What Does it Mean when Your Thermostat Says Temporary?

When your thermostat says "temporary", it means that your thermostat is in a temporary hold. The thermostat will hold the building's HVAC system at the set temperature until the temporary hold period expires of the hold is cancelled. The temperature for the temporary hold can be adjusted.

A hold basically tells a thermostat to ignore any schedule that has been put in place and hold the HVAC system at a set temperature. Holds can be either temporary or permanent. A temporary hold has a set time when the hold will automatically expire. At that point, the thermostat will resume its normal schedule. This should not be confused with a permanent hold, which will not expire on its own at any point. Any permanent hold will need to be cancelled by the user before the normal schedule can be resumed.

A user can extend the temporary hold period to keep the temperature set for a longer period if needed. They can also increase or decrease the held temperature, or they can cancel the temporary hold altogether. On the other hand, a permanent hold will keep the HVAC system at the set temperature and ignore the programmed schedule indefinitely until the user manually cancels the hold.

In order to use a hold, the thermostat must have some type of scheduling feature. Otherwise, there would be no schedule to override with a hold. If that were the case, the user would just be setting the temperature rather than setting a hold. Additionally, a thermostat must actually have a heading and cooling schedule put into place in order for a hold to be active. If no schedule is put in place, then the user is just merely setting the temperature. Remember, the thermostat will need to be able to keep track of date and time in order to use scheduling functions. Once the schedule is in place, a user will be able to override it with temporary and permanent holds.