Heh. I did it. I know EXACTLY how my house is heated because I am now, the goddess of thermostats! And maybe just my thermostat hookup, but dang, I learned a lot.

While on Friday, I couldn't turn off my furnace (something about hooking up the wires in the wrong places so they were always touching) and yesterday, 14 degrees Celsius seemed a little cool so I went to work trying to figure out the system. After much time on the phone with my dad again, I had bridged a connection at the furnace to make it fire up. Yay! I pulled on wires running into the walls and figured out which were the live two wires that I needed to touch together to make the furnace come on. There are three in the wall, but one isn't connected at either end so I made sure to mark the dead one upstairs. I determined through many trips up and down the basement stairs (many, many trips) that the new programmable thermostat was a dud. Completely broken. Stupid electronics. Of course, I got it in Nipawin so I have to wait to send it back to my parents so they can return it.

I now have the old one back on the wall and working properly.

And I could hook up a new thermostat in less than the estimated installation time and be able to check to make sure it's working properly too.

I still want a programmable thermostat.