Thermostats

September 27, 2008

This past weekend I replaced all of our old-school thermostats with brand-new programmable thermostats. This is Something-You-Can-Do-Yourself. (But first turn off the power to the furnace or boiler). There were several surprising things that I learned about thermostats:

- There was a humongous blob of mercury in the Old Thermostats that really scared me (I tend to drop things)

- The new thermostats, even if I never end up programming them, and even with their constant digital readout, are a lot better looking than the old thermostats; I would’ve thought it’d be the opposite, considering how I like that retro look

Actually that’s only two surprising things.

So, step two is to wait for a cold day, and then (with the thermostats set at a constant 68 degrees) chart hourly temperatures at each thermostat all day long. If you know me you just shrugged when you read that. The thrill is in the charting and tracking, and the puzzle! The puzzle is: how do you program a programmable thermostat if you have both radiant heat and some solar heating.

Posted by marci | Filed Under green design, interior design