broken thermostat

[NeverWasACornflakeGirl]

Hoping someone can help, as it's now 52 degrees in my house and I've had to make fingerless gloves out of holey socks!!

We have a LUX TX 9000TS programmable thermostat which we installed ourselves about 3 years ago.  Never had a problem with it and now suddenly it won't work!  The replace battery indicator came on so we replaced the batteries and the furnace wouldn't come on.  So we put another set of batteries in.  Same problem.  Over the past week I've gotten the furnace to sometimes come on by variously doing a hardware or software reset of the thermostat, taking the body off the wall and putting it back on the base, setting the temp manually below the room temp (until you hear the "click") then setting it back up where it should be, performing voodoo rituals, etc.  But last night it stopped working and will not come on no matter what I do. 

I've called the company's technical assistance line but haven't heard back from them.  I've also done web searches and have found that others have also had this problem after replacing the batteries on this model but have found no solutions.

Any ideas, DYI gurus??  Should I just give up and go buy a new thermostat?

[makstache]

I had a similar problem earlier this winter. Chances are the problem is at the furnace and not the thermostat. Try cleaning the furnace's flame sensors. Just search for a video on youtube. It's an easy and pretty much free fix.

[Spork]

It should be easy to use a small bit of wire to manually connect the terminals.   This would test the unit and determine if the problem was your thermostat or your unit.

I can never remember which wire is which without a googlemachine.... This was the first hit I found:

http://www.ehow.com/how_7605533_create-jump-test-thermostat.html


EDIT TO ADD:  I am making an assumption that you have a normal low-voltage thermostat.  If you have a line voltage thermostat, the same concepts would work -- but the wire colors would be different and you'd want to use a whole lot more caution in playing with it.

[wild wendella]

We've had the same issue with a programmable thermostat this year.  (we're renting - less flexibility).  A plumber, the landlord and a service rep from our oil company have looked into all possible causes, and we've actually determined it's just the thermostat itself.  The service rep says he sees tons of problems w/ the programable stats, and recommends installing an old fashioned one.  So that's what we're trying next.   

[phred]

I just know you've inserted the batteries correctly after cleaning the battery terminals in the thermostat.  Next thing I would try is take the service panel off the furnace and see if there is a reset button.  Also, just for the heck of it, ensure the circuit breaker doesn't need to be reset.  Finally, take a look that the thermostat setting is where you desire.
  If all that doesn't work, try a new thermostat.

[BlueMR2]

We've had the same issue with a programmable thermostat this year.  (we're renting - less flexibility).  A plumber, the landlord and a service rep from our oil company have looked into all possible causes, and we've actually determined it's just the thermostat itself.  The service rep says he sees tons of problems w/ the programable stats, and recommends installing an old fashioned one.  So that's what we're trying next.   

That's what my parents did.  They had a couple programmables fail on them in fairly short order.  Luckily they were able to find an old-school thermostat to put in.  Never had another failure.  I was lucky enough to buy a house with an old-style already in it.  Electronics make some things better, thermostat's ain't one of them!

[Spork]

I love to make complicated stuff... but in almost every case: simpler is better.  From a pure "it works" point of view, it's hard to argue with a mercury switch that just connects two wires together.

[NeverWasACornflakeGirl]

Thanks to all!  It was a broken thermostat.  :-)