Originally Posted by
Charlie Velasquez
In most rooms in our district the teacher/employee cannot control the temperature settings with the thermostat. The stat serves only to relay information to our hvac software.
The staff have learned a “forbidden” workaround of our district’s set points of 68° heating and 74° cooling. In the winter they would put a paper towel in ice water and place it on the thermostat, in the cooling season they would put a coffee pot under the thermostat.
It was kinda funny… we would be sitting in our maintenance building and our lead hvac guy, Jeff, would chime in,”Mrs. McDonald in Room 217 at Grant School just put a cold paper towel on her thermostat.” Our hvac software sends a flashing alarm on our computers whenever there is an anomaly or the temp in a room is outside certain parameters. Going from 68° to 45° in 15 seconds will do it .
So Jeff would call Grant School, have the secretary patch him to Mrs. McDonald’s room and say, “Good morning, Mrs. D. The thermostat will work much better without anything restricting the normal air flow. Please remove anything you have on the thermostat. Thank you.”
The teachers were mesmerized when he did that. One teacher spent an hour after school looking for hidden cameras.