What were you doing at 4:00 am?

Over the past few days, we've noticed that our air conditioning unit would turn on to cool. but then would fail to turn off after reaching the desired temperature. It would go a degree or two below and we'd catch it and turn it off. The other night, Heather turned the a/c back on and forgot to turn it off. So, when I got home yesterday afternoon, it was 67 degrees inside the house. That's going to be a nice electric bill. :) Since the unit is cooling fine, we figured it was just the thermostat. I did some research on the web and saw the type I was going to need. I got the essentials (voltage/for a heat pump/etc) , because our original thermostat isn't made anymore. So, after heather got home from work, I went to Lowe's and got a new one. nothing fancy. Just a digital, non-programmable replacement for the one we had. I got home, took the old thermostat apart, labeled the wires and got it about half way wired when they called me for supper. The Father-in-Law had come over to see the grand kids and cook supper for us, so I didn't want to make him wait for us to eat. After supper, I went back to finishing up the wiring. Everything went together fine and I flipped the circuit breaker to run it all back one. You are expecting me to talk about a fire aren't you? Nope. Everything worked fine. The temp was low enough in the house where the a/c unit didn't come on, so I didn't give it another thought. As we went to bed, the thermostat read 74 and the house temp was 74. Good to go.

About 3:15 am, I woke up. I was hot. Crap. Well, I thought, we've had the problem with the a/c the last few nights, maybe I was just used to sleeping in the 70 degree temp and 74 feels warm right now. I'll think anything to keep me from getting out of bed. A few more minutes and I couldn't take it anymore. I was getting hotter. Crap. I had to go see what the temp said. The readout said 78. Crap. The fan was running, so I walked over to the vent in the floor and put my foot over it. Hot air. Crap! I shut off the unit, pulled off the face plate, got the installation manual and proceeded to check my wiring. My wiring looked good. Crap. So, I got on the web and started researching my original thermostat, the new thermostat and wiring diagrams for units to see exactly what wire was designated for what. After some trial and error, a lot of reading and cross-referencing, I finally figured out the problem. There was one wire that had a double designation on it. "O/B" that I had read earlier that evening as "D/B". Since there was no "D" on the wire plan, I wired it to the "B" post. Once I saw what the two designators were for and that it was actually an "O" and not a "D," I figured it need to be wired to the "D" post and not the "B." I rewired my thermostat and by 4:00 am, the bottom floor was cooling down nicely. The rest of the family doesn't even know I screwed it up. Of course, putting the story out on the web won't help me keep my secret very long, but keeping my ego intact has never been a high priority for me. If it was, I wouldn't write half the stories I do on here.