What Temperature is Your Thermostat Set?

[Rich Riddle]

To those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, summer's quickly approaching. In the bank on Friday a man was complaining the bank was too hot for comfort. They had the thermostat set at 74 degrees. The one in our house is set to 78 degrees. Seems people want to be cold in the summer and hot in the winter. We grew up in an old farm house with a gravity furnace and no air conditioning. Learned to make peace with the elements.

So at what temperature is your thermostat? Is it your doing, another's preference, or a compromise?

[Phil Thien]

Well I do 78 in the summer but the women insist on 72-73 in the winter. They (women) are impossible. I've decided that this next winter, they'd better stock-up on fleece.

[George Bokros]

We set 70 daytime in winter an 67 nite time in winter. Summer 75 day time and 70 nite time

[Jason Roehl]

Summer: 77ºF day, 78º night whenever the dew point is above 60ºF and/or the temp is above about 85º outside.
Winter: 66ºF day, 60º night.

I've found that having the lower temperature in the house in the winter helps me become acclimated to the colder temps outside in the winter. I definitely don't handle the heat as well as I used to, and don't mind the cold near as much, either.

If I spend a day working outside in the heat, I'll drive the whole way home with the A/C on MAX and the fan on its highest setting.

[Brad Adams]

74 now during the summer months, 70 in the winter

[Bruce Page]

We had refrigerated air installed last month so I’m still experimenting. Right now we’re at 74 daytime & 69 at night. During the winter we set the furnace at 72 daytime and 65 any night.
I will probably make adjustments after the first bill..:rolleyes:

[Brian Elfert]

I sold my house recently, but I set the A/C on 75 degrees and left it that way for the entire summer. I had separate zones, but if I turned the temp up on first floor at night I would freeze upstairs. (Heat flowed up the stairway to the upstairs thermostat.) In the winter I had the thermostat at 69 degrees when I was home. At night I set the first floor to 60 degrees and the second floor to 66 degrees.

A/C can feel very cold or very hot even when the temp is still 75 degrees in the house. If it is 90 degrees outside the A/C runs a lot and it feels cold in the house. If it is 65 degrees outside the house can feel very hot. New central A/C units now have humidity control which helps when it is cool, but humid.

[John C Lawson]

Cool to 78 in the summer, heat to 73 in the winter. Separate zone upstairs is one degree warmer. I live in Texas. When we moved here from New Jersey seven years ago, we cooled to 68 and heated to 63. It seems we're acclimating.

[Shawn Pixley]

Winter, furnace can only be turned on after Thanksgiving. We use a sophisticated programmable thermostat. The hottest setpoint is 68 degree F. Weekdays, set to cycle on once before I leave for work. Then the thermostat holds heating set point at 68 from 6PM to 10 PM. Then it steps back to 62 F for overnight. The furnace usually doesn't kick on over night. Typically, the furnace is turned off in February. LOML and I are happy with sweaters to make ourselves comfortable if we are moving around. Our house is pretty well made and insulated properly.

Summer, everything is off. We don't have AC. We regulate the temp with open doors / windows and a few portable fans.

About 15 miles away in the valley, AC has been running for a couple months. One of my co-workers runs $1,600 monthly electric bills in the summer. I think most set it between 70-72 F.

[Rick Potter]

Programmable thermostat, usually off in daytime till 2 or 3, off at nite, except for those few hot humid nites (maybe 20 per year). Windows open at nite all year.

All subject to change at whim of any of four women I live with. I have surrendered to the inevitable.

Rick P

[Rich Enders]

Our set points are 68F if heating, and 82F if cooling.

[paul cottingham]

73 heating, 76 or 75 for cooling. Heat really bothers me, due to my shunt. Fortunately, we live in a very temperate climate.

[Jay Jolliffe]

63 all year round...In winter we throw more wood in the wood stove & summer we turn on the window air conditioner upstairs...as heat rises.

[Brian W Smith]

We have a combination of systems.Some utilize thermostats one dosen't.

Our whole 3 sp house fan is in the ceiling above entry hall,no "stat".About 3-4 months out of the year we run that......and love it.This year's been bad for pollen,which will get sucked in.It also will suck in any,visiting skunks that travel by,haha.But we really like it.

AC is composed of split units.One up,one down.It's actually cheaper to run both......in Summer,set them at 75 and put a padlock on stat.It runs when it needs to,and because it's a pretty big house(rediculously efficient),it dosen't run at night.House design/HVAC is too complicated for discussion.It's like a heat sink,but works both ways......heats itself in Winter,cools itself in Summer.

Our furnace has three functions.Its a "heatpump",HVAC that's honestly,practically worthless with the elec. strip heaters.The main heat system is an engineered combination furnace,about 30 y.o. and too complicated for discussion.It's an oil/wood system.Painfully cheap to run,and have seen the kids when they were youngins,leave ext. doors open in Jan/Feb.......wifey and I would just smile and close the door.We usually set the stat for about 75.

[Rich Riddle]

Well I do 78 in the summer but the women insist on 72-73 in the winter. They (women) are impossible. I've decided that this next winter, they'd better stock-up on fleece.
That's a can of worms best left alone. It might be easier to find alternatives..... Good luck.

[Brian Kent]

Always off at night. AC at 74 or off. Heater at 68 or off.

[Jim Matthews]

I'm with JJ on this one.

I set my programmable thermostats, divided into four zones to reach no more than
68 degrees during Winter. If we need it warmer, I burn more wood.

Rooms are only heated to max temp when in use.

(It was mild here, last year.)

[Myk Rian]

78 summer. 64 winter, with it turned down to 56 at night.

[Ole Anderson]

Winter: 65 at night, and we are up to 71 during the day. In the summer I prefer the windows open (ah, Pure Michigan!), but when it gets hot and sticky, the air gets set at 76. Programmable thermostat tied to our security system so I can change temp from my smart phone.

[Jim Becker]

Summer when AC is active... 78º F
Winter when heat is active... 68º F

I pay the PECO bill so I set the temps. ;) Since my office is at home, we do not use setbacks.

[David Weaver]

Summer 80 degrees. When it's not that hot out and it's humid, we might cut that down a couple of degrees to let the A/C take some of the moisture out of the air.

Winter- 68-70, depending on how cold it is outside. Our thermostat is dead center in the house, so it'll actually be a degree or two cooler out in the rooms if it's really cold out.

[Garth Almgren]

No A/C here, except for a portable one for the few days we get over 80. Our programmable thermostat for the furnace is set to heat only: 68 when people are home, and 62 when they're not.

[Bill McNiel]

Winter (Thanksgiving to Spring Training) = 70 daytime, 55 at night. Rest of the year nothing, no AC, don't need it.

[Ryan Mooney]

Summer 80 when we start running it. Up till now we've been just opening up at night and closing up during the day which creeps up to maybe 84-85 on a hot day. Above about 80 our one dog has a hard time keeping up with his breathing nowadays though so I don't usually let it stay there to long. If the pollen is really bad we might close up late spring sometimes for a few days and hold at 80 instead of opening the windows at night (happened for about 2 weeks this year pollen was horrible).

Winter 65 or sometimes 68 if I have some beer going that wants a higher temp (and the one room stays a smidge warmer than that).

Thermostat is programmable but on a heat pump it doesn't seem to help that much fiddling with set points as the catch up costs you some.

Unity on this decision!

[Stew Hagerty]

Well, let me start by saying that my friends & family refer to my home as "the igloo".

Thanks to my neurological disorder, my internal thermostat does not work as it should. I find it increasingly difficult to be comfortable as the temperature rises above 70. I keep my heat/AC set at 66 during the daytime and 62 at night year-round.

It costs a small fortune during the summer but we make up for it during the winter.

I have my garage shop fully insulated and air conditioned (14,000 BTU, dual hosed, portable AC unit), but I have to stop working most of the summer (exterior temp 90 and up) as the shop temperature rises above 75.

[Phil Thien]

Well some of you may have seen my other thread about thermostats with a circulate feature. This is a feature that turns on your blower for ten minutes of every half hour.

In the past I had run my blower 24/7, to even-out the temperature fluctuations throughout the house. My home, as well as my daughter's, also have a single duct in the basement and running the blower helps remove all the moisture in the basement (or at least average it down).

But running the blower 24/7 costs approx. $30/month, and was probably unnecessary. So these new thermostats will save me up to $20/month in electricity. It seemed worth it to me. Thermostats than can do this are available for as low as $31. The ones I got were $41 and have more programming features.

But anyhow, I installed one of the thermostats at my place and one at the daughter's. And I noticed that they come preset to the EnergyStar recommendations (listed in the table below). It says the schedule is designed to lower energy costs year-round. When I removed the old thermostat I learned that the temps had been more or less changed to about 74 year-around.

I'm leaving these settings. But I admit I think sleeping at 82 in the summer is going to be a challenge for me.




Time
Cooling F
Heating F


Morn
6am
78
70


Day
8am
85
62


Eve
6pm
78
70


Nite
10pm
82
62

[Jason Roehl]

Phil, if your house is at 78ºF at 10pm, I would think that it probably won't change much from that overnight in WI, provided you don't do any late-night baking.

[Brian Elfert]

I'm surprised how cool a lot of you keep your houses in the winter. To me, 69 degrees is already cool enough. I know one can add layers, but at 62 or 64 degrees the hands are likely to feel cold. Maybe I'm just lucky that I had a newer house with great insulation that cost little to heat. I would probably think differently if I was pay 20 to 30 cents a KW like some of you.

[Joe Tilson]

My wife insist on 68 in the summer and 68 in winter, therefore I freeze in both seasons. I will be glad when the hormones quit causing hot flashes. While she goes to work I jack it up, or wear fleece year round. I have to say, earlier in our marriage it was the other way around. Found out I was dibetic.

[Rod Sheridan]

For heating we set it at 20 occupied, 16 non occupied.

Cooling is set at 25 occupied, not used when non occupied...............Rod.

[Rich Riddle]

I didn't realize Canadians used the metric system for temperature.

[Robert Delhommer Sr]

I like 68 daytime in winter an 65 nite time in winter. Summer 75 or 76 day time and 72 night time.

[Frank Drew]

I don't have central air or heat, so I live with a bit more heat and cold than many; uncomfortable sometimes, but it hasn't killed me yet.

As for women and temperature, I work with mostly women and I swear they have a comfort zone that doesn't tolerate a variance of more than 1.5 degrees!

[Jim Becker]

I didn't realize Canadians used the metric system for temperature.

Hah! Most of the world uses metric measurement and the Celsius scale for temps..."we" have to be different for some reason... :o

[Jason Roehl]

Hah! Most of the world uses metric measurement and the Celsius scale for temps..."we" have to be different for some reason... :o

We just haven't felt the need to follow measurement fads. ;)

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Thermostat??? What's that? I have been 13 years in the Caribbean. I open the windows and let the air blow through. If it gets cool, I shut the windows. Average temps are around 84 deg. If it gets below 80 I throw a blanket on the bed. I am not kidding. At 78F I am shivering and wear a jacket. It's all about conditioning yourself. I am amazed when I travel and see folks in the summer set thermostats at 68 degrees (and even less) and in the winter they crank it up to 80. We (humans) waste so much energy.

[David Weaver]

It's funny you mention that malcolm. I've tried to convince my wife we should go the other way more. We are at 68 winter and 80 summer, or thereabouts, and I think we could get used to 62 or 64 in the winter, and in the summer, to me, the use of the A/C is more about humidity reduction than temperature here. It gets humid enough without the A/C that things start to happen - like books get molded after an esp. humid stretch, etc.

I could live without A/C, though. Never had it until I was about 16.

My wife isn't on board with my stinginess, though. That's the bottom line.

[Jason Roehl]

I'm kind of with you on that, David, except that in the last few years, I've noticed I'm losing my tolerance for heat, particularly when it's humid. I used to be in my element when it was 95ºF and humid out, but now that would mean I'd be a hot, dripping mess if I even stepped outside in those conditions. On the other end, I can deal with the cold pretty well. I'll dress for the conditions when I'm out plowing snow, so if I end up out in it, I'm fine. But, I'm often comfortable in a t-shirt and shorts at 50ºF.

[David Weaver]

As time has gone on, I've gotten to be a bit of a wuss about real heat, too (like 95 degree temps). When I was a kid, we used fans and I was OK with them. I'd figure that I could get used to that again in a matter of a year, but wife and kids aren't going to allow that to happen.

I'm enamored with the idea of turning the heat down to about 55 or so and heating the immediate area where you sit with something radiative and in the 100 watt range.

i like to follow the way out there ideas sometimes, just to get a perspective from further away than "just turn the heat down two more degrees".

http://www.richsoil.com/electric-heat.jsp

In the winter, this wouldn't cover everything I do in the house, but when I'm in the shop, I like 50-55 degrees, anyway, because I'm using a lot of hand tools.

Plus like a lot of people, I have a certain sort of satisfaction when I'm not using something. My bugaboo at <65 degrees is if I'm working at a computer, my fingers get stiff. It looks like 80 watts or so would pretty much remove that problem.

[Rod Sheridan]

I didn't realize Canadians used the metric system for temperature.

Hi Rich, we went metric in the 1970's, there are no Imperial units in official use any longer........Strangely I was in England last fall, the country is metric except for road speed limits.

Buying fuel in litres and seeing miles per hour signs was pretty funny........Rod.

P.S. Just returned from working in the Shenandoah valley, beautiful area....

[Rod Sheridan]

We just haven't felt the need to follow measurement fads. ;)

LOL....A few years ago I decided to find out why the US system was different from the Imperial system.

I had always assumed that after the Revolutionary War the US had modified their measurement system as a rejection of the British system.

Nope, I was wrong, you kept the old Imperial system and England updated theirs so that they are now different.

Weird, exactly the opposite of what I thought had happened...............Rod.

[Belinda Barfield]

Being an Impossible Woman, I'll chime in here. Savannah can be brutal for heat and humidity. There are ceiling fans in every room except the kitchen and baths. For summer nights the thermostat is set to 75, and goes up to 80 for the daytime hours I'm not home. Unless I'm really doing some serious cleaning, I leave the thermostat at 80 on weekend days. Spring and fall, all open windows and fans. Winter? Well that varies as we either have no real winter or an extremely (for us) cold winter. Unless we are down into the 30s or lower, windows open at night and no heat really needed during the day. I have been known to build a fire and open the windows on Christmas.

[Brian Elfert]

As time has gone on, I've gotten to be a bit of a wuss about real heat, too (like 95 degree temps). When I was a kid, we used fans and I was OK with them. I'd figure that I could get used to that again in a matter of a year, but wife and kids aren't going to allow that to happen.


I'm a complete wuss about heat of any kind with humidity. I will air condition my car when it is 60 degrees out if it is humid. I very rarely do not use the A/C in my car from mid May through mid Sept and I live in Minnesota. The house I sold was kept at 75 degrees all the time during the summer. I did not turn up the temp during the day because 4 pm is the hottest time of the day so it is really hard to cool a house by a number of degrees at that time of day.

I had heat exhaustion twice in 2003. Ever since then I am very sensitive to heat. I bring water and Gatorade any time I will be outdoors for a long time in the heat.

I am looking at a foreclosed house that has electric heat. I am considering geothermal if I buy the house, but I'm not sure the savings are there. Some of the savings calculators say it is only $250 a year less than natural gas for heating alone. I would never in my life buy a house with straight electric heat in Minnesota.

[Ed Wood]

usually keep ac at 74-75 day and night. Heat about 72-73 day and night