John's Blog

It happened again. For the second time.

The next door neighbor got ahold of me yesterday, asking if I could fix his thermostat again. You may recall my prior experience at fixing the “increase temperature” button. This time it was the “decrease temperature” button that had stopped working. The thing was set at 90 and he couldn’t lower it.

Long story short… I tried several times to fix the down button by salvaging tiny little parts from a 20 year old calculator. It was delicate work and my hands wouldn’t cooperate. So I bundled up, braved the weather, and went out and bought a new t-stat plus a handful of furnace filters for his furnace.

By the time I stepped into his front room the temp in the house was 55. He was wrapped up like an Eskimo, sitting there, chain smoking in the dusk. I installed the new thermostat in spite of the wiring. You see, ages ago someone replaced the t-stat harness from the furnace where each colored wire has a specific purpose, with a length of telephone wire where each colored wire has a specific purpose. Thing is, the colors of some of the wires aren’t the same. A bit of a puzzle that actually made a job that was mostly a chore into one that was somewhat interesting.

I installed the t-stat then worked my way downstairs to replace the furnace filter. To say that the house is extremely unclean is to put it nicely. I’ll make it a point to go over there every month or so and swap filters.