Thermostat screw up

[Ed Pawlowski]

My thermostat for the AC/heat pump is a bit more complex than the Honeywell, etc for heat only. You have to select some equipment in the settings that I've never had to touch since the house was new.

This morning, there was a brief power outage, just a minute or so. I happened to see the temperature setting was incorrect so I reset it and forgot about it. As the day wore on, the temperature went up and finally hit the set point to kick on the AC. I heard it go on, but after a few minutes, it was putting out hot air. Played with the touch screen, no go.

I called my son and got the name of an AC guy that lives in our community. I called him, told him the problem and he walked me through the setup menu and said it takes about 10 minutes to reset. Sure enough, it worked.

This is a guy that never heard of me but he helped get me going and did not ask for any payment. So, I scheduled the annual cleaning and checkup. He will be my new service guy.

[danny burstein]

[snip]

One way I handle these "good guy/no charge" cases is ask them if there's a charity they like. If they don't have a quick answer, I ask if they'd be ok if I gave some extra money to a foodbank in their area. (If it's a techie I'll suggest the EFF...)

[invalid unparseable]

I have a Honeywell with new heat pump but still cold here and will be of interest to change in the summer.

On a very cold day we had a two day power failure that dropped temp inside by nearly twenty degrees. Wife was concerned when power returned and it was not working immediately but I told her to wait awhile and it came back to normal.

Might also mention with time change my smart watch got decoupled from phone and would not change. First I updated the phone ap which called for turning off power saving option on phone but that did not work. Messing around I deleted the phone ap and reinstalled it and coupled phone and it is now OK. Spent about an hour. All today's computerized crap can even befuddle those of us that think we are savvy.

[Ed P]

I have UPS backups for the cable boxes and they can also charge a phone. You won't get two days from them though.

We rely on electricity now, far more than 20 years ago.

[invalid unparseable]

People are to lazy to read the instruction manual thoroughly.

[Retirednoguilt]

Instruction manuals are too often written by the engineers who designed the item. They seem insufficiently tested by a panel of representative consumers. Even worse, some seem to be written by people whose first language is not English and their English is poor. Of course, the trend today is to sell a complicated piece of expensive home use technology and to save a few cents, the manual has been replaced by a small sheet of paper with the URL of the on-line manual which is so hyperlinked that it can't be printed as a single document. Last year I bought a name brand 4K HD tv for >$1K. No manual included, just a URL. Went on-line. Almost useless. Best source of information - a conventional web search for the feature I want to access. What used to take about an hour to adjust to my preferences took a complete afternoon.

[micky]

And batteries. When I grew up the only use for batteries, was the car battery and flashlights.

[invalid unparseable]

The instruction manual might be embedded in the onscreen menu of your name brand 4K HD TV. Try to look for it.

[invalid unparseable]

I have a generator that could handle our oil furnace but not the heat pump.

Just talking to my wife about getting a UPS for the modem as a power glitch this morning knocked out phone for a few minutes while it reset.

[danny burstein]

[snip]

Eyup. I've got a bunch of old, battery marginal, UPS'es for just those purposes. They give me a few minutes on the lowish power cable modem and some similars.. but that's wnough to cover the half second hiccups when The Grid 20 miles away cuts in and out...

[Ed P]

Yes, and the cable box takes forever to reboot after a few second hiccup. Not life changing, but annoying

[Clare Snyder]

And the doorbell - and all those cheap japanese toys

[Retirednoguilt]

[snip]

It claims it is, but all that's there is the hyperlink to the on-line manual. I think they believe that most customers are too lazy or too ignorant to fuss with adjustments and satisfied using whatever default settings exist when the TV is first booted up. Of course, just give the remote to any kid under the age of 14 and they'll navigate immediately to just what you want to adjust. Doesn't matter if it's a TV, smart phone, etc.

[micky]

Our doorbell was connected to a doorbell transformer, and as to toys, my parents didn't buy me such toys. They required batteries.

[invalid unparseable]

micky wrote on 3/11/2024 5:54 PM:

China has made alkaline batteries affordable for us now, but I remember in the 1990s alkaline batteries (AA, AAA, C, D) were like luxury items. Radio Shack rolled out a gimmick called "Battery Club". If you joined the club for a fee, then you could buy certain number of batteries at a discounted price every month. Today such idea is laughable. Batteries are so cheap now at Amazon and Home Dept, who the hell would join a "Battery Club"?

[Ed P]

Would be good for some. A woman I worked with was single and she use a lot of C cell batteries.

[micky]

I don't know for sure if I was i nthe Battery Club, but I had a battery card for no charge and they gave me a free battery every time I went in there, up to once a month iirc.

[invalid unparseable]

micky wrote on 3/11/2024 9:17 PM:

It's either I remembered it wrong, or it was a different deal in Canada. Radio Shack is no more in Canada. "The Source" doesn't sell resistors and capacitors like Radio Shack did. I bought quite many things from Radio Shack back in the days. I remembered every electronic gadget they sold came with circuit diagram (schematic). I was into building my own amplifier, radio receiver and transmitter back then. When I open up an amplifier or a radio I can identifier all the different stages on the printed circuit board. I think the reason Radio Shack included circuit diagrams for their products was for electronic hobbyists like me.

[micky]

Now Radio Shack continues to make airplanes, In fact it made the Enola Gay, that was used to bomb Hiroshima.

[micky]