Analog max/min thermometer
I adore keeping track of the
weather, but I've been on strike for the last two years. You see,
the little digital max/min thermometers I'd been buying kept keeling
over after six months or a year, and I'm just not keen on throwaway
products.
I think I've finally
found the solution --- an
analog thermometer that still records maximum and minimum temperatures, for the same price as those
disposable digitals. Unless I drop it or hit it with a brick, I
can't think what might go wrong.
The Sper Scientific
thermometer is so simple it's ingenious. The column of mercury is
bent into a U-shape so that you can read the temperature both on the
right and on the left. Each side of the column also has a
colored, magnetized something-or-other inside the tube, so when the
temperature increases (on the max side) or decreases (on the min side),
the mercury pushes the colored marker in front of it. The marker
doesn't retreat to follow the mercury when the latter shrinks back
down, so you're left with a reminder of what the maximum or minimum
temperature was. Then you use a little magnet (attached to a
string so you don't lose it) to pull the markers back down onto the top
of the mercury column, resetting the maximum and minimum recordings.
Reading the thermometer does
take a bit of getting used to. First, if you're accustomed to
Fahrenheit, you have to remember to read the small numbers. And
you also have to realize that the numbers on the minimum (left) side go
from low numbers at the top to high numbers at the bottom rather than
vice versa. Finally, the markers only delineate two degree
intervals, so you won't get the same precision you see in a digital
thermometer.
But I don't mind a
slight learning curve if I've finally found a thermometer that will go
the distance. We got our new thermometer up and running just in
time to record last week's crazy temperatures --- a low of 42 one
night, followed soon thereafter by three days that hit 102. Maybe
it would have been less painful if I didn't know how hot it was?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Anna, have you used this new analog thermometer in a greenhouse/tunnel or humid structure yet? We lose the digital thermometers in less than 6 mos in the greenhouse - we've given up as well. Winter gardening with no added heat - we need to find a new solution for recording highs and lows. Thank you for this!! We're going to order one soon! Peace, michele