Ohmigod–is THAT what that little car with arrows thing is? I have never understood what that meant. I’ll have to use it from now on!!
–Millit, who keeps the thermostat on 11 all winter long…touch it and risk death!
Car climate control jumped the shark long, long ago.
My mom & dad have a Volvo XC70 wagon. The thing has actual temperature dials for driver and passenger, fully overrideable with a fan speed control, auto/manual switch, recirc, and ergonomic dingus with little head-body-foot pictures. Just in case, the front seats have 2-position heating as well. The whole mess is actually confusing, especially to a couple of bicker-prone 70somethings.
Meanwhile, the rear seat passengers get dick. 4 moveable vents that don’t even get heat into the rear in cool weather. My mom mentioned the problem to the dealer, who offered to sell her an official Volvo electric blanket. :dubious: She replied that if she wanted a vehicle you had to plug into to keep warm, she would have bought a B-17.
I ran into the same thing when I was teaching.
I’d be teaching my first class (during the winter) with the thermostat set comfortably at 68 deg F. About 15 minutes into my second class in the same room, I’d realize that it was uncomfortably hot. I’d check out the thermostat, only to find that, during the class switch, some idiot student had moved the setting all the way to max (85+ deg F)!
And once the room heated up to sweltering, there was no easy way to cool the room down. (We couldn’t open the windows, and the cooling system was shut down for the winter, of course.)
I don’t know how many times I’d admonish the class: “It’s a THERMOSTAT!! Raise it up by a couple of degrees if you’re cold, but don’t peg it at 85 degrees, or the heating system attempts to heat the room to…wait for it…85 FRICKIN’ DEGREES!”
It never sank in. Finally I just told all my classes to not touch the thermostat for any reason.
And no, the room didn’t warm up any faster when they maxed out the thermostat, either, just hotter.
Actually, I feel that way about my Car Stereo. I’m not someone that blares music or even plays it all of the time in my car, but as you said, **its my car. **
I had to give a coworker a ride once. She was new to this post and her car wasn’t here yet. We were only going to the PX a trip of maybe 25 to 30 minutes. When I picked her up i had a I had burned myself of old talking heads songs. the first thing she said when she got in my car was
“I brought this CD of (some band I don’t know, don’t care about). Put in it.”
ME: No…and I’m dead serious, touch my stereo and I’ll put you out of this car so quick your head will spin.
“But this is a really cool band! Blah, blah, blah”.
ME: Listen, I don’t fucking care. Because this is my car…I wouldn’t get into your car or anyone elses car and expect to be given stereo preference. If I let you do this now, then every time you get in my car you’ll think you have the right to change the music. You don’t, because its my car and my music. I don’t actually care if anyone but me likes it, because I’m paying for it.
The thermostat in my car isn’t something people would mess with. Its a 2007 jeep, so the AC isn’t really available during the summer, since I’ll have the windows down and top off if its really hot, and the heater kicks ass so no one bothers with it when its cold.
A woman, who does the same thing, called into Car Talk about a month ago. She disagreed with her husband, who said that it will still reach the desired temperature (70º) in the same amount of time. She felt turning up to broil would heat the car faster.
Ray and Tom set her straight. It still gets to 70 in the same amount of time, regardless of the thermostat setting. Then they counseled the woman to stop turning up the heat, but never admit she was wrong; if the subject were to ever come back up, she should just change the topic. 
They (Ray and Tom) were having some fun because it is usually the guys in the couple who are trying something lame, stupid, dangerous, or all three. It was a rare win for the men.
I 100% agree. If it’s mine, I have it set the way I want it; don’t mess with it!
I have a friend who always seems to want to mess with my computers… every time he sits down at one he starts changing the settings around. Drives me bat-shit crazy. Whenever I catch him at it and chastise him he gives me some version of “but THIS way is ever-so-slightly more efficient!” I don’t give a shit… that’s not how I like to have it set. Leave it alone! :mad:
AARGH!
I’ll be in the angry dome.
It’s NOT a thermostat. If you have the red/blue windy knob it controls the temperature of the air it blows. It doesn’t then adjst that temperature based on how hot or cold the car gets.
But in general, yeah, I agree.
I think it’s because car’s heat/AC controls are confusing.
It’s fairly obvious that if you turn the A/C button to OFF and turn that blue/red slider to red, you get heat. If you slide it to blue and turn the A/C/ button on, you get cool. In any other in-between setting, I have no idea what my car does. I had the vague impression that the red/blue slider just controlled the air flow or coolant flow to the heater core, and has nothing to do with the A/C, is that incorrect? Do cars even have thermostats for cabin temperature, unless you get the optional “climate control system” or whatever?
:rolleyes:
Anybody that can’t figure out the climate system on a Volvo by either staring at it for 30 seconds and or reading the manual for an equal amount of time, ought to consider not going out in public alone. FTR when that panel design came out in 1999 it was praised by several car magazines as being one of the simplest one in the industry.
Feel free to pass these instructions along to your parents:
Push the button marked auto Driver sets the temp they want, passenger does the same.
If either one of them is too hot, or too cold, move the knob on their side of the car to a higher or lower setting.
Your buns cold? Push the bun warmer button. Push once, two orange lights on = high. Push again one orange light on = low. Push once again = off. bun warmers are on a thermostat and will turn off by themselves. If your parents find the temp too hot or too cold, the dealer can adjust the settings. (yes it is also on a thermostat)
Rear window frosted up? Push the rear defrost button located by the bun warmer buttons. Front window fogged up? Push the defrost button located next to the rear window defrost button. When the front window is clear, press the auto button to restore automatic control. In all honesty, I find the two glyphs for front and rear defrost confusing, but since I tend to use them together, it really isn’t a problem for me.
Seriously, how tough was that?
Advanced instructions:
If they want more fan speed for some reason, turn the fan speed knob clockwise. Counter clockwise for less fan speed.
If the heater is on, with air blowing at their feet, and they want face level, push the middle chrome button, and all the air will blow at their face. If they want air at both face and feet, push both the middle and bottom button. If they want some air onto the windshield, push the top chrome button.
Anytime you want to restore full automatic control, push the auto button.
As you correctly point out the OP is wrong. It is not a fucking thermostat. It is just a level to control the air flow past the heater coil and AC/outside vent.
Some fancier cars have real thermostats with temperature sensors that control how much heater air gets mixed with the cool air. This is generally marketed as climate control.
This is one of the only things that, IMO, might make a fancier car worth it. I also wish I had a car where the air coming out the top vents and the air coming out at the foot-level vents didn’t necessarily have to be the same temperature. My feet tend to be colder than my hands, especially when I’ve been walking in snow or slush.
Agreed. I love my feet being really warm but can’t stand my upper body getting warm (otherwise I get sleepy). I then look like a moron for driving with my window a decent portion down in the middle of winter.
You made me spit my soda with that Futurama quote. 
Whether or not it employs a temperature sensor to turn the system on and off, the fact remains that it is a lever to control the temperature. If you set the thing in the MIDDLE of it’s range, you will get air coming out of the vents that is something other than freezing cold or broiling hot. I should have titled the rant “See that little red/blue lever? Use it?” instead.
Oh jeez, I’ve run into so many people who have no concept of how a thermostat works. Listen up, people: the thermostat has no fucking effect on the temperature of the air coming out of the furnace/heater! The furnace/heater produces a steady, always-the-same temperature. The thermostat simply tells it when to start and stop!
Remembering roommates who thought they could heat or cool the apartment faster by setting the thermostat to the extremes.
And, for the record, your thermostat in your house doesn’t control the temperature of the air it blows. It has exactly 1 setting, On/Off. If you have air conditioning, it has 2 settings. On/Off, and Hot/Cold, rather like the way people treat the air conditioning in their car.
Actually, the thermostat in the house I’m in right how is for a heat-pump system combined with a 93% gas furnace with a variable-speed blower and variable gas jets. So, you’re incorrect in my case.
That actually sounds pretty cool. Does the thing just stay on all of the time and adjust the temp of the air that it blows? How does it decide what temp the air it’s blowing should be? Because if the themostat is set to 70, it will have to blow a lot longer to heat the room up than if it was blowing at 85, and that kind of sounds like a waste of power.
The electricity needed to run the blower to circulate the already heated room air is a fraction of the electricity needed to run the heat pump - which is less than the cost of running the gas furnace. If someone comes in a changes the desired temperature more than 3 degrees, it will bring on the gas “emergency” heat. But the heat pump runs down to 30 degrees, pulling in heat from the outside air. Since installing this system, the utility bills are a fraction of what they were last year.