One of the first things I wanted to do when we got this house was put a new thermostat in. I hated the old one. It was lame, ugly and the old owners had put marks on the side with an “H” and a “C” by them so they knew where to slide the lame plastic lever on the side without thinking. It fucking sucked.

Oddly enough, it’s been one of the few things that’s been overlooked. It just kept falling further down the importance list.

So today the guy the warranty company sent out for the A/C showed up and was pretty cool. (and of course the unit worked the entire time he was here)

He first checked the furnace in the basement, then messed with the thermostat for a minute, then went outside to the A/C unit. He found on loose wire that triggered the something or other (Sorry, I don’t give a shit). He also said the unit was wired weirdly – not incorrectly, but in an unusual way. He secured the loose wire and came back in. The thing was pretty much working. He opened up the thermostat and claimed it was on the verge of going bad (if it weren’t already) and showed me what he claimed was evidence of something or other (again, don’t care) arcing. So he calls the warranty people to see if that’s covered. He’s gone forever and finally comes in and apologizes saying the warranty people don’t want him to do the work because of what he charges. Even though he’s here and has diagnosed a potential problem and he has the part with him and it’s covered, they’ll send someone else out at a later date to do the work.

Whatever. He was instructed to charge us half of our deductable-per-incident and that was that.

We quickly got a phone call from the warranty people saying they’d send someone out today to do the work. Cool.

Or so we thought at first. But upon discussing it, we figured they’re probably going to replace the thermostat with some equally lame unit and we’ll be stuck paying the other half of the deductable for what essentially amounts to a $15 thermostat and labor. For a few bucks more (and I mean literally a few dollars) we could go pick a sweet thermostat up on our own and put hook it up. Seemed like a win/win for us to do it ourselves.

We called the warranty people who now claimed no one was coming, but we’d hear from them in the next day or two to set up an appointment (Sweet Fucking Jesus!) and we just said whatever – we’ll blow them off when they call.

We headed out to Lowe’s to pick up a thermostat and a dehumidifier (that’s part of the basement flood saga that’s not interesting enough for a blog post on it’s own – when it’s time to tell more of that story, I’m sure the dehumidifier will make an appearance) and made sure we still had 10% off coupons.

Note: if you ever plan on making a significant purchase at Lowe’s, just swing by the post office and pick up a handful of moving kits or mover’s guides or whatever they are – the things with all the info on moving and changing your address and shit. Each packet has a 10% Lowe’s coupon good for purchases up to $5000. (That’s potentially $500 savings) Since we bought the house, we always have some current coupons on hand. Seems like we live at Lowe’s anymore.

Anyway, we swung by and got the goods. I picked a fun touchscreen model from Hunter. When we got home I got the dehumidifier up and running in the basement and them got to work on the thermostat. I took the old one off and let the kids write their names on the wall behind it for future generations to find and then got to work on putting the new one up. It took no time at all and within minutes we had a nice new thermostat that didn’t look like it belonged in a low-end home from the 1980′s. Yay us!

Old Thermostat:
Old

New Thermostat:
New

It glows blue when the air is on and red when the heat is on. Stuff like that amuses me. Lots of settings and programmable stuff. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to play much as tonight has been one of the most comfortable evenings we’ve seen in a while. Windows open. Cool breeze blowing.

It’s supposed to get shitty again soon enough and then I can play with it a little more. (that’s what she said!)