I call my hvac guy before I do anything with stats. I put a prodigy tstat into a condo, it was a heat pump so I wired it as such.

The issue I had was that even though it was a traditional pump, it only used emergency heat due to it being in a small condo. I had no way of knowing this, burned up a relay, made a mess.

I'm really not qualified to mess with hvac, if there is a problem I have no way to fix it, and there are so many types of systems out there that I don't know enough to know what I'm doing, only enough to be dangerous.

Then the problem arises if there is a problem, the hvac guy says its not his stat so not his problem. Then add in that there is a touch panel integrated with it, it will blow the hvac guys mind.

My best practice is to have the pro hook up the stat and then communicate with it.