To think my FIL shouldn't be allowed near

[YankNCock]

. . .a thermostat?

FFS, just spent half an hour on the phone with him explaining that the reason the number keeps jumping back to 24 when he's turned it down to 18, is because that is what fucking temperature the room currently is!

DH pissing himself in the corner as I say, 'if you want the number to go down, the house has to get cooler. Open a window!'

FIL: 'so I should just leave it alone now?'

Me: FFS Yes, go to bed! 'Yes, just leave it now, it should get cooler overnight'

They've just had the new boiler installed and every day is a new tale of woe, which is probably our fault for telling them who we used for our boiler.

Roll on Christmas.

This reminded me of going on holiday with friends. (in May, in the UK, it was raining but warm). These friends used to always dry clothes on radiators which was fine in their own home. The actual room temperature was about 21/22. They kept putting the heating on (which was set to maybe 20) and both of them were utterly bemused that the heating was "broken" and wouldn't come on. The dh is an engineer fgs. I tried and tried to explain. Clearly they thought the heating should somehow know to come on as their laundry was damp.

Sometimes I question whether I had got it wrong. Have I? My understanding is that if a heating system thermostat is set to 20 it will only switch on when the room temperature falls below 20!

YANBU of course. :)

Erm, yanbu

TBF, the real problem is your FIL hasn't understood the display is flicking between the temperature the thermostat's set to, and the room temperature.

Good old non-digital displays just show what the thermostat is set to. So no wonder he's confused.

(No such excuse for onepieceofcremeegg's engineer friends!)

'TBF, the real problem is your FIL hasn't understood the display is flicking between the temperature the thermostat's set to, and the room temperature.'

Yes, and when I went online and got an instruction manual, which he could have read at any time, I figured it out immediately.

And then I hear MIL in the background telling him the same thing---she knew what the problem was but he never listens to her. I seriously don't know how she puts up with it. DH says this is typical, he never listens to anyone in his immediate family and never reads instructions.

At least I can rest tonight knowing I've saved some poor person the joy of my FIL on the phone demanding they come out to his house and sort out his thermostat again.