I learned a new lesson this morning.
The furnace won’t work if the programmable thermostat needs new batteries.
I confess, I thought the batteries were there just to hold the settings in case the electricity goes off. NOT SO!
The furnace was working when I went to bed last night. It’s set to drop to 64° during the night hours. (I stay toasty in my heated waterbed). It’s supposed to go back up to 70° at 7:00AM. When I woke up, the room temp seemed chilly.
I first checked the thermostat to see what it showed, and the display was blank except for the words “REPL BATT”.
I got out the instruction book and there it was: Heating/cooling system won’t work unless live batteries are installed.
Wouldn’t you know that the batteries decide to die when the outside temp is 5°!
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What a lousy time for the batteries to go kaput! brrrr! It is always good to have back up batteries for that and for the smoke detector. The smoke detector batteries always seem to die in the middle of the night too.
Lesson learned. I had only 1 good AA battery, so I had to rob my CO detector to get the needed 3 batteries for the furnace.
I totally agree that the chirps from the smoke detector ALWAYS occur at night and scare the crap out of me.
At least it wasn’t someting wrong with the furnace!
Oh yes at least the batteries did the trick. I admit I did not know this either! I’ll have to start asking questions when inspectors are with my buyers and get the word out to them too. Thanks!
Carole, later this afternoon, someone told me this might be an issue only for those that we install ourselves. It may not apply to new builds where the HVAC guys install originally.
A homeowner told me that, so don’t know if it applies or not.