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February 21, 2005
No heat, part II
Although it's only down to about -5 C (23 F) out there, it's cold in our house this morning. Our radiators were all cold, too. It seemed like the heater had turned itself off again.
But that was not the case. I had hot water to wash my face, and the heater also warms the water that comes out of the faucets. The heater has a timer attached to it, one of those circular, mechanical timers with the plastic sections you slide toward or away from the center to set hours of operation. The timer covers 7 days. It is set to scale everything back each night.
The thermostat gets its data from a probe on the north face of the house above the garage, and from a thermometer built into the control unit in the hall near the door to the basement stairs. The system functions well when the flow of air through the house is mostly uninterrupted. But we've been closing the doors to the living room this week. The interior thermometer must've been in a stagnant temperature pocket as temperature in the exterior rooms dropped but their air didn't circulate.
Since we cannot read the thermometer inside, I don't know what the real temperature was. I'd guess about 16 C (61 F). The heaters are probably working now, and the kids are probably already up, fighting over which cartoon to watch.
Posted by Mark at February 21, 2005 07:42 AM