On Wed, 8 Feb 2017 14:54:37 -0800, MOP CAP wrote:

I am an old cranky fart. I don't like most of the excess on modern
items. For a furnace I want a simple
thermostat with millivolt system, no outside power required. That way
when the power goes out
I still can get heat.

CP

I'm with you on the " the excess on modern items". Everything these
days seems to be made as complicated as possible. Thats one of the
reasons I refuse to use any version of Windows newer than XP, and I
still like Win98 the best. I also find these new tv sets really annoy
me. All the old tvs had a channel selector, volume control and power
switch right on the tv. Yes, remote controls are nice, but when I cant
find the remote, I cant even change channel or adjust the volume,
because there are no controls on the tv itself (except a power switch).
Very annoying.

Modern cars are another annoyance. I have only older cars, but even back
in the late 90s they were putting stupid **** on them. I dont want power
windows, they always break and are a fortune to fix. One of my cars used
to lock everytime I got out and slammed the door. It was less than a
week of owning it, that I ended up with the keys in the ignition and the
doors locked. I live in a rural area, I dont need to lock the doors. I
finally found a way to disable them.

Last year I went shopping for an inexpensive car radio/stereo. The car
came with an AM/FM radio, with a CD player. It quit working and I
decided to just replace it with a similar unit. I did like the idea of a
USB port so I can play my MP3 music, but thats all I wanted. Good grief,
all the crap they put on these new car radios is ridiculous. I dont want
whatever that pay-for radio is called, but i dont want it. I dont want
whatever connects to WIFI in the car, my car dont have WIFI. I have
never liked tuners that have SCAN / SEARCH all that crap. I like the
plain old analog tuner, but know they dont make analog tuners anymore,
so I'd have to bite the bullet on that one. I cant begin to even explain
all the nonsense they put on some of them, but I did know that I'd end
up in a car crash if I had to screw with one of them things while
driving. I did finally find one of the cheapest radios came with not
much more than AM/FM radio, CD player, and USB. I found I was able to
operate it in the store (demo unit), without any manual. I knew this was
the one I wanted.

I could go on an on with all the complicated crap we hav to cope with
these days....

Some years ago, I was living in a house that had a programmable
thermostat. That thing could not be bypassed like the one I have now. I
spent hours trying to program that piece of ****. It seemed the more I
tried to program it, the worse it got. Half the time I'd be freezing,
other times it would be so hot I could not handle it. One day I ripped
it off the wall, and replaced it with one of those old round Honeywell
mercury switch ones. Problem solved!

One thing you said, that i dont understand.... I dont know of any
furnace that will work without electricity. The blower fan needs power.
Even if I could rig a car battery to the controls (during a power
outage), that blower needs considerable power. We had a power outage
last winter, that lasted one and a half days. I used a propane "Mister
Heater", which I have for when I go camping. I always keep a full 20lb
propane tank just for that use. That worked fairly well.