I had a similar problem with a Carrier thermostat which gave instructions on programing and stated the temp in F (and equivalent in Celsius). I wrote to the company suggesting that it was inconsiderate to have people convert all Fahrenheit to Celsius when this should have been done by the editor of the manual.
 
I also wrote the following to Bradford White Reference Technical Literature

 

 Dear Sir or Madam:

 

I recently purchased a Bradford White Through the wall Gas water heater, apart from the efficiency, the reason I bought your product over competitors was the inclusion of SI (Metric Units) on your technical data sheet. I applaud Bradford White for the inclusion of metric units on all your literature; this has long been neglected by the industry. I do however have many comments on your installation instructions; my hope being to improve the readability of the instructions for those installers and consumers who actually use the metric system.

 

1.             I regularly find that the editor or writer of instructions too often use an incredibly accurate conversion of a value that is nominal at best. Is a 65 US Gallon water heater exactly this quantity or is this nominal to within one gallon? Could the equivalent be 250 liters, nominally?

2.             Units would be more readable if expressed in millimeters instead of centimeters. Mainly because the value would be a whole number with no decimal point, it�s readily convertible to cm just by moving the decimal place. Again, avoid excessive accuracy for a nominal value. Example: The Drain pan must be no greater than 1-� inches (3.8 cm) deep. This is 38 mm, 40 mm would be a perfectly acceptable value, one millimeter is the thickness of a dime, this is inconsequential!

3.             Vent connector lengths are to the nearest 5 feet, so this could easily be expressed to the nearest one-meter length.

4.             3� and 4� PVC pipe is again nominal, 75 mm and 100 mm would be the equivalent, not 7.6 cm or 10.2 cm.

5.             The same with high altitude pipe lengths, these altitudes are nominal to 1000 feet, rounding to the nearest 1000 meters would work fine.

6.             Again with temperature, approximately 120�F means approximately, not exactly. the equivalent is 50�C not 49�C. Hot water may scald within 5 seconds at a temperature setting of 135�F (57.3�C) I believe the same would happen at 55�C!

 

I believe with the above editing, your manual would be more readable by those of us who use the metric units you provide. Keep up the good work.

 

Michael Payne

----- Original Message -----
To: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: 23/12/03 01:24:02
Subject: [USMA:27927] Residential thermostats

 
 
My White-Rodgers programable thermostat instructs me to program it in Fahrenheit before switching it over to Celsius.  I may understand why that is required.  It may be because there are 9 �F to each 5 �C.  Thus if one wants to change it up or down, usually one has to punch the up or down arrows twice.  This may be because at most times 1 �C is equal to 2 �F (or you could say that usually each punch equals aproximately 0.5 �C. 
 
I have to insist that, to me, changing by 1 �F in the house is very truly and most certainly noticeable.  This leads me to think that thermostats designed for Celsius may need to be calibrated in 0.5 �C increments.  What is done in Europe? 
 
Norm

 
--- Michael Payne
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