Any suggestions for thermostat wars?

M1

Goodness this is annoying.  My partner is cold ALL of the time, and she's always goosing the thermostat up on heat, while I'm suffocating and goosing it back down on cool  Unfortunately the separate rooms do not have separate controls.  I know this is common, but it's another thing that keeps us in separate parts of the house.  She has an electric blanket on her bed, a gas fireplace in her bedroom, and an electric blanket for when she's sitting on the couch in the living room--but still, she runs the heat way up to where I'm miserable in all of the rooms.  Really gets so we spend less and less time together, and that makes me sad.  If anyone out there has come up with something that is tolerable, I'd love to know about it.  She's mildly anemic and on a selective beta blocker, and I know many 80 year olds get cold--but it's one more thing that eats into our relationship.....

Ed1937

Sorry you're going through this. I know it can be bad. My wife is also cold, but she doesn't know how to turn the heat up. I give her a sweatshirt, then put a blanket over her. Sometimes she'll wear her winter coat. I'm counting my blessings. Wish I had a fix for you. I'm not very familiar with the thermostats you can control online, but I wonder if it could be something to consider?

Stuck in the middle

Marriage has been defined as a relationship between a person who can't sleep with the window open and another who can't sleep with the window closed, but what you describe is extreme.  

I get colder than DW so I wear thermal underwear and a cap all winter.  A person loses a lot of heat through the top of the head, especially if the hair is thin.  If your LO will wear a beanie she just might love it.  My mother wore a knit cap nearly all the time in her 80s and 90s.

There's an old joke about the guy who installed two thermostats, one that worked and one for his wife to adjust.  

LadyTexan

This has been a problem for us too. DH can't stay warm. 

During the winter, he was bumping the thermostat up to 80 degrees. Our bills were out of this world. I have since put a portable oil heater in the room where he watches TV all day. That has been working for now.

Mint

I am not tech savvy but believe have heard someone say you can have a thermostat installed that you control it with an app.  She would not be able to change it then is my thought process.  Don’t know if that would work for you or not but a thought.

Marie58

Slippers, like a hat, can make a difference too. If I have cold feet, I'm cold all over. Will she wear slippers? Or thick, non-skid slipper-socks?

M1

She wears slippers and socks all the time; not sure she would go for a cap but it's a thought.  She's pretty vain about her hair. Our units are due for a spring tuneup, I'll ask about a thermostat upgrade when our heat and air guy is here but I think one she couldn't control would p-ss her off, bigtime.  My daughter gave her a wonderful heated blanket for the living room at Christmas, but now she's put it up somewhere and neither one of us can find it.  Sigh.  No telling.  How many places could she possibly put it?  I'm afraid she may have put it in a garbage bag and thrown in out by mistake, she's done that before too.  With a handmade quilt her mother made.

Lills

I had to smile when I read the title of your post.  My mother had Alz. and every time she walked past the thermostat, she turned the heat up high.  Like you, my dad was miserable!

Dad did purchase a new thermostat and had a cover put on.  I Googled "locked thermostat" but didn't find the kind my dad bought. 

 http://energycut.com.au/business/step-07/how-to-stop-people-changing-the-thermostat/

A fiblet or two might be in order here.  Maybe the electric company is now requiring all units to have the same new thermostat, etc.  Or, Gee, I just hate this new thermostat because it regulates the temperature of the room automatically.  Etc. 

Good luck.  

Gig Harbor

That might be a brilliant fix. Put a box with air flow over the working thermostat and put a fake one on the wall a distance away for her to play with. My husband wears a shirt, a vest and a jacket in the house all day. I leave the thermostat at 70.

Ed1937

Lills wrote:

A fiblet or two might be in order here.  Maybe the electric company is now requiring all units to have the same new thermostat, etc.  Or, Gee, I just hate this new thermostat because it regulates the temperature of the room automatically.  Etc. 

That's a great thought. Blame it on the service company.

feudman

Stuck in the middle wrote:

There's an old joke about the guy who installed two thermostats, one that worked and one for his wife to adjust.  

This "joke" worked for me. I left the original in place & wired a new one hidden behind a wall clock. She never realized it didn't work.

You can find more suggestions if you search the forums with your question (its come up multiple times).

P.S.: the thermostats you control from your phone incur a monthly charge, and may still be adjustable conventionally. The locking covers can reportedly cause more problems than you have now.

ElaineD

Lots of good ideas here.  I am always too hot, always.  My DH is too cold, always. I sleep with a small fan blowing on me, to tolerate a temperature of 72 at night.  I would prefer 65-68, and the window open in the winter at night...but that is impossible for DH to bear.

And the battle continues over the thermostat when the AC is on, too.  

It helps me know it isn't 'all in his mind' or general contrariness.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4620514/#:~:text=Here%20we%20have%20shown%20that,reported%20for%20temperature%20than%20pain.

"Here we have shown that altered experience of pain and temperature is common in the major dementia syndromes. Altered behavioural responses to both pain and temperature were frequently reported but more often reported for temperature than pain. "

Also: 

1.  Buy a humidifier (we have used large ones since 1969).  I have a dryness condition (Sjogren's) and it helps a lot.  We  run it as soon as we switch to heat each year.  With a good humidifier you can keep the temperature several degrees lower.

2.  Buy a small humidistat .so you know the humidity in the room.  I turn the humidifier up or down and keep the humidity at least at 50%.

3. We used to have one of those electric radiant heaters that warms one person.  https://www.amazon.com/Radiant-Heaters/s?k=Radiant+Heaters

4. Throw-sized electric blanket?

5. Fingerless gloves actually work.  See if she will wear those,  Check to see if her hands are cold.

6.  Does your DW read the actual room temperature or just push the button to raise the heat setting when she feels cold? There are thermostats which allow you to set a HOLD/LOCKED temperature (combination of buttons at the bottom.)  Then when the temperature setting is raised or lowered, the actual 'set temperature' stays the same.  Does your DW read the actual room temperature or just push the button to raise the temperature when she feels cold?

7. How are you treating the 'mild anemia'?  Feeling cold is one of the symptoms.  Talk with your doctor about increasing her iron supplement until her mild anemia is gone.  

This is a very difficult issue.  Research shows that office productivity is affected by temperature: The golden office temperature for heightened productivity is somewhere between 71.6 and 77 degrees. Anything above or below that will lead to decreased productivity.

I  had to lock the thermometer and take away the key in the office I managed.  Talk about thermostat wars!  And of course the men were always too hot in their suits, socks and heavier shoes and the women were always too cold in their light dresses (worn even in the winter).

Elaine

harshedbuzz

M1-

That's a difficult situation. The temperature regulation thing went quite early on with my dad in part because of his Wernicke-Korsakoff's which specifically targets the part of the brain that handle the task. I recall watching him get up on a warm July morning in coastal MD and turning the heat up to 85F. I thought I was going to suffocate. 

Some strategies we tried with limited success. 

1. Dressing dad appropriately for his own quirky thermostat. He seemed to develop sensory issues as the disease progressed and left to his own devices would have chosen to wear cotton knit athletic shorts and short sleeved tees. Getting him into warmer clothes with an additional layer or 2 helped. In the winter he would agree, sometimes, to silk long underwear. Vests can be a good layer, too. Dad had a very lightweight Polartec that we'd sometimes add if he'd been complaining he was cold.

2. When mom replaced her HVAC system, the new thermostat could be controlled by a smartphone app. Technology has never been my 83 year old mom's strongest skill, so often I'd get a call to tweak it from my phone. 

3. Hats helped a lot. Warm socks can, too. Just be careful they've got gripper treads on the bottoms. A nice fleece slipper would work too. I swear by the LLBean ones.

4. We warmed the area where he sat with a small ceramic heater that took the edge off for him but didn't impact the room temperature much for others. He also had a down throw he liked to use.

5. They had a Company Store comforter that was designed with 2 levels of filling so one side was much, much warmer than the other. 

I hope you can find a way to be comfortable in the same space. 

HB

M1

Thanks for all of the suggestions.  I mentioned a hat yesterday and she immediately nixed it.  I'll talk to our HVAC guy about thermostat updates; since she built the house, she wants and expects control over this kind of thing, but I'll see if there are any workarounds we haven't thought of.  We've got every kind of blanket, etc. we can think of--and with her own gas fireplace, I don't know that we can do any better than that.  But it means she stays in her bedroom, and I stay elsewhere.  It's been a long cold spring in our parts, maybe when the weather actually stabilizes it will improve, but I'm not optimistic.  I think it's just physical reinforcement of the emotional separations that are already in place.  Always sad.....trying to be grateful for the little things.  It could be worse.

Re the anemia:  chronic and unfixable, she has mild renal insufficiency, age-related, and lymphoma.  So no easy solutions there, it's not iron deficiency.  It just is what it is.....