In other news for today....

[conuly]

it seems our thermostat has stopped working properly. I took off the front of it to replace the battery, noticed a wire was loose, fixed the wire, and now the damn thing won't shut off, even with the front of the thermostat removed or switched to "off".

I've turned off the boiler itself, in the interest of not having an 85F home overnight. After a day of careful fiddling, I'm pretty sure this is non-DIY fix. Unless maybe replacing the thermostat unit itself would work.

Comments

[jtthomas]

Those electronic ones break so easily, even just if a bug crawls inside and dies. See if whoever fixes yours has any manual / button pressing ones in stock.

[conuly]

Like an old fashioned mercury one?

[jtthomas]

Not even, just anything "of the old-fashioned sort". If you can get a dial one, those still last the longest, though.

[darkoshi]

Are you sure you connected the loose wire to where it's supposed to be? Even if you put it where it originally was, maybe the only reason it worked before was due to it being loose and not really making a connection?

[conuly]

I'm starting to suspect that I didn't. I've gone over the power diagrams on the internet a few times. I definitely need to have a wire in the "r" slot, a wire in the "rc" slot (that seems to be the problem - so long as the wire I think goes there is plugged in, the boiler goes on but doesn't shut off) and I think one in the "w" slot. But... maybe I have the wrong wires in the wrong slots or something?

[darkoshi]

We have a Trane thermostat and 6 wires from the wall connected to 6 different slots (RC, WT, Y, G, B, W2). They mostly match the wire colors (red, white, yellow, green, blue, brown). There's a jumper wire between the RC and R slots, which from what I've read is a common configuration. But for other setups, there would be no jumper, and separate wires going to both of them. Your wires and the required connections may depend on what kind of heating and cooling units you have.

[antisoppist]

When my thermostat stopped working, online advice was to disconnect one of the wires in the thermostat receiver unit (my thermostat is wireless) and connect it to a different terminal as this would override the thermostat and make the boiler turn on permanently. It sounds like you might have done something like this inadvertently.

I didn't have to do this because I have a landlord and she got me a new thermostat installed which manages to talk to the boiler.

[conuly]

Hm. Worth a shot. In the morning.

[sarahthecoat]

If your utility offers free home energy audits, see if they might do one and give you a new thermostat. In my state, the utility is required to offer them, and they include various energy saving measures like led light bulbs, weatherization strips for the doors, low flow showerheads, etc, varies from year to year. Worth a try, anyway.