Old versus new

[HVAC LLC]

Yesterday, I changed out an old household thermostat, must have been 30 years old. Pretty good service life, it had switched on and off for over a million times, on the wall doing it’s job.
Now we need much more work from our thermostats, we want them to not only switch on, and switch off, but we want them to be able to be seen across the room, so we know what the temperature is without being a few inches from them, with our reading glasses on.
The new programmable thermostats are so nice, they warm our homes up in the morning when we roll out of bed in the winter, after a cooler temperature at night, so we can snuggle in bed with grandma’s quilt.
They go about the job of saving us energy costs by adjusting the temperatures up and down depending on the seasons, while we earn our livings away from home. The furnace and air-conditioning fan can be programmed to run continuously at night when we sleep, then switch to automatic fan operation when we awake. Some will kick the fan on if the weather is neutral, for 10 minutes, the off for 20 minutes so the air in our homes will not be stale. They call it the ‘Comfort circulating fan feature.’
Fancy name, I wonder how long it took them to come up with that…
The smart thermostats know what day it is, has a very accurate clock, they even know when daylight savings time changes, and compensates for it.
You can set the ‘hold’ feature for a wide range of times; if ‘Aunt Tilly’ is staying with you for a few weeks, (Heaven forbid) and knows that she can raise the temperature in the house a few degrees; (Up to 85) then push the hold button. You can program the thermostat to reset to normal programming after 5 minutes, or for up to 4 hours. (Sorry Aunt Tilly)
The thermostats have built in compressor delay, keypad lock-outs, automatic switch-over from heat to cool if wanted, and many, many more wonderful features. Mine came with a 5 year warranty.
Time will tell, but I doubt it will last the 30 years that the old guy I took off the wall did.

[ball a/c]

And us old guys can get our 10 year old grandchild to program it for us.

[motoguy128]

I see your point, but it's not really a fair comparison to make. Sort of like compariing a early 1970's car to a modern car. Hard to compare durability and reiability when their feature, performance and comfort are so dramatically different. Consider this, a "slow" car now is only capable of about 8.5 seconds 0-60... and has a small 4 cylinder. In the early 70's took a small V8, 3 times the size yet only 50% more power, yet didn't have any more passenger room. And the newer car still gets better mileage, has almost zero emissions, and the engine itelf will run much longer between overhauls. BUT.... just wait unitl the electronic components start failing in 20 years. Good luck finding spare parts.


You can still buy a simple mecahnical thermostat if you want another to last 30 years. But you're right, a microprocessor thermostat and expecially the touchscreen are not likely to last more than about 15 years. But who cares, because it will likely be obsolete by then anyway and you can upgrade to soemthing with even more features. Probably mostly wireless, with internet connectivity so it can use weather forecasts to determine the optimum hours to run the heat pump in the winter and order itself new air filters when the static pressure rises. We can even stick a Red LED on it and call it "HAL".

Actually all that capabilty is possible now, but it's too expensive for small residential applicaton.

[HVAC LLC]

And us old guys can get our 10 year old grandchild to program it for us.

:D:D:D

[beenthere]

Yep.


There are a lot of 30 plus year old inaccurate mercury thermostats still out there.

And 100's of 1000's more that didn't last 10 years.

[riderman]

[QUOTE=motoguy128;3252082] In the early 70's took a small V8, 3 times the size yet only 50% more power,

You need to take a ride in my 69 Chevelle. Jokes aside, I take your point and agree.

edit: Sorry for the hijack of the thread.