Our thermostat was dying.
Several times over this past winter our heat would kick-off because the thermostat would randomly kick-the-bucket. One morning we woke up to find the heat had gone off sometime in the night and our home was a chilly 52 (Fahrenheit) degrees!
We soon learned that in order to restart the heat during these periodic acts of rebellion by our thermostat, we’d have to slide the temperature to somewhere above 70, and once we heard the heater kick-on in our basement we’d then slide it back to somewhere just below 70 and hope it stayed on.
Also going against the thermostat was that it took a bit of guess-timation with the slider to get it “around” the temperature we wanted inside the house. Was it sitting at 68? 71? Were we wasting money with our utility bill?
A new thermostat thus became a new priority.
However, do y’all realize how tech-crazy thermostats are nowadays?
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| via Lowes |
I’ve been well aware of the fawning happening over the Nest thermostat and other similar devices that one can monitor with your cel phone. Karl, being a tech & gadgets guy, was team “cool thermostats” and reiterated to me why these devices can be useful.
I wasn’t convinced.
I’m team “keep it simple, stupid”.
Yup, I have old-fashioned preferences. I mean for goodness sakes, it’s a friggin thermostat – does it really need a touchscreen or be wifi enabled?! I submit that unless you travel extensively, it does not.
For us, our thermostat really only needed 2 things:
1. a digital backlit screen
2. was budget-friendly
With a quick online search through Lowes and Home Depot, it quickly became apparent that even the most basic, non-programmable digital thermostat would run $25 and up. Wanting to see if I could find better, I looked around at a few other places online.
Craigslist didn’t provide much.
I hopped over to Ebay.
Ooo…there were a lot of choices on Ebay.
It was the jackpot really – everything from a basic thermostat to the Nest, and a significant number were new or like new (returned out of box) and most from reputable sellers.
After a little more research we ended up with a programmable digital thermostat from Ebay that cost us only $13, s/h included. Booyah.
We received and installed it a few days later.
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| like the addition of our color swatches on the wall? ;) |
Happily, we haven’t had any more trouble with our heat shutting off since installing it last month, and it’s wonderful being able to know and set an exact temperature.
…and dudes…never go retail when you don’t have to! ^_-
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