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09 October 2009
AskMeCha: What's your temp? We got a new furnace installed→[More:], so before I program it, what do you normally set your thermostat at these days?
Daytime/nighttime winter/summer heat/AC differences worthy of mention.
I have mine set on automatic so I don't end up fiddling with it and I keep the AC temp at 78 and the heat temp at 68. It can be a bit chilly in the morning and late in the evening, but it's not horrible enough for me to justify fiddling with it and jacking up my electric bill.
I've thought about dropping the heat temp a bit more since I live on the top floor, but I'll see how I feel when it actually starts to get cold and stay cold here (and depending on what my bill looks like in the next few months.)
My central heating boiler has an ancient thermostat that's on a dial. Luckily it doesn't take much to heat up this flat. I normally set it to around 20C (68F) and at the moment that's not high enough for the boiler to kick in.
I have gas central heating, run from a combi-boiler. I also got my latest bill from British Gas and am delighted to find that I am about £250 in credit. What this means is that (a) my monthly payment will be reduced by 50% and (b) that my gas for the winter is already paid for, so I don't have to worry about the cost of putting the heating on.
In the last few years, fuel prices in the UK have skyrocketed. Last winter I was really conscious of not switching on the heating, and instead would curl up on the sofa with one of those microwave grain cushions, putting another in the bed before I turned in. I'd only have the heating on for an hour before got up so the bathroom would be warm for a shower. The cats, naturally, hated this state of affairs. Despite their fur, they love nothing more than lying against a hot radiator.
We set ours at 63 overnight, generally 65-70 during the day, when necessary. But it doesn't get very cold here, so we're rarely fighting against any real cold drafts or anything.
Heat: electric baseboard radiators. 17C/63F during the day and 13C/59F at night (we like it cool). I have, however, been known to nudge it up to 20C/68F during really cold days if it doesn't seem warm enough.
A/C: indoor portable unit. It gets set at 70F and that gets the room temp to about 73-80F depending on outdoor temps. It's set up in my den because of the rats as they're susceptible to overheating.
Heat: gas fired heater for a free-standing one-bedroom apartment, set at 70F when I'm home and it's cold outside (like today), turned down to 60-ish when I'm gone.
I have an air conditioner, but I never use it, as I hate air conditioning more than I hate being hot.
Thermostat? What's that?
Woodstove here. No A/C.
I'm happy if it's above 50F in my bedroom in the mornings here midwinter.
In the summer, it's not really the temp, but the humidity that's the killer.
Ah. Things bounced around a bit but now are regressing toward a mean. 68F sounds like a good temp to me.
My dad constantly complained about being cold and in the last year of his dementia at home started playing with the thermostat "nudge" feature almost hourly, up or down, and generally in a very warm range around 75-77, which I find sweltering. On my own I tended to keep my apartment at 69 or 71 if I wanted to be a bit cozier, but most of the rooms are blocked off in winter. (Back in Evanston I had hot water heat and virtually no control over it, ranging between blistering and clammy with little in-between.) I can't drop the overnight too far as the thermostat is usually several degrees warmer than the upstairs bedrooms, but I'll see if I can get it down to about 58F.
We started using oil-filled space heaters when we discovered that they were waaay cheaper to run than it was to fire up the furnace. Last year we only turned on the furnace when the inside temp got below 60 (and that only happened when the outside temp was 20 or below).
But yay for you on your new furnace! If I had a new, energy-efficient one, I would definitely use it.