Earlier this week while lazing around in the living room, I realized that I hadn’t heard the heating system running in quite some time, the house was cool, but not uncomfortably so.
The house was already at a comfortable temperature of 68 degrees, and I had the thermostat set there to save money on heating and cooling costs.
The temperature was moderate, so I didn’t worry about the silence coming from the house’s heating system, later that night, as the house began to cool down, I noticed that the silence had persisted. The temperature outside was only 53 degrees, and it seemed like it should have started up by now. The temperature indoors had begun to drop. Within an hour of my call, a technician from the Heating plus A/C company was at my house, fixing the unit. He examined the furnace and its settings, as well as the thermostat. He reported that the heater was working fine and that he had checked the thermostat and found nothing amiss. Something was wrong with the thermostat or the heating system, I figured. I watched as he returned his attention to the thermostat while a grin spread across his face. If I had put the thermostat in the cooling position, he asked. Beyond checking the indoor temperature, I hadn’t made any adjustments to the thermostat. According to him, someone flipped the switch from heating to cooling. When I came in, I saw my kid’s jacket hanging on the thermostat. The temperature in the home, he said, was too mild. He probably pushed the button that flipped the thermostat’s setting from heating to cooling.