Yesterday morning Matt the Air-conditioning Tech called to discuss the thermostat issue. By then I had finally managed to figure out the trick of programming the thing, evidently quite the trick, since one of the instructions he gave me over the phone was wrong. If an expert can’t work it, I don’t feel like such a moron taking months to master its “simple” instructions.
Matt said the classic round Honeywell thermostat is no longer being made: mercury. He speculated that before replacing the programmable number with another digital thermostat, it might be worth it to experiment with jacking up the temperature further during the day or simply turning the system off until the house starts to get uncomfortable. That mimics what I used to do with the old thermostat: I would turn it off manually the first thing in the morning and leave it off till I couldn’t stand the heat any more, or, on workdays, until I got home from the office.
Hilariously, Matt suggested one way to shut the fancy thermostat off: press the “Hold” button. He believed that would turn it off until the button was pressed again.
N-n-o. What that does is say to the system “hold the temperature at the figure that’s now showing on your display, no matter what the programming says.” So, if your system is set at 80 degrees from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., the thermostat reads 78 (meaning it registers the temperature at 78 degrees), and you press “Hold,” the device will keep the temp at 78 degrees. Should you notice this fluke and press “Hold” again to toggle that function off, the thermostat will go back to maintaining the temp at 80.
It now looks like the issues are these:
• The thermostat Matt installed isn’t really a model designed for heat pumps, even though he insists it’s perfectly OK with my system.
• It’s apparently more sensitive than the old round Honeywell number. The formerly oven-like bedrooms have been, it must be admitted, suspiciously balmy. To get them that way, the thermostat runs the unit longer than the old one did.
• Eighty degrees is too cool. I need to set it for about 82 in the daytime and then leave the system turned off until it gets unbearable inside the house. That evidently saves more power than programmed setbacks.
Mercifully, just now we’re having a cold spell. When I got up at 5:00 this morning, it was a fantastic 70 degrees outside, after a night that allowed me to leave the AC off and the window locked in its no-burglar-can-squeeze-through open position. Today is supposed to be cool—only about 90—followed by another 70-degree night. w00t!
Honeywell DOES still make the classic round thermostat (though it might not be made with mercury any longer). I work in a plumbing/heating/HVAC distribution warehouse. We carry pretty much the full line of Honeywell products in stock, including two or three different variations on the old round thermostat.