The Yankee decided she’d like to have a digital thermostat for the house. So we picked one up the other day and that was going to be one of our little chores for today.
So I open the open-proof packaging, find the instructions in the proper language, pull out the parts and settle in. Step One: Discontinue power to the air conditioner. OK, no problem for most.
The one difficulty in the new house being that the circuit breakers were vaguely labeled. I’ve been exploring the electricity and have figured out the circuit breaker layout, but there’s no air conditioner. Outside, below the main, there is a faded A/C inscription. Success! So I flip it, go inside and we removed the old thermostat for the new.
Only the new thermostat isn’t the right model.
So off comes the new, and back on goes the old:
Only it now doesn’t work. So I take it off again, reinstall it once again. Still nothing.
On the air conditioning unit itself there is a phone number. I call to see if they’d offer a little telephone troubleshooting. It seems I shouldn’t have turned off that circuit, but rather a different one. I’ve probably blown a fuse in the attic. The guy sends me back up into the attic and tells me it should be in here:
Fuses can take on many appearances. The attic light doesn’t penetrate this portion of the room. It is dark, hot and this is all stored in a section that isn’t exactly comfortable. The roof slants down at a significant angle here. There are exposed nails to duck, rafters to dodge, plywood to step on. It has to be 115 degrees up there, so I’m sweating a great deal again.
My abilities as an electrician reach just far enough for me to know when I’m about to become a danger to myself. So I start calling people that might know a little bit more about this stuff than I do. I sent photographs. We discuss possibilities. (No, the round thing with the yellow and white sticker isn’t it. Yes, the thing just beneath it is hot.)
I take my pictures to Lowe’s, because I’m going to have to buy a new fuse anyway, I figure. So we head out, my mind imagining the heat rising inside the house. The trip to the fix-it store is always slower when you have something to fix. The Yankee returns the thermostat that is the wrong model for our situation. I find a guy who knows electricity. I tell him the story. He says, “Sure. You look here, flip this, do that, and the fuses are there. It’ll look like this.”
So he shows me the example. He sells me fuses. I pick up a voltmeter, because I have to be a grown up eventually. We head home. I’m eager to solve the problem, turn the air back on and get back to the day. I go back to the attic. I find this:
I pull the black handle, flip down the gray panel and … no fuse. So I’m back to calling people for advice. I decide to close this little box up, so I flip up the gray panel, try to click the black handle back in place and dislocate my thumb.
I have weak thumbs. I haven’t done this in a long while and, to make up for lost time, I did it but good. (You can tell by the blinding white hot light and the mutterings I uttered and the exclamations I exclaimed.) My thumb goes right back, but it’s going to hurt for a good while.
And that’s when I gave up. We called for an air conditioning guy. Our home inspector suggested someone. We called that gentleman and he showed up within the hour. I explained the story, we climbed into the attic. He told me where I should have turned off the air — that switch above — and said there was a reset button in that jumble of wires. Turns out I was very close to finding the button. And pressing that button would have solved the problem. He reached in, pushed the magic button, sealed the giant box of wires up tight and was on his way.
This took all day, lots of aggravation and a now aching hand. We have fuses we don’t need. We feel less than intelligent, missed the farmers market and gave an HVAC guy an easy laugh and a few bucks.
Stupid thermostat.
We walked through the new neighborhood this evening. We are within walking distance of the Publix. We have this stream nearby:
We met five people — also walking, running or biking — they all said hello.
