The beauty of a programmable thermostat is that you can control when your home needs extra cooling or heating and when it doesn’t. For instance, in summer when the sun goes down and it gets cooler outside, that would be a good time to program for less cooling because everyone will sleep through the night anyway. By adopting similar strategies that reduce the burden on your heating and cooling system, you can achieve real savings.
The catch is that your programmable thermostat has to be working exactly right to realize those savings. When it’s not working right, there are some fairly simple checks you can make yourself to troubleshoot the problem:
- When it seems that the settings you programmed in are not really being followed, it may be something as simple as the batteries losing strength. Look for a readout telling you that the batteries are low, if your thermostat has this feature. If you know the batteries are old, just replace them. If they’re relatively new, check them to make sure they’re still performing at good strength.
- If the thermostat doesn’t seem to be controlling the temperature at all, check to make sure the fuse isn’t blown and replace it if need be.
- Try switching to the opposite system that you were using. If you were using heating, switch to air conditioning to see if that works. If the problem only shows up in one of the two systems, most likely the problem is not the thermostat, but somewhere within the system that isn’t working. If the problems shows up in both systems, replace the thermostat. If even replacing the thermostat does not correct the problem, you should contact an HVAC serviceman to have the problem investigated.
Contact Us
The professionals at CCAC, Inc. have had more than three decades of experience in the home comfort business, so if you’d like to take advantage of that home comfort knowledge and experience, please stop in and see us when you’re in Corpus Christi. If you’d prefer to contact us via our website, we’ll be in touch with you very promptly.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Corpus Christi, Texas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about programmable thermostats and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
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