Digital Thermostat Quit Working

snipped-for-privacy@tubes.com wrote: "never knew those thermostats would completely fail to start the furnace when the batteries went dead. Apparently so. "

They don't.

Thermostats completely fail to heat because electrical supply to the thermostat has failed, and the batteries, which are for back up of clock and program settings, finally expired.

Maybe mine will turn on at 50deg. (or so). It does not say anything about that in the PDF manual I downloaded. It's a Honeywell made around

I am an old cranky fart. I don't like most of the excess on modern items. For a furnace I want a simple thermostat with millivolt system, no outside power required. That way when the power goes out I still can get heat.

CP

I'm with you on the " the excess on modern items". Everything these days seems to be made as complicated as possible. Thats one of the reasons I refuse to use any version of Windows newer than XP, and I still like Win98 the best. I also find these new tv sets really annoy me. All the old tvs had a channel selector, volume control and power switch right on the tv. Yes, remote controls are nice, but when I cant find the remote, I cant even change channel or adjust the volume, because there are no controls on the tv itself (except a power switch). Very annoying.

Modern cars are another annoyance. I have only older cars, but even back in the late 90s they were putting stupid shit on them. I dont want power windows, they always break and are a fortune to fix. One of my cars used to lock everytime I got out and slammed the door. It was less than a week of owning it, that I ended up with the keys in the ignition and the doors locked. I live in a rural area, I dont need to lock the doors. I finally found a way to disable them.

Last year I went shopping for an inexpensive car radio/stereo. The car came with an AM/FM radio, with a CD player. It quit working and I decided to just replace it with a similar unit. I did like the idea of a USB port so I can play my MP3 music, but thats all I wanted. Good grief, all the crap they put on these new car radios is ridiculous. I dont want whatever that pay-for radio is called, but i dont want it. I dont want whatever connects to WIFI in the car, my car dont have WIFI. I have never liked tuners that have SCAN / SEARCH all that crap. I like the plain old analog tuner, but know they dont make analog tuners anymore, so I'd have to bite the bullet on that one. I cant begin to even explain all the nonsense they put on some of them, but I did know that I'd end up in a car crash if I had to screw with one of them things while driving. I did finally find one of the cheapest radios came with not much more than AM/FM radio, CD player, and USB. I found I was able to operate it in the store (demo unit), without any manual. I knew this was the one I wanted.

I could go on an on with all the complicated crap we hav to cope with these days....

Some years ago, I was living in a house that had a programmable thermostat. That thing could not be bypassed like the one I have now. I spent hours trying to program that piece of shit. It seemed the more I tried to program it, the worse it got. Half the time I'd be freezing, other times it would be so hot I could not handle it. One day I ripped it off the wall, and replaced it with one of those old round Honeywell mercury switch ones. Problem solved!

One thing you said, that i dont understand.... I dont know of any furnace that will work without electricity. The blower fan needs power. Even if I could rig a car battery to the controls (during a power outage), that blower needs considerable power. We had a power outage last winter, that lasted one and a half days. I used a propane "Mister Heater", which I have for when I go camping. I always keep a full 20lb propane tank just for that use. That worked fairly well.