<p>“I love my programmable thermostat, it is set to warm the house before I get up and just before I usually get home.”</p>
<p>We love our programmables as well. We have a separate heating and AC system for upstairs and downstairs. This really saves a lot of money. In the morning I have the heating programmed to come on a half hour before I wake up so that even though it runs around 55/58 at night…for just 45 minutes that bathroom and bedroom are a toasty 74. The upstairs AC and HEAT shut off entirely when I leave for work.</p>
<p>I have the zones for the programmable thermostat, too. I admit, it came with the house and I never bothered to learn to program them until a period of a few months of unemployment at the beginning of the recession. Now I feel silly for having ignored them prior to that.</p>
<p>The programmable thermostat is great. We don’t heat or cool the house while we are sleeping or when we are not home. We set the heat to go on in the am in the winter about 20 minutes before we get up. It goes off around 8 am. We also set the heat to go around 5 each afternoon in the winter and to go off at 10 pm.
In summer we have the heat turned off. We have AC but rarely use it. In summer the way our house is built it stays fairly comfortable. We have double paned windows and overhangs on the side of the house that gets the most sun. Our master bedroom is the warmest room in the house. A few days of the year. Mainly in late Sept and early Oct it gets up to 85 degrees in our bedroom and is still that way when we are ready to go to bed. We will turn the AC on to sleep. My H likes to set it on those nights at 76 but I like it cooler and turn it down to 73.
We have two heating/cooling units in our house. One for each end of the house. We live in a temperate climate so our heating/cooling bills are low. The house is presently a natural temp of 69 degrees on one end and 68 at the other. I have on a light fleece and slippers. I find this temp cool but comfortable.
dmd77 my DH also loves the window open at night. I also have lots of blankets.</p>
<p>Wow. Seems like people really like different temperatures. We heat the house to 68 just before getting up and for a couple of hours before we go to bed. The rest of the day it’s at 64 when we’re moving around. At night it’s set to about 60 which I really like. Maybe that’s why my sister’s house felt so warm at 68 at night. I also really used to like the house warmer but for about the last three years, have enjoyed it cooler. Not really hot flashes, more like my thermostat adjusted to that of my husband’s.</p>
<p>We keep our thermostat set at 67-68 in the winter and mid to upper 70’s in the summer depending on the weather. We never change the settings at night. </p>
<p>DH has been an engineer for a utility company for 28 yrs. He has always felt that the small amt. of money saved by lowering the thermostat at night is negated by how hard the system has to work to regain that heat in the morning. It runs longer (more costly) trying to get the inside temp. back up than it would have if just left at the same (or very close to same) temp. 'round the clock. The furnace has to run a long time to raise the temp. of a 2000 sq. ft. house 5-10 degrees.</p>
<p>If you just like it colder at night and are not lowering the thermostat for cost savings then it really doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>I have heard that it takes more energy to heat the house back up if it’s been turned down overnight, but I have trouble believing that turning it down eight degrees for eight hours won’t make up for the hour or two it takes to warm it back up. I do know that since we started doing it last year our gas bill went way down. I objected before because I was always cold, but now that my thermostat is equal to my husband’s I said okay and it has saved a bunch of money. We are also keeping it a couple of degrees colder during the day.</p>
<p>“I have heard that it takes more energy to heat the house back up if it’s been turned down overnight”</p>
<p>We have seperate heating and AC systems as well as controls for upstairs and downstairs. Each system only heating about 1200 square feet. When we switched to dual systems we began cutting off AC and heat according to time and what rooms we occupy. We cut our costs in half.</p>
<p>I find that I seep much better if I lower the temperature at night. I also like to sleep with a bedroom window open, but we live in Seattle, so even if my thermostat is set at 61 at night, it rarely gets colder than 64 or so.</p>
<p>We have been on the serious austerity plan for many years of tuition, add to that me be freezing all the time and DH being hot all the time and we elect not to pay a penny more than we must for utilities. Our house is heated by propane and with big floor to ceiling, wall to wall windows and cathedral ceilings, you could go broke heating it. I can feel the cool air come in through the windows, but they are 25’ high and there is not room for much in the way of window coverings.</p>
<p>With all the kids gone, we literally programmed the thermostat to 40F at night and 50F daytime. We then supplement with a small electric heater at my feet in my office which warms it to be comfortable as well as a couple of those eco-friendly room heaters set to the minimum 65F in the family room and bedroom. If I turn them on on the morning, by the time we do dinner the room is above 60.</p>
<p>I do use socks, fingerless gloves, uggs, a down throw, etc, but I am always cold and DH is still plenty toasty at 55-60!! A big down quilt is great and in general we like to breathe cool air when we sleep.</p>
<p>When the kids are home we heat to a toasty 64-65, but, darn the propane is expensive. Having lived in other homes with electric baseboard heating and knowing how expensive that is, it surprises me that the room heaters do such a nice job and do not run the bill up crazy high.</p>
<p>We keep the living areas downstairs at 70-72. Unless it gets really cold we leave the heat off and the upstairs bedroom doors closed. When the temperature drops below about 60, we turn up the heat. I am done, done, done with cold weather. Fortunately, next year’s retirement will mean a warmer climate and seasonal travel.</p>
<p>We live in an old Victorian house with radiators. We set the thermostat on the first floor for 60 all the time, which ends up being about 64 or so on the second floor. I prefer it cool, wear sweaters in the winter. I work in the 3rd floor room that has only a wall-mounted HVAC unit which I turn on in the winter when it is truly too cold to sit for 3 or 4 hours without stiffening up. I also have fingerless gloves. Otherwise I just dress for 60. My H and I are fine with it. My D is always cold, but she leaves for college next year. I think being cool keeps us healthier.</p>
<p>I’m feeling kind of wimpy here compared to many of you. We generally keep the house at 70 in the winter. We usually don’t turn it down at night. If we do it’s not below 65. We use a geothermal system. For whatever reason it seems to heat more slowly than the natural gas systems we’ve had in previous homes. As a result the “heating the house” up a short time before we wake up doesn’t really work for us. DH works out of his home office so the heat or ac is always on. Previously my H always wanted it at about 70 in the summer also. This past summer we started leaving it about 76 except on the very hottest, muggiest days. Then it was a bit lower. We rarely open windows unless DH is out of town. His allergies flair up too quickly when the windows stay open.</p>
<p>If the room is cooler than 73 in the winter I am freezing cold. I wear sweatshirts (often with the hood on), socks and slippers all day and night. Once I’m in bed, I don’t care, I see the thermostat in the morning says 58. A shower and I’m good to go. In the summer I rarely care if the house is “too warm” - I must be cold blooded.</p>
<p>We also have a programmable thermostat. It is set to have the house warmed to 67 by 6 a.m. It turns down to 55 at 7:30 when we all are gone. Set to heat the house to 67 by 4:30 p.m. Turns down to 55 for the night at 10 p.m. </p>
<p>We all have polar fleece jackets that we wear like sweaters in the house…and you know…if we feel chilly, we just turn the thermostat up to 70. </p>
<p>We have A/C units in the bedrooms that we set at 72 degrees but only at night…in the summers. Usually (New England), the evenings are cool enough that A/C isn’t needed at all.</p>
<p>68 in winter, 78 in summer (if husband had his way it would be around 82 in summer.) DD lived in an apartment in college in New England with roommates who insisted on keeping the thermostat at 50, if I recall correctly. She was pretty miserable.</p>
<p>We are a 68 degree family and the thermostat is programmed for 58 at night then back up to 68 degrees about an hour before we all get up. When we aren’t in the house for multiple days we over ride it to 53 degrees. We don’t have air so summer temps are whatever the summer temp is…</p>
<p>I got partway through this thread and had to get up to turn the heat up and make a mug of hot chocolate, into which I pour a little peppermint schnapps. All the houses set to 50-something: brrrrr!!!</p>
<p>I have the no-longer-programmable programmable thermostat set to go to 60 during the weekday, 68 during the morning prep and evening home times, and 65 at night. I’m cold right now, and I’m wearing a turtleneck and sweater, have a blanket over me, and a hot laptop on my legs. Yes, socks on, too, and oh, how I hope Santa brings me SmartWool socks this year!!! I just bumped the thermostat up to 68. I’m cold-blooded, but also, I know my body temperature drops a lot around bedtime; my body’s way of telling me to go lie down under a down comforter somewhere and sleep!</p>
<p>In the summer, the thermostat is set for either 78, 80, or 85, depending on the time of day. (85 during the workday.) If I’m too hot, I’ll turn on the ceiling fan in the living room.</p>
<p>We have yet to turn our furnace on this season; thanks to pretty mild weather in So. Cal., it’s the longest we’ve ever gone (it’s usually on by Thanksgiving at the latest). Currently, the house is 63 degrees, which is a bit too cold for my comfort. We’re buying a new furnace filter today and cranking it up tonight. We generally set the thermostat to come on in the evening, shut down for the night and come back on in the morning for an hour. I like it to be in the high 60s.</p>