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Hey Ed, How Does an Electronic Thermostat Work?


In This Edition of “Hey Ed,” Ed Discusses How an Electronic Thermostat Works

Hey Ed, how does an electronic thermostat work? A lot better than the thermostats of the days of your. I think that's a good way to sum it up. Back in the day, we used Mercury bulb thermostats and as the name implies, it was a bulb or a glass bulb that had mercury in it and it had a couple of wires hanging in the bulb and it had what would be called a bimetal disc and it's two dissimilar metals that are fused together and they react differently to temperature and it moves when it gets warm or it moves when it gets cold and that's what would make and break those two contact points that would be inside that bowl. A good product but again, something that we would use in the past. An electronic thermostat is going to use some kind of much more reliable set of electronic contacts that are going to open and close based off of the signal where the I guess we would call mechanics of that electronic thermostat to cycle the equipment on and off. The modern thermostats much more reliable, much more dependable product and that's the way I see it.

In This Edition of “Hey Ed,” Ed Discusses How an Electronic Thermostat Works

Ed Janowiak

Ed Janowiak is the Manager of HVAC Design Education at ACCA.


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Posted In: Hey Ed, Technical Tips

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