Originally posted by: Brainonska511
My dorm room has an idiotic thermostat that is either off, hot, really hot, or ridiculously hot. At home, it is set to 68 from 6AM - 11PM and 62 from 11PM - 6AM. Oil heat is used at home along with a gas range.
Hah, that sounds awfully familiar. Left alone, it ranges from 68F to somewhere around 85-90F in this apartment.* There is ONE thermostat, and it is in the livingroom. The bedrooms lack thermostats. But back to the livingroom - it is always cold out there, and if you open the door, a blast of cold air hits the ancient thermostat, which relies on a bimetallic coiled strip and a mercury tilt switch. Once the mercury flows to one side, its weight keeps that end held down longer than it should be. So that keeps the heat on longer than it needs to be. Not only that, but the vents in the livingroom are tiny, and they're right under the big front window. The curtain there catches some of the air, and directs it against the cold window.
Result of all this: the thermostat turns on the heat, thinking it's cold. The livingroom stays cold while the bedrooms heat up to nearly 90 degrees (seriously).
* That was at the start of the semester. We've finally found a "sweet spot" where the thermostat can be set to such that the mercury is always just barely teetering on the edge of flopping to one side or the other. The guys in the other room weight down a sheet of cardboard over their vent so that the heat doesn't go into their room. Instead, it goes into the rest of the apartment, including my room. I can stand it up to about 80F, but 77F is the perfect temperature for me in winter. Sometimes I've got to open the window to let some of the excess heat out.
These apartments are about 20-30 years old, and it shows.
Facebook
Twitter