or just keep it tucked in the wall?

EDIT:  forgot to add, I dont have anything Gas, its all electric.  Conventional air system.


EDIT 2:  After looking at it some more, I believe I may have to put the white wire in the "Y" and the "W" /  "AUX/E" and the "O" into the "W" (which i still dont get is also the O/B"), this seem right?

I did the same one on my system. Google is your friend.  I cannot remember how I found it, but the answer is out there.  Much confusion.  There is supposed to be a jumper some where.
I have the printout at home in my garage.  If you don't get an answer before this evening, I'll post up my findings.

First, is your HVAC a conventional system or a heat pump system? When you look at the terminal blocks, the top lettering is for conventional systems, and the lower lettering is for heat pump systems.

I have not seen anywhere that says putting the G wire in C will work. Look at this chart of thermostat wire colors. G is used to power your air handler's fan motor.

The User Guide for your thermostate also says:

Turn the power off at the breaker.  Go and open your furnace, find the low voltage control wire connections, and see what is connected there.  Your old thermostat looks like a cluster fuck.  If you have a single stage gas furnace and a single stage air conditioner you will need to connect at the thermostat and the furnace wires for R - 24 volt hot (red), C - 24 volt common (blue), W - call for heat (white), G - call for fan (green), and Y - call for compressor (yellow).  Your don't have to use those colors, but those are the colors I typically use if they're available.  On the new Honeywell thermostat you will connect the wires based on the upper terminal descriptions.  You will also need to go through the installer programming on the thermostat and make sure it is configured correctly.

Yeah, I think this is about when I gave up.  I googled and googled and youtubed that I think i just royally confused myself.

I installed 2 Honeywell thermostats a few years and had a similar issue, I had to hook up the C wire. It was present in the wiring, but not hooked up on the air handler, it worked once I hooked it up. I'll check to see if I still have my old pics.

ETA: Found my old thread in the archive

https://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_139/1377159_Thermostat_wiring_help.html

thanks for the link.  I will prob try in the morning after i get home from work.

I have a bare / copper wire that is in the wall just tucked back in.  I figured this was the ground wire of some sort. i dont have any other wires tucked inside.

On the chart I linked to, it lists C as a black wire, but also says that's the 24VAC Common wire. Common is another name for ground, hence why you may have a bare copper wire.

This also explains why attaching G to C worked, because G is probably grounded.

I can't use youtube at work, but Honeywell has a video on moving the g wire to the c wire and installing a jumper from g to y I think.

with that setup, you won't be able to turn just the fan on, however the fan will work when it is heating or cooling

go to wifithermostat.com/video I think is where its at.

the video is on this page

#5

RH to RC.
Did you check for control transformers (120 VAC to 24 VAC) in both heater unit and A/C condensor?
It is often effective to remove one of them and use the RH-RC jumper than muck around.
The change to center tap on the 24 VAC side (instead of one end of the 24 VAC being ground) causes all sorts of 'funny' things to happen when mixing old and new equipment.