I have a 7 year old American Standard HVAC system. I am very pleased with it, apart from the fact that the 950 Thermostat loses the runtime history every time there is the briefest power outage. As I live in rural Wisconsin, this is a fact of life and I have several UPSes to overcome this challenge on much of my electrical equipment.
As the furnace is hard wired, I do not think it would be easy to add a code compliant UPS.
I was going to ignore the issue until on a recent trip the furnace (i.e. the 950 Thermostat which controls it) did not come back up after what I assume was a very brief power interruption. I am fairly sure there power interruption was brief, as I have IT equipment that remained up, and the logs show they did not reboot. The HVAC restarted as soon as my housekeeper touched the 950 - I assume there was a "press any key to continue type message". Additionally, I found the clock had reset back to default 2012 date and time.
I have tried speaking to American Standard in the past who said "speak to your dealer". My dealer is very helpful, but is an HVAC contractor and not an IT guru. He has spoken to the distributor who have stated:
- there is no battery in the 950 controller (I had thought there might be a small hearing aid type battery to protect the system against brief power outages, much like a PC)
- they do consider it a warranty failure
I am assuming that if the system does not have a battery, that information must be stored in Nonvolatile Random-access Memory (NVRAM). I suspect that the NVRAM is starting to fail and that at some point it will fail completely, and when it does I expect the HVAC will stop as it will not be receiving any control information.
I would really like to help my dealer get this fixed. If anyone has any suggestions as to the best approach to getting the distributor to take my dealers issues more seriously, I would be interested to hear them.
As the furnace is hard wired, I do not think it would be easy to add a code compliant UPS.
I was going to ignore the issue until on a recent trip the furnace (i.e. the 950 Thermostat which controls it) did not come back up after what I assume was a very brief power interruption. I am fairly sure there power interruption was brief, as I have IT equipment that remained up, and the logs show they did not reboot. The HVAC restarted as soon as my housekeeper touched the 950 - I assume there was a "press any key to continue type message". Additionally, I found the clock had reset back to default 2012 date and time.
I have tried speaking to American Standard in the past who said "speak to your dealer". My dealer is very helpful, but is an HVAC contractor and not an IT guru. He has spoken to the distributor who have stated:
- there is no battery in the 950 controller (I had thought there might be a small hearing aid type battery to protect the system against brief power outages, much like a PC)
- they do consider it a warranty failure
I am assuming that if the system does not have a battery, that information must be stored in Nonvolatile Random-access Memory (NVRAM). I suspect that the NVRAM is starting to fail and that at some point it will fail completely, and when it does I expect the HVAC will stop as it will not be receiving any control information.
I would really like to help my dealer get this fixed. If anyone has any suggestions as to the best approach to getting the distributor to take my dealers issues more seriously, I would be interested to hear them.
source https://hvac-talk.com/vbb/threads/2235302-American-Standard-950-Thermostat-losing-runtime-history?goto=newpost
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