These thermostats in this apartment have been here since the place was built in the 80s, I swear. They are older than I am, and I am not that young! These thermostats are these dials that just have the temperature of the room on the bottom half, and then the needle and the various temperature settings on the top half. That way you can see the temperature of the room–or at least the temperature of the space immediately around the thermostat–and change the temperature setting of the climate control accordingly. These thermostats are not digital, so there are at least no batteries to change, however they are not able to be programmed to your needs either. This means that you need to constantly adjust the thermostat throughout the day. We need to turn it up when we get up in the morning, turn it down before we leave for work, and then turn it back up again when we get home and wait for the electric furnace to heat the apartment back up again. These things can only do one job–turn the electric furnace on and off according to the temperature of the room–and lately they aren’t even doing that well! Instead of coming one when we want them to, they don’t turn on unless we move the dial up. Then while they turn the furnace on, the thermostats then fail to the furnace back off. They just keep heating the space, regardless of how high the temperature reading gets. One time we dozed off on the couch, and when we got up to go to our beds the apartment was 73 degrees, but we had only set the thermostat for 62 degrees. You could still hear the electric furnace going!
The different types of thermostats