PTACs and Wired Thermostats

[spedprof]

Living in a condo apt. by the ocean in New York State where all units have PTACs. Prefer Friedrich units. All rooms have wired programmable thermostats but of different brands. The latest Thermostat, made by Friedrich, is a pain to to use. As some PTACs are aging, I'm trying to look ahead to the replacement of a unit or two. A few  questions:
1) If wired programmable thermostats are working, any reason to change to Bluetooth models? (Not interested in W-Fi thermostats).
2) Can I use any brand wired Thermostat with a new Friedrich PTAC or is it advisable to use a Friedrich Thermostat?
3) Should any HVAC installer be able to hook up the wired PTAC to the thermostats? (Have had problems in the past) .
Thanks

[Admin]

Some manufacturers make you buy a wiring adapter to use a remote stat.  Some use their own proprietary stat.  It really depends.

The Friedrich manual I looked up lets you use any stat with single stage cooling, 2 stage heating and a B reversing valve terminal, which energizes on cooling.  And depending on whether you want low speed or high speed fan you connect GL or GH to the G on the stat.  I would check before buying though.  Newer models may change.

Any HVAC installer should be able to do this.

The advantage with WIFI stats is you can get alerts if the room is freezing.

[Sergroum]

one thing you need to make sure is the number of wires you've got ran between your ptac and the thermostat


If you only have 2 wires, you are pretty much limited to wifi tstats.

I'd say the moment you have 5 or 6 wires then the number of options become wildly variable.

Any tech should be able to do it.  Friedrich is not using any weird communicating board to tstat systems, so any tstat mentioned above would work. Provided you have the wires for it.