Toadfrogs

Hot? Cold? Warm? Just Right?

A lot of Wade’s projects at work seem unrelated to Home Depot power tools. One of his next projects at work is thermostats. I think the idea is to make them more user-friendly. To get started, the research people wanted to watch normal people buy and install a thermostat. Somehow Wade and I qualified as normal people. Wade’s coworkers wanted to observe us buying and installing a new thermostat. We came home with a seven day touch screen programmable thermostat and an old school one for the heat pump upstairs. Wade did the installing and programming and decided the touch screen one was way too complicated. There is another one on order for us to try. At least the new ones are pretty on the wall.

  1. never use the fancy ones. My brother installs a/c’s for a living for the past 20yrs. In my house he insisted I use the most basic thermostat they make. He says the fancy ones will break down every time and they only sell them to suckers. I set mine once and never touched it again. Also who is doing your a/c. See if you can put in a second return air filter. There is a punch out on the side of your air handler that alows it. The thermostat is located 5ft from the filter. The air in your house is pulled to the filter and goes right by the thermostat. That gives off a false reading of the entire house. Thats why theres always a room thats too cold or too hot. If you put in a second return on the other side of the house than you put the thermostat in the middle of the house. Then the whole house stays the same temp. Trust me this makes a world of difference. When the building inspector insepected my house she said it was the best installation of an a/c in a house she had ever seen . Nows the time to do in while you are fixing it up. If wade has a question tell him to contact me its easy to do. If you have 2 themostats , do you have 2 air conditioners.

  2. OK, so if they consider you and Wade as the ‘normal’ consumer, what sort of crazy products should we see hit the market in the near future? Maybe one that projects re-runs of Buffy and doles out Rollo’s each morning?
    -J

  3. Scott – that sounds like very good advice. I am sending it on to Wade. As for the fancy thermostats, after even trying to install and program I can see why they are nothing but troube.
    Jamie – If there is a thermostat that doles out Rolos each morning, I want to be first in line!

Leave a Reply