A West Virginia household entered a new phase of its annual thermostat dispute Thursday after Kevin Hensley declared the house “finally about right” moments before his wife opened two windows.
The announcement came after three weeks in which Hensley resisted turning on the furnace, repeatedly assuring family members that the house would warm up once the sun came around.
According to his wife, Melissa, the sun had been given every reasonable opportunity.
“It came around several times,” she said. “We watched it from under blankets.”
Hensley eventually authorized the heat following a family breakfast during which their youngest daughter wore gloves to butter toast.
He initially set the thermostat to 64.
Melissa raised it to 68.
Kevin lowered it to 66.
For several days, the device displayed numbers determined largely by which spouse had most recently walked through the hallway.
The dispute appeared to reach a settlement Wednesday evening when Hensley emerged from the bedroom wearing shorts and announced that he was comfortable.
Melissa said this was precisely when she became concerned.
“If he’s comfortable in shorts, the rest of us are being slow-cooked.”
By Thursday afternoon, Hensley had raised the thermostat to 74, explaining that the furnace kept shutting off.
Melissa informed him that shutting off was something it was supposed to do.
“Well, it wasn’t doing much for a while,” he said.
The week’s warm afternoons further complicated conditions inside the house, where the heating system continued operating according to instructions Hensley had issued during a chilly morning.
Melissa said she returned from an errand to discover the furnace running, sunlight pouring through the front windows, and Kevin sitting beneath a ceiling fan.
“He said the fan was to circulate the heat,” she recalled. “It was circulating me toward divorce.”
Asked why he had not lowered the thermostat, Hensley said he did not want to lose the temperature he had worked to establish.
“You get everything warmed up, then you go messing with it.”
Melissa responded by opening the living room window.
Hensley immediately noticed.
“You’re letting all the heat out.”
“Yes,” she said.
The exchange reportedly continued for several minutes as Kevin explained that the family was now paying to heat the outdoors.
Melissa said she understood the arrangement and hoped a breeze might improve it.
Their oldest daughter described the household’s temperature as difficult to predict.
“You put on a sweatshirt because Dad says it’s cold,” she said. “Then you come downstairs and he’s dressed for a cookout.”
She has begun storing both a hoodie and a battery-powered fan beside the couch.
Her younger sister said the warmest room was whichever one Kevin had just left.
Hensley’s position on heating costs has also drawn scrutiny from family members who remember his earlier warnings that turning the furnace on would “run the bill through the roof.”
He said those comments referred to unnecessary heating.
“This is different,” he explained. “It’s cold.”
Outside, a neighbor was washing his truck in a T-shirt.
Hensley said some people run hot.
At 3:15 p.m., Melissa turned the furnace off entirely.
Kevin discovered the change within eleven minutes, despite remaining in the same recliner beneath the same ceiling fan.
“I can feel it already,” he said.
Melissa checked the thermostat.
The house had cooled from 76 degrees to 76 degrees.
Kevin attributed the reading to where the thermostat was mounted.
“It don’t know what it feels like over here.”
The family briefly considered a compromise involving a lower furnace setting and additional clothing.
Hensley rejected the proposal on the grounds that he should not have to wear a coat inside his own house.
Melissa asked whether he remembered making that exact recommendation to everyone else two weeks earlier.
He said he had meant a hoodie.
By evening, the thermostat had been set to 69, the living room windows were closed, and both spouses described the outcome as something they had agreed to “for now.”
Kevin put on sweatpants.
Melissa put away the fan.
Their daughters resumed normal household activities under what they understood to be a temporary ceasefire.
At press time, Kevin had turned on the gas fireplace.
He said it was for the atmosphere.
The Holler Herald — West Virginia’s Least Reliable News Source.
