Digital Thermostat Quit Working

[whit3rd]

On Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at 1:30:22 AM UTC-8, Look165 wrote:
> Mercury is prohibited because of environmental considerations.

Prohibited some places, for some uses. I can still buy mercury switches.

 

olds...@tubes.com wrote: "never knew those thermostats would completely fail to start the
furnace when the batteries went dead. Apparently so. "


They don't.

Thermostats completely fail to heat because electrical
supply to the thermostat has failed, and the batteries,
which are for back up of clock and program settings,
finally expired.

 

On Tue, 7 Feb 2017 21:29:16 -0000 (UTC), Jerry Peters
<jerry@example.invalid> wrote:

(I still think the best Thermostats made were those old round Honeywell
ones with the mercury switch. They lasted decades and never needed any
repairs. So much for so called "improved technology").


My programmable thermostat has an auxiliary thermoswitch that will
turn on the furnace if the temperature goes below around 50F or so,
even if the battery fails or the thermostat itself fails. It's a
Robertshaw, about 20 or so years old. The thermoswitch is clearly
visible on the baseplate assembly. The thermostat itself is removable
from the baseplate so you don't have to stand at it when setting
the program.

I'd expect most decent battery powered thermostats to have a similiar
feature. Otherwise I could see lawsuits against the manufacterers or
the heating contractors when the battery fails and the pipes freeze
and cause extensive water damage.

Maybe mine will turn on at 50deg. (or so). It does not say anything
about that in the PDF manual I downloaded. It's a Honeywell made around
2009. I can easily pop it off the wall and program it.

 

[MOP CAP]

I am an old cranky fart. I don't like most of the excess on modern
items. For a furnace I want a simple
thermostat with millivolt system, no outside power required. That way
when the power goes out
I still can get heat.

CP

 

On Wed, 8 Feb 2017 14:54:37 -0800, MOP CAP <email@domain.com> wrote:

I am an old cranky fart. I don't like most of the excess on modern
items. For a furnace I want a simple
thermostat with millivolt system, no outside power required. That way
when the power goes out
I still can get heat.

CP

I'm with you on the " the excess on modern items". Everything these
days seems to be made as complicated as possible. Thats one of the
reasons I refuse to use any version of Windows newer than XP, and I
still like Win98 the best. I also find these new tv sets really annoy
me. All the old tvs had a channel selector, volume control and power
switch right on the tv. Yes, remote controls are nice, but when I cant
find the remote, I cant even change channel or adjust the volume,
because there are no controls on the tv itself (except a power switch).
Very annoying.

Modern cars are another annoyance. I have only older cars, but even back
in the late 90s they were putting stupid shit on them. I dont want power
windows, they always break and are a fortune to fix. One of my cars used
to lock everytime I got out and slammed the door. It was less than a
week of owning it, that I ended up with the keys in the ignition and the
doors locked. I live in a rural area, I dont need to lock the doors. I
finally found a way to disable them.

Last year I went shopping for an inexpensive car radio/stereo. The car
came with an AM/FM radio, with a CD player. It quit working and I
decided to just replace it with a similar unit. I did like the idea of a
USB port so I can play my MP3 music, but thats all I wanted. Good grief,
all the crap they put on these new car radios is ridiculous. I dont want
whatever that pay-for radio is called, but i dont want it. I dont want
whatever connects to WIFI in the car, my car dont have WIFI. I have
never liked tuners that have SCAN / SEARCH all that crap. I like the
plain old analog tuner, but know they dont make analog tuners anymore,
so I'd have to bite the bullet on that one. I cant begin to even explain
all the nonsense they put on some of them, but I did know that I'd end
up in a car crash if I had to screw with one of them things while
driving. I did finally find one of the cheapest radios came with not
much more than AM/FM radio, CD player, and USB. I found I was able to
operate it in the store (demo unit), without any manual. I knew this was
the one I wanted.

I could go on an on with all the complicated crap we hav to cope with
these days....

Some years ago, I was living in a house that had a programmable
thermostat. That thing could not be bypassed like the one I have now. I
spent hours trying to program that piece of shit. It seemed the more I
tried to program it, the worse it got. Half the time I'd be freezing,
other times it would be so hot I could not handle it. One day I ripped
it off the wall, and replaced it with one of those old round Honeywell
mercury switch ones. Problem solved!

One thing you said, that i dont understand.... I dont know of any
furnace that will work without electricity. The blower fan needs power.
Even if I could rig a car battery to the controls (during a power
outage), that blower needs considerable power. We had a power outage
last winter, that lasted one and a half days. I used a propane "Mister
Heater", which I have for when I go camping. I always keep a full 20lb
propane tank just for that use. That worked fairly well.