31 thoughts on “Thermostats”

1. The plaque of modern life – too many options, and too much rigamarole to program them.

   When I was young, I would delve into everything any device I had could do. Now, I typically use only a fraction of the features. Oh, for the days of “You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.”

   1. When I was a kid, we didn’t have any of these fancy “therm-o-stats.” We just had a wet rope, and when it froze, we’d shovel coal into the furnace and hope for the best. And in the summer, when it dried out, we’d open up a fire hydrant on the curb, and pump the water into our living room to cool it down. And we loved it!

      1. A fire hydrant? You young’uns!

         1. You had a rope? Luxury!

            1. I remember that they had to sell my grandmother to get it.

2. If your house is big enough, you can get some remote thermostats with motion detectors, and have the area you are in be the reference point for the AC.

   1. I have a 1700 SF home, with a furnace, and no AC.

3. I do have both heating and AC, I do live in an area where it gets well below freezing, and I do travel a lot. And I strongly advise against complexity unless needed, so yeah, I think you’re on the right track, get something from home depot or similar.

   What I do with mine (which does not have a vacation mode) is give it one; before I leave I set it for 45 degrees during every time period. That keeps my pipes, pantry, etc from freezing.

   Internet connected? No thanks.

4. Oh my, this is funny. You want a nice simple thermostat, and to you that means something that programmed for the next week or so.

   When I was a kid. if the house seemed cold, you went to the thermostat and twisted it to the left and after a while the furnace came on. If it was too warm, you twisted the thermostat so the nice big red line was well right of the downward pointing arrow and after a while things cooled off.

   Which was actually sort of complicated for a six year old kid back in the really early 1950’s, and I suspect that for people of my grandparent’s age back then, this was extremely difficult. If it was cold, dammit, you went down to the basement and shoveled some coal into the furnace. And if it was hot, you opened some windows and you thanked God you were rich enough to have a house with windows that could be opened! And for my grandparent’s grandparents …..

   One century or so of progress and you’re complaining about the cost and the complications. Guy, it’s funny.

   1. It appears Rand is being accused of “First World Problems”.

      I’ve noticed that those who throw that accusation around the most tend to have “Third World Attitudes”– A willingness to tolerate and to excuse shoddiness, ignorance, irresponsibility, incompetence, deception, and corruption.

      So what exactly is wrong with criticizing the current trend toward overcomplicating and for unnecessary complexity in what should be simple devices performing simple tasks? Especially when the the simple tasks aren’t done well.

   2. I’m failing to see anything in the more expensive models to justify the cost and security risk.

      1. You need a thermostat that networks with other thermostats in the area so they can coordinate on an overall strategy of stabilizing the grid, managing California’s energy costs, easing the burden on California’s pension funds, while maximizing the fight against global climate change, and generating ad revenue that goes toward ecosystem protection programs.

         1. “The sarcasm is strong in this one.”

   3. So our host took a look, and said “No, thanks.” And your problem with that is…what?

5. I live in Seabrook, Texas. My own house is fairly well sealed and insulated. I have an eighteen dollar, non-programmable thermostat that I keep at 74 degrees day and night, year round. Why 74 degrees? That is the temperature at which the wife and kids don’t bitch about the temperature, day or night, year round. Why don’t I vary the setting between night and day? Nobody is there during the day after all. Because it is actually cheaper to keep the house at a steady state, than to let it warm up during the day and then cool it at night. Some would argue that, but I have the electric bills to prove it.

   1. Because it is actually cheaper to keep the house at a steady state, than to let it warm up during the day and then cool it at night.

      People who don’t realize this drive me crazy.

      Another one is people who think opening your windows will cool the house down. Sure, maybe by 5am and in the meantime enjoy the smoke, pollen, and noise.

      74 is a bit too hot for me in summer but perfect in the winter.

      1. Ummm… Wodun, if you’re seriously saying that opening your windows doesn’t cool your house down, please let me know why?

         What I do is glance at my weather readout (indoor-outdoor thermometer that also has humidity for both). If it’s more than a couple of degrees cooler outside than inside, I shut off the AC and open some windows on all three floors (I get a thermal chimney effect from that). That seems to work well. (I live in the mountains, not near a town, so no worries on noise, smog, etc.). I find this method especially useful here, because the daytime highs are usually over 25 degrees different to the overnight lows.

         If, on the other hand, you mean trying to cool down a 80 degree house on a 90 degree day by opening some windows, I 100% agree – that’ll just make it worse, fast.

      2. My observation is that much of the daytime heat in our house is produced by light bulbs and the two refrigerators-when their compressors kick on. In the absence of those items, the temperature would barely move in the summertime. I solved the problem with the light bulbs by installing LEDs. This provided a double benefit with the reduction in electricity usage via the LED lighting. The refrigerators are a different problem. The AC compressor always kicks on about 15 to 30 minutes after the Refrigerator compressor shuts down. I do not understand why refrigerator compressors are not vented outdoors the same way the stove and oven exhaust heat is vented outdoors.

         1. Venting the refrigerator heat outside would make the refrigerator draw more power directly in the summer. And there’s the expense of the ductwork. In the winter, having the refrigerator dump heat outside would make the appliance more efficient, but draw heat from the rest of the house.

6. I call it “decadent engineering”. Making some thing too complex for the job at hand.
   Just installed reverse cycle A/C in our bedroom for heating during winter. Took about a week to figure out how to set the controller up so that one button turns it on to the preset temperature and another turns it off. No these aren’t marked ON and OFF. And why do I have to tell it to go into heat or cool mode? Can’t it figure out if the room is above or below the pre set temperature?

   1. It’s about making money. A simple thermostat that just kept a constant temperature would probably cost $5. A programmable thermostat that uses Amazon’s ‘cloud’ to let you control it with app can sell for $500.And not work when Amazon’s ‘cloud’ is down (as some people discovered during the recent Amazon outage).

      Rather like cars. The easiest way to increase the profit margin on a car these days is to throw in a ton of fancy electronics.

      1. Car electronics. Yeah.

         My wife has a 2003 car with GPS, and an add-on hands-free. She doesn’t use any of that. She has a dash clip for her iPhone and uses the speakerphone feature and Google Maps.

         I took a look at what it would take to update the maps in her car: last map available (and no more) is 2015 and would cost around $500 at the dealer.

         My car just has a radio/CD player with an Aux-In jack. I connect the jack to a Bluetooth receiver and I’m as happy as a clam. I don’t use either the radio nor the CD player. Instead, I stream music with my Galaxy S7.

         The big problem I see is in updating and upgrading. Like with maps, that’s Google’s problem to keep updated, not my wife’s. Upgrading for her means buying a new iPhone.

         Another problem is language. My wife is Chinese, and Google Maps talks to her in Mandarin. Fat chance getting her car to do that!

      2. Edward, you’re forgetting some of the benefits that $500 gadget will give you. Internet connectivity (so it can be hacked and helpfully alert nearby burglars when its in vacation mode). And of course, unless it’s internet-connected, there’s no way you’ll get to experience having your device bricked – and not just when the cloud is down, but permanently.

         Another wonderful feature of connected thermostats is that many get automatic updates to their code. Without that, you’ll never have the joy of finding out that the manufacturer has reconfigured your thermostat to make it bombard you with ads.

         Same with connected cars. Think of the exciting ride you’ll miss out on if you take away the ability for hackers to take over its controls remotely, and think of the inconvenience to local burglars if your car can’t be made to tell them when you’re away.

         Seriously though, I won’t buy a car that’s “connected”. I also loathe built-in GPS, because it’s so often inferior (and more expensive) to a dedicated sat-nav device such as a Garmin. Also, I can move my Garmin to different vehicles (such as rental cars). And, if my Garmin breaks, I’m out a couple hundred, not the bigger expense and hassle of taking my car in to get it fixed. And the more bells and whistles you get on a car, the more there is to go wrong.

         And let’s not forget the spying issue; Onstar (GM’s Orwellian abomination) was found to be spying on all Onstar equipped vehicles, even ones who didn’t have the service activated. Amongst other things, they were tracking the vehicles, and they were selling this data – and weren’t even picky who they sold it to.

7. We still have the same analog mercury switch thermostat that was installed when our home was built 31 years ago. Never got around to an “upgrade”.

   1. I do like being able to program it so it’s warm when I get out of bed in the morning, and having a different weekend than weekday schedule.

8. You’ve likely already made the correct choice – the basic 7-day programmable model. Internet-linked is really only useful if you are checking up on the house in extreme climates, or returning from a trip and want the house warm before you get there. Neither of these applies to the LA area. Side benefit – they can’t spy on you.

9. Also of note – Honeywell product quality seems to have gone down badly on their basic products – my 7 day programmable lasted 4 years.

10. I have a couple of Honeywell’s older wifi thermostats, and I’ve found it easier to adjust them from my phone than from their own touchscreens.

    We chose wifi thermostats when we moved into our present house because the programmable unit in our previous house here in metro Atlanta had a “vacation” setting but the lousy HVAC units would take hours upon our return to make the house comfortable; we reasoned that being able to reset the units in our new house before our arrival would be much better.

    Thing is, the HVAC system here is vastly superior and our heating and cooling bills are unbelievably lower despite being in the same climate. We haven’t needed to adjust these thermostats. I’m almost thinking if we need to replace them we might as well go back to the old, ultra-low-tech eyeball thermostat.

    1. (Yes, I have adjusted these thermostats. Didn’t need to. New toy syndrome, when they were new. Now they’re not.)

11. I’m a computer nerd and follow various Internet techno-rant blogs. One of then has done a few WTF columns on some of the low-price knockoff versions of net-connected IoT gizmos.

    Long story short – horrible design decisions, gaping security flaws, and extremely brittle code. Just begging to be added to the latest bot-net so they can be used in a distributed-denial-of-service attack.

    The high-end products *may* be better, but personally, I intend to repeat my ‘do we really need that’ the next time my slightly-less-nerdy wife needs to replace our thermostat. And if it doesn’t work, it’s going to be lecture time.

    1. And if it doesn’t work, it’s going to be lecture time.

       But who will be getting lectured? 😉

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