Fixing A Minor Thermostat Issue And Google %^&#$

The last time we used the 5’er thermostat for anything was way back in April.  Tuesday morning I was in the rig going through my checklist of things to test when I came to ‘make sure the furnace works’.  I turned the thermostat on to Furnace at 72F and all I got was a flashing ‘E1’ error code.  Now what?  Then, I remembered I had turned off both propane tanks earlier so that must be it!

Wrong!  After the propane tanks were turned on I checked to make sure I could light a burner on the stove to prove that gas was getting through – no problem.  Back to the thermostat, turned it on and it started up as usual but that pesky ‘E1’ code kept flashing.

At the Estuary yesterday, the only snow we saw was up in the hills

My next step was to look at the Dometic manual to see what this E1 code meant.  This was the explanation:

Loss of communication between the Single Zone LCD thermostat and the module board. LCD will cycle between E1 and the previous mode setting. System will shut down.

The recommendation was to take it to a qualified dealer for service which I wasn’t about to do because the system wasn’t shutting down and, in fact, it was working just fine heating up the rig – except for the pesky E1 code.  Instead, I took the short drive over to Arbutus RV to ask the techs there what they thought.  This is where I bought our rig and they’ve always been very helpful with advice.

It was surprisingly warm with the sun shining yesterday

They thought the problem could be a loose connection with one of the modules wires or maybe even a bit of moisture or condensation after sitting so long.  They suggested I re-initialize the thermostat back to its factory settings by doing the following:

Make sure the furnace is off.  Press the “+” button and, while holding it, also press and hold the On/Off Mode button for three seconds. LCD will show “― ― “.   Press the On/Off Mode button again to turn system off.  This completes the initialization.

Hallelujah!  That worked to get rid of the pesky ‘E1’ error code.  I also learned something else new by reading the manual.  I never knew the thermostat could display the actual room temperature.  With the thermostat off, just pressing the “+ or –“ keys will display the actual temperature in the rig.  That’s a handy little feature I wasn’t aware of with Dometic thermostats.

There’s something special about seeing snow up in the hills

While on the subject of things not working as they’re supposed to, I noticed just 2 days ago that my iPad began to display blogs in the Mobile format rather than the Web Version.  Those of you with smartphones who look at blogs on their phones will know that the Mobile Phone template is a truncated version of what we normally see when visiting a blog site.  The iPad, however, is fully capable of displaying an entire blog the same way as on a computer display.

After checking all the settings on my iPad to see if I had mistakenly changed a setting I came up empty.  They were all o.k.  Next, I went to the web to find out what was going on and discovered that the Google Gods, in their infinite wisdom changed the default view for iPads to the Mobile Template.  What?  No explanation given but I suspect it’s just Google rattling Apple’s chain a bit – a little of the Christmas Spirit perhaps!

Our backyard after the snow fell overnight Sunday

I don’t really like looking at my blog on my iPad in Mobile view so I went to the Blogger Dashboard > Template and ‘Disabled’ Mobile View for my blog.  Now it displays on my iPad in web template mode which is what I want.  Hopefully, if enough users complain, and lots are, Google will provide an option so that we can select either Web or Mobile templates as our default for all blogs.

Have a great Wednesday, and thanks again for visiting!