See that thing on the dashboard of your car? The slider from blue to red? It can be slid to an infinite number of positions from blue to red.
So why in the name of all that is holy do you insist on only using two of this infinite number of positions - melt-your-shoes hot in the winter and frostbitten nose in the summer? And, more than that, when your passenger mentions that the temperature could be a little warmer or colder do you insist on turning the fan up and down? Leave the damn fan switch alone! The VOLUME of air is just fine, it’s the temperature that is the problem! Freezing or baking with less intensity is not an improvement. Setting the temperature control so that the system is producing a comfortable temperature in the first place would be an improvement.
Experience as a passenger in cars equipped with a pair of temperature up and down buttons and a digital readout instead of the slider confirms that automobile heating a cooling systems are perfectly capable of producing and maintaining a wide range of temperatures.
One presumes that you don’t run your home furnace the same way - set the thermostat at 100 degrees in the winter and 32 degrees in the summer and regulating the temperature by turning the blower motor on and off. So why in the hell is your car any different?
And any move to adjust the temperature slider is met with the same sort of offended reaction as urinating on a religious icon, as if the car gods will strike me dead for setting the temperature slider to anything other than all the way one way or all the way the other.
Can you please explain that to my wife.
We finally have a car that has a digital thermostat in it. Set it at the temp you want and the car will either heat it up to that point or cool it down to that point.
So what does she do on a cold winter day when she first starts the car? Sets it from the previous setting (set by me) from 70 degrees to 76.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Because it’s cold out.”
“Yeah, so when the car warms up to 70 you’ll be fine.”
“But I want it to warm up faster.” :smack:
The heat and fan on my car interact in ways you might not immediately expect. If I turn the fan down, for example, I often also want to turn the heat down, because while it blows less air, that air is much, much hotter. Turning both the heat and the fan down, though, tends to create a situation where the heat isn’t making it all the way to my feet. It’s a pain in the ass to get it right, and I find that for me, I get the best results by making small adjustments to the fan alone (less air, but warmer, or more air but cooler) than trying to fiddle with the two different nobs at once.
An additional factor I’ve found - if I turn down the heat below a certain level, the windshield begins to fog up. For reasons I can’t begin to guess, I tend to fog windows a lot, in cars. So, if I’ve found a setting that keeps the window clear, I find it’s easier to let the heat stay on the current setting - while I control my body temperature by opening or shutting the driver’s side window.
People, I have concluded, are largely binary beings. When asked to rate something between 1 and 10, a huge number of people will pick 1 or 10, apparently unable to countenance anything between Robert Mitchum’s left and right hands. When asked to debate between two nuanced positions, it will take a considerable amount of time before discussion advances beyond the black and white (“You want to let all the criminals go!” “Yeah, well you want to lock everyone up and shoot them!”). Most drivers treat the throttle as a purely binary instrument, although in the case of certain muscle cars they may well have a point.
So I think you’re fighting a losing battle on this one. That said, many cars’ temperature sliders merely alter the ratio of radiator air to unheated air coming through, so if someone is trying to heat the car up in a hurry, wanging it all the way up initially makes sense. Maybe you with yer posh car have a poncy thermostat, but then why are you hitching lifts, eh?
Right, I’m off to burn the shit out of some bacon and drink all the alcohol in the house.
I would love to use my car’s thermostat, but I’ve got a busted baffle inside the dashboard and I have to pop the hood to open or shut a valve depending on whether I want the heater or AC.
Instead of a slide from blue to red, mine has to be twisted almost through a full circle. This certainly discourages the binary attitude somewhat, because there’s not a comfortable or at least intuitive action to go from one extreme to the other.
I’m with jacquilynne on the air speed factor, too. Mine is very uncomfortable once on full heat with a warm engine with the fan set low, unpleasant for whichever part of the body is receiving the result, whether feet, hands, face, or the top of your head via the windscreen vent.
Then there’s the Mrs. Bubbadog way of running the heater/AC.
1 - Complain that Bubbadog has the temp too hi/lo
2 - Disregard Bubbadog’s comment about him feeling just fine
3 - Crank the the thermostat to the desired direction
4 - When your radical adjustments cause the temperature to be lo/hi ** reach over and adjust all of the vent louvers away from yourself and to point at Bubbadog**
I am willing to bet this is because you have the lever in the *Recirculate * position rather than the Fresh Air position. Outside air is generally much dryer than inside air, which becomes laden with moisture from your breath, causing the windows to fog. You generally won’t even notice a difference in the temperature of the heated air between the two settings.
Mercury Le Sable. It doesn’t help that it has an “automatic” internal thermostat, which sets up for a constant cabin temperature, but ignores foot space, and the front windshield. To say that I don’t particularly trust it would be understating things.
I’ve seen the recirc thing for decades, but for the longest time it was only on imports, I thought.
What the hell is up with that? A significant proportion of taxi drivers I get have this driving technique where you end up constantly rocking back and forward. Here’s a clue people, if throttle position 1 makes you go too slow and throttle position 2 makes you go too fast, how about trying something in between, rather than rocking your foot up and down on the accelerator?
