Back in the thermostat thread, someone mentioned putting a "dummy" thermostat on the wall to keep people from messing up the HVAC system, and minimize all the complaints. A co-worker and myself replaced the thermostat in the repair area with a new electronic one. We then took the old mechanical thermo and installed it over in marketing, where they're always complaining about it being cold or hot, or whatever. The girls are always going over to the repair area and fouling up our stat. The problem is that's not their thermo. Theirs is the one out in the main hallway! The "new" thermostat however doesn't actually do anything!
The trick was that I wanted all the lights to come on in the thermostat showing the system status, so it looked like it was actually doing something. For that, I got some ordinary 8-condutor lo-voltage cable, and ran it from the air handler to the thermostat. At the thermostat though, I only connected up 3 wires...the hot, ground, and "defrost" lines. I did this so that the indicator lights would work. What happens is if one were to go up to the thermostat, and push the lever towards the hot side, the red indicator for heating will light up...but it's not controlling anything....Same goes for the cooling side...the blue light will come on, but no cooling is taking place. When it's really cold out, the heat pump outdoor unit will sometimes freeze up and go into defrost mode. When it does this, the yellow light will come on every so often. I did this just to give it the added touch of realism.
The nice thing about this is if one really wanted to activate the thermostat, it's just a matter of going in there and connecting up the rest of the wiring (and dis-connecting the other thermo). I did the job on Friday afternoon, and made a big deal about setting up ladders, pulling cable and all sorts of stuff with the other tech, so that way it would look like we were really "solving" their climate control problem! It's gonna be interesting to see how things transpire, but I imagine I'm gonna get all sorts of thank you's for "solving" their climate control issue!
The trick was that I wanted all the lights to come on in the thermostat showing the system status, so it looked like it was actually doing something. For that, I got some ordinary 8-condutor lo-voltage cable, and ran it from the air handler to the thermostat. At the thermostat though, I only connected up 3 wires...the hot, ground, and "defrost" lines. I did this so that the indicator lights would work. What happens is if one were to go up to the thermostat, and push the lever towards the hot side, the red indicator for heating will light up...but it's not controlling anything....Same goes for the cooling side...the blue light will come on, but no cooling is taking place. When it's really cold out, the heat pump outdoor unit will sometimes freeze up and go into defrost mode. When it does this, the yellow light will come on every so often. I did this just to give it the added touch of realism.
The nice thing about this is if one really wanted to activate the thermostat, it's just a matter of going in there and connecting up the rest of the wiring (and dis-connecting the other thermo). I did the job on Friday afternoon, and made a big deal about setting up ladders, pulling cable and all sorts of stuff with the other tech, so that way it would look like we were really "solving" their climate control problem! It's gonna be interesting to see how things transpire, but I imagine I'm gonna get all sorts of thank you's for "solving" their climate control issue!
:0 
