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How low can you go? |
11 Comments |
| By Matt Mayer in Climate Change, Conservation, Green Living | February 7, 2007 | ||
I came across this blog post recently (I think from the Energy Bulletin group) and it led to an interesting train of thoughts in my house.
The jist of the blog post is that this blogger, Amanda Kavattana, started turning her furnace down manually rather than using a programmable thermostat. It led to an interesting development as they determined that even with the programmable thermostat they were keeping their house too warm when no one was there. Eventually they started wearing extra clothing indoors to try to keep the house temperature even lower, in effect,
they were trying to see how low they could go. And they would go so far as to just turn the heat off and wear more clothing.
This led my wife and I to try an experiment at our house wherein we started turning down the heat even further at night. Eventually we got down to 58 degrees before our boys would make comments about how cold it was the night before. With some fine tuning we’ve settled on 60 as the optimum temperature at night for our house so that we don’t have to listen to any complaining. (As a side note, we had a problem with our boys sleeping sans pajamas before, but this problem has cleared itself up as the temperature came down in the house.)
Previously we would turn the temperature down, but we never thought to push it down as low as we could to see what the lowest tolerable temperature was. Why? I have no idea. The thought just hadn’t occured to us. We just decided on a number and used it without seeing if that number was the right fit for us.
I’m encouraging you to see how low you can go and turn down that temperature until you get to a level that is not tolerable. Then find the right one just a little above that. If you want to use a programmable thermostat to do that once you find the right temps, go ahead, but we’ve found just turning it on and off works just fine at our house.
Your pocket book will thank you and the earth will thank you.
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Groovy Green story « Fat Guy on a Little Bike said,
[...] 7th, 2007 · No Comments I wrote what I think is an interesting story over at GroovyGreen. [...]
Jeff said,
We slowly lowered the thermostat until we hit our uncomfortable point. It’s currently set at 64. It worked – our latest gas bill (the house is all-electric except for heat) was quite a bit lower.
Steve Balogh said,
We do 60 during the day (when were at work), and 64 at night while we sleep. The rest of the time it is difficult to get below 68 degrees comfortably. This is due to there being no insulation in the walls of my Upstate NY home. (That’s next year’s project…)
Amy said,
I recently found out that our local gas company will give you a $250 rebate if you buy a high efficiency furnace (over 92%) and a $20 rebate if you buy a programmable thermostat. I’m sure that our gas company isn’t the only one in the world doing this.
You can also get a break of $150 on your federal income taxes for having a very high efficiency furnace (over 95%). I don’t know if that’s a one time thing, or if it happens every year. I forgot to ask.
Our 44 year old furnace is on its last legs, so we’re in the market. Last night it was 55 degrees in the house, but not on purpose.
turtlebella said,
My husband and I are always trying to stay low on the heat setting, both due to environmental and $$ reasons. We’ve routinely done 60-62 at night, but you are right, I just chose those numbers because…they’re even? They seem right? Who knows?! I am going to try setting it a bit lower.
Our current problem is that we’ve moved into a new-to-us old (1889) house with radiators where the downstairs is freezing – partly due to large windows that look out onto an unheated porch. And the fact that the outside temp has rarely been much above 0 degrees (F) since we moved in several weeks ago. We sit in the living room with layers and layers of sweaters and fleeces and hats on. Which is not pleasant. And so I have been guiltily creeping the thermostat up. I feel awful when it hits 67, especially since it doesn’t really help all that much! And of course it’s hotter than Hades upstairs! We finally decided that this was goofy and stupid and are getting some storm windows. (Frankly, I’m not really sure why there aren’t ones on there already, I think because the former owners had this delusion that the porch could be a 4 season porch without having properly insulated it and had a fricken electric baseboard heater out there).
BerryBird said,
We have a programmable thermostat, and use it, although it initially caused me much consternation before I figured out how to use it properly–the previous homeowners kept the heat at 70 degrees 24 hours a day. I panicked and shut off the heat when it hit 67.
I have it programmed to drop to 56 degrees at night, and a balmy 62 degrees when we are home. At night, I would take it even lower if I felt sure the pipes wouldn’t freeze. How can that safely be determined? 62 degrees for hanging out is not comfortable by many people’s standards, but we dress in layers and keep blankets by the couch. It bugs the hell out of me when people heat their homes to a level where they can comfortably wear short sleeves all winter. Put on a sweater!
Another technique we use is to delay turning the heat on in the fall for as long as possible. After several years’ experimentation, we settled on a November 1st deadline: no heat before then. It sounds silly, but it really helps ward off temptation to have a fixed goal.
Crafty Green Poet said,
We don’t have the heating on at all overnight or if we’re out of the house. I don’t know what the temperature is when we’re in but its not set too high. We wear extra clothing if we need it.
Ohiorganic said,
I was keeping my thermostat set at 60F during the day and 57F at night (with all the vents closed in the bedroom so the sleeping area is likely closer to 50F). But when our temps dipped to below zero with much colder windchills we found at 60F our pipes were freezing up so had to put the heat up to 63F (which is the UN reccomendation-no house should go below this in winter).
This is the first time I have lived with central heat in about 15 years. I am used to heating with a woodstove and having the house hot in some rooms and freezing in others. Moved last year to a new house and put in a brand new Hi Efficiency gas heater this past fall. gas is a lot cheaper than electric, I’ll tell you what.
Dan said,
I keep my programmable thermostat set at 56 at all times during the week and I crank it up to a balmy 60 on the weekends when I’m home more. I’m usually wearing a long sleeve shirt and fleece pull over and hat during the week, but I manage just fine. The neighbors probably see me and think I’m nuts.
Luckily my girlfriend likes cold weather and keeps her thermostat set at 60 and would go colder if she didn’t have a old dog and cat. Her grown up niece lived with her for awhile after college and they compromised at setting it at 65 while they were home and even then her niece would complain about how cold the house was and would try to turn up the temp when my girlfriend wasn’t looking.
I’m with Berry Bird and advocate putting on a sweater when you get cold and see how long you can go before you turn on the heat each fall. Our recent ancestors seemed to get along ok using less heat and so can we.
Sherri said,
Even though I grew up on the Gulf and DH grew up in the Panhandle, it seems that during sleep, he can’t handle the cold as well (but he can handle it a lot better while he’s awake). So I can’t see how low we can go, because he’ll turn it on after it gets close to 60F.
I’m used to layering in the house, because our Yankee mother wouldn’t turn on the heat until we were layered. But she was quick to turn on the AC cold enough to make us cold during the summer LOL.
I’m not really sure, but I’d bet we get more 100+ days than we get freezing nights every year — with utility prices the way they have been, and wanting to decrease our footprint, we’ve got insulation work ahead of us too.
urbanmike said,
We’re renting at the moment, its averaging -5 at night and 2 during the day, and our indoor temperature is controlled by the upstairs tenants. They are not real considerate when it comes to keeping a regular temperature, but we’re getting prepared for keeping the costs down when we get our own place.
It’s probably more important to invest in good insulation and gap fixtures rather than just turning the heat down, if you don’t improve the conditions, you are burning money.