What temperature do you keep your thermostat at?

root@lemmy.zip to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 168 points –

Title. We keep ours at 75F, parents do 77F, and in laws 68F. It made me curious what everyone else keeps theirs at?

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WHAT THE HELL IS A FARENHEIT 🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺

You guys can control the temperature in the summer?

Tried to set ours here to around 20°C (~70°F), but it barely even reaches 23°C (~74°F) even in the middle of the night. I still consider myself lucky being able to run the AC for most of the day though, so I'm not complaining.

They never seem to be very accurate even if it thinks it's reached 20c

Even more so since my AC's thermostat is located just inside the air intake. Perhaps it registers a far lower temperature than the rest of the room. It's easily compensated though by setting the thermostat lower than the target ambient temperature (here, it's 25°C or 77°F), I guess.

In australia reverse cycle ac is very common, so we keep ours set to ~24°C year round.

Europe.

Winter 20C/70F, but we only heat the bedrooms or rooms we mostly stay in. Kitchen, etc. can go as low as 10C/50F

Summer: no heating/AC at all. Open a window when cold air is coming inside. Close the windows when hot air is coming in. It's never gone above 35C/95F, and that's during a heat wave. Usually it's 25C/80F max.

Sometimes when it's too cold. You wear a sweater and thick socks. Sometimes it's hot. Fan or live with it. Adapt our schedules accordingly, perhaps do groceries when it's super hot or go on an errand that requires the car a drive so we can cool down in the supermarket/AC.

It's never gone above 35C/95F

I think I speak for 99% of the people here when I say “FUCK THAT”

Some of us do enjoy hot weather. I hardly ever use my air conditioner.

That happens quite often for me inside, it really sucks. Not much I can do about it though.

I think I misunderstood him. I assumed he meant that the inside of his house was 95, but I think he meant that the outside was 95. Still anything over 80 indoors I can’t handle.

Edit: nope just read his other reply and it was 95 inside. Again, fuck that.

Yeah, it sucks. AC is very uncommon in residential housing so there is not much you can do, especially if you're like me with a hot computer in the house. Without a computer it's still way to hot but it's better.

Optimally you open your windows but you might not always want to do that, since there are quite a few insects outside. During night the mosquitos are fucking everywhere, so leaving a window open is possible, but it's risky.

would a remote screen and kb/mouse setup solve it?

The climate's fucked and inflation is rampant.

You're frankly better off getting used to the occasional hot day.

It's hot, but you get used to it.

It's hot, but you get used to it

I'm not sure it will stay true in Europe. I think we might start to see more and more deadly heatwave, with temperatures to high to get used to it.

My view change on AC because of that, I used to think it was a luxury but it might become a necessity.

On the other hand fans can greatly improve the "efficiency" of AC, I'm comfortably sleeping with a fan and the AC thermostat setup at 28°C.

Ah. But that 35C was when it was above 40C. It was already extreme for northern europe.

If we ever head towards 50C, I suspect I'll be dead before then, there's always the basement. That's ten or more degrees less than under the roof.

As climate change accelerates, and energy prices increase, we'll have to adapt. Because when the power increasingly goes out, or when you end up paying hundreds per month on electricity, you're fucked in a poorly insulated house even with AC.

It's not environmentally friendly, it's increasingly unaffordable, and it's not sustainable on a societal level.

Not American. What's a thermostat?

The electronic thing on the wall that controls the temperature of your heater or air conditioner.

older ones are often electrical, but not really electronic. they use a bimetal strip that bends due to changing temperatures, to complete a circuit at the point you set the slider. it's actually a really fascinatingly simple bit of tech.

Mine growing up used a bit of mercury in a sealed vial mounted to that bimetallic strip.

any idea what the mercury was for? something about getting the heat in and out of the strip faster maybe?

The Mercury is in a glass tube with two wires and the tube is attached to the bimetallic strip in such a way that the motion of the Mercury due to gravity as the strip moves will close the circuit between the two wires. The Mercury is just being used a liquid conductor.

Yeah, sorry. It was the switch! Two wires on one side. When the capsule tilts from the strip/coil it makes the electrical connection.

Thermostat isn't an American term.

Google search would have answered that.

It's what controls the furnace or air conditioner in your house. That way you can control how hot or cold your house is.

That depends. For example in a lot of Europe there aren't any air conditioners in houses, so it only controls heating.

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I have been involved in many of these types of discussions, and I'm convinced that we are not experiencing the same temperatures when we set our thermostats to the same temperature. If I set mine any lower than 77°F, I would freeze to death. But many people here set theirs to below 70°F.

I have a few hypotheses.

  1. Apparently AC units can really only make the temperature about 20-25°F degrees colder than the outside ambient temperature. It is over 100°F in my area almost every day from June to mid September, so any temperature below about 78°F just means your AC is on 100% of the time. This is removing moisture from the air, making it feel colder.

  2. My thermostat is right next to my garage door, which is not insulated. This is probably where the majority of heat enters the house. So the thermostat thinks it is warmer than it is. Other people might be in similar or opposite situations and need to set their thermostats to account for that.

  3. People's AC units are not actually cooling anywhere near those temperatures. The unit is just on 100% of the time at those temperatures, and they could realistically increase the temperature a great deal and get the same results.

  4. Humidity.

  5. Some people's AC units/thermometers just suck. 65°F on their unit actually gets the space to the same temperature as 75°F on my unit.

Number 2 has merit. Here are a few more.

  1. Most thermostats do require calibration, and nobody has time for that. This has a similar effect to your second point. Proper air flow (or lack thereof) throughout the home is also important.

  2. Sunlight makes a huge difference. A temperature that feels comfortable at night may not feel comfortable at noon in a home with a lot of natural light. Same as a sunny vs a cloudy day, indoors or outdoors.

  3. Men and women have drastically different tolerances for comfortable room temperature. In general, non-menopausal women tend to appreciate a slightly warmer room than men. This plays out in office spaces all over the world, with many women running space heaters under their desks.

  4. Clothing obviously makes a huge difference. Some people prefer to dress for their desired temperature; others prefer to dress for their physical comfort and let the HVAC balance things out accordingly.

  5. Medical conditions and medications and diet can all drastically affect one's body heat output. For example, anything that boosts serotonin is likely to make one run hot. Stimulants will constrict blood vessels and make one cold, especially in the extremities. And we all know what alcohol does (dilates blood vessels, allowing more heat to escape the body, lowering one's body temperature despite actually making them feel warmer). Blood sugar levels make a difference. The list is endless.

But it's interesting that most of your thought process went into how HVAC systems and humidity work, versus the simple fact that the people themselves are just drastically different (see points 3 through 5).

This is removing moisture from the air, making it feel colder.

That’s not how humidity works. Higher humidity means that cooler temperatures feel much colder and warmer temperatures feel much warmer. Even the heat index calculation shows this. Just try it out for yourself, or look at the formula. https://www.weather.gov/epz/wxcalc_heatindex

People's AC units are not actually cooling anywhere near those temperatures. The unit is just on 100% of the time at those temperatures, and they could realistically increase the temperature a great deal and get the same results.

I don’t know why you think this. Maybe you only have a single stage AC or maybe you’ve never actually measured the temp with an extra thermometer, but you can get the ac 40-50°F cooler than outside, both by removing humidity (which decreases the “feels like” temp) but also through actually heat removal from the house. You might just have bad insulation as well.

If you live in a dry climate you can do the opposite. Pump humidity in using a swamp cooler, which places moisture in the air and then immediately causes it to evaporate carrying heat with it in the state change. You’re cooling the air slightly and since moisture exaggerates temperature changes it feels cooler to you.

My thermostat is right next to my garage door, which is not insulated. This is probably where the majority of heat enters the house. So the thermostat thinks it is warmer than it is.

I've got an Ecobee thermostat and they sell little temperature sensors that you can place anywhere in your house. You can configure which sensors are used at which time - for example I have a sensor in my bedroom, and configured it to only look at the bedroom temperature overnight. If you select multiple sensors, it averages them.

It's a decent solution to this problem.

Yeah, those are all good points and certainly factor in. There are objective studies about human comfort preferences used for building design. I expect OPs question is a roundabout way to ultimately ask about comfort preferences.

Studies done on temperature preferences are also biased (like medicine studies or calorie recommendations). Office building studies were based largely on the preferences of white men. Not even accounting for individual preferences someone being in a different "category" (i.e. gender) may also influence at what temperature they are most comfortable.

21C in the winter. 23C in the summer. Well at least these are the settings during the daytime. During sleeping hours they are set to 19C in the winter and 25C in the summer.

Winter: 20°C when home/awake, 17°C when out or asleep. Before kids we used to drop it to 15°C at night. It was glorious

Summer: 22°C when home awake or asleep, 26°C when away for longer period, 24 for short periods

That's interesting. When away from home I set a minimum temperature to avoid pipes freezing in the winter, but why do you put the AC on a max temperature when away from home?

I have a brand new apartment. On recommendation of the constructor (new walls contain lots of moisture that needs to go out), it's set a little warmer than I'd usually go: 21C (70F). In my old place I'd put it at 18C (64F).

That said, currently it's 25C inside (77F). This place is insulated like crazy, and we don't have AC (that still isn't common over here, even for new builds). For reference, current temperatures outside are 14C (57F)

I live in the Netherlands.

In the UK here, have you guys had a cool, wet summer too? And if so have people (not necessarily you as it seems you live in a modern well insulated home) needed to put the heating on? I'm in a flat in a late 1800s building and have put it on a couple of times to take the chill off, my mum's in a 1920s semi detached and has had the heating on most days.

Our weather is nigh-identical to that in south-eastern England. I mean, after all, coast to coast theres only 100km between us. We've had a normal summer. Perhaps "cool" by today's standard, but even on average for the last 30 years it's been a normal summer.

June in fact was exceptionally sunny and dry. July indeed was a nothingburger, mostly rain rain and more rain. August was a mix, some good days some bad. What we didn't have this year was any 35+ temperatures.

21C in the winter and 19C in the summer

Why not just set it to 20 all year long?

Because celcius sucks for environmental temperature

I mean I don't really care what temperature is based on but exactly what does 77 degrees exactly refer to in that it is better or worse than any other number?

It means it's 77% hot

Or you can learn both and just be better educated...you could try that.

It's not about learning or not. It's about 1 system being fundamentally less suited for the task. You wouldn't argue that we should all be using kelvin. I mean, you could argue that, but you wouldn't be right.

Yes Celsius certainly seems more natural.

Not for human centered climate, where 0-100F is a very convenient set of human centric temperatures. 0 is really cold, 100 is really hot

You just described Celsius, you idiot.

Are you water worried about boiling? When is 100 relevant to you as a human?

Are you water? When is 100C ever relevant for you day to day?

Are you water? When is 100C ever relevant for you day to day?

Ahahah... When does water freeze or boil? At 0° and 100° Celsius. Much more convenient to remember those degrees rather than the corresponding Fahrenheit.

But it's obvious you're trolling. I, mean, I hope so otherwise it's sad. Because only a moron who has never cooked would ask that.

How is the temperature that water boils (at standard pressure mind you) relevant to you? How is knowing that number important in your day to day life?

Important when your cooking. Something I do nearly every day. Rather important if I want to determine is something will burn me.

What is the temp in f where you are at risk of burns? I can guess in c without having to look it up.

You are talking purely out of ignorance. The majority of the population on Earth are getting on just fine using celsius with none of the problems you claim to exist.

Also "really cold" and "really hot" are purely subjective terms which varies a lot from person to person and from location to location.

Where is freezing? That is a pretty important one particularly for driving or freezing pipes? So 40 is really hot, 20 is decent, 0 is freezing and -20 is cold and -40 is really cold. And water boils typically around 100.

I mean, ignoring zero in Calvin, it is all arbitrary when it comes to temperature. Just celsius likes to land some key numbers on human centric values.

Where is freezing in Celsius? Because it's very unlikely to be 0 where you happen to be at any given time.

Water boiling is totally irrelevant to what we care about as humans living in an environment

Your trolling entertains me.

100% serious and this is a hill in willing to die on

It is almost always at zero or close enough on earth that it doesn't matter.

But 72f means something more than 25c? It is all relative but one measurement refers to states we can relate to. The other is a bit random.

Yes it does. It means it's 72% hot, because most human environmental temperatures that you experience are from 0 to 100

Western suburbs of Chicago, IL. Summer it's 77-79f (25-26c). Winter it's 65-69f (18.3-20.5c).

In summer we open the windows at night and let the cooler air in and when the sun comes in I close the windows and run a dehumidifier to quickly bring down the relative temp upstairs especially. Helps a bunch.

When our new kid comes I will have to def adjust these numbers much closer to 72f (22c).

I was talking to friends who live nearby and essentially keep it at 72f (22c) year round and almost never open their windows they were using like 1040kwh-1600kwh per month last month where we were using 309kwh or about 50 bucks a month. This was for July. I think we may be the weirdos and we will have to get more on their level with a newborn.

My heating is set at 21°C (70F) for daytimes and 16°C (61F) for the night time, so it doesn't come on at all during summer, and a lot of spring (UK). During winter when it gets colder out (like below about 6°C/43F) I will usually need to whack it up by a couple of degrees, or give it a little extra blast in the morning to warm up. Its an old building (late 1800s) and my flat has external walls on three sides, and a cold empty basement below, so it can get quite cold when the outside temperature drops.

Edited to make it clear i mean my heating thermostat, because I realised most people here are talking about AC and that's very rare in homes here.

83F day 78F night. These temps are mainly chosen to not give my AC a heart attack.

During the winter I’m pretty hands off and will let it get down to 20-30F and just layer up next to a small space heater.

20 - 30F?! You have no water pipes??

If it does get down below freezing it’s usually not for long. And once I’m up and moving and have a space heater on its probably in the 50s by the afternoon.

I live in an RV - you kind of just work with the weather you get.

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18 in summer or off and 22 or off in winter

We typically keep our house at 68F in the summer, and in the winter it’s 63F during the day, 55F at night. We like it on the chilly side.

To help those unfamiliar with Fahrenheit (like I am)

68°F = 20°C
63°F = 16.6°C
55°F = 12.8°C

24°C in the summer

20°C in the winter

Same! But I try to not starting to use the AC until the season has really taken off :P

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We set the AC for 18°C heating in winter, and 23° cooling in summer. I'm happy in 18-23 temperatures, doesn't need to be the same temp year around.

18 when it's 10ish outside feels nice and toasty, and be 23 when it's 35ish outside feels nice and cool.

21, all year round. When the sun hits the windows and I don't have the shades down, and it creeps up to 23, I can't definitely feel it.

Off.

It's hot as balls outside though. Gotta have some AC going.

Exactly, I get swampass just thinking about being without AC in this heat

No AC here, only heating. So it is off during summer.

76F to 78F in the summer.

68F in the winter.

My Dad does 85F summer and 65F winter though. I though I was being luxurious with my settings lol.

I do run a dehumidifier in the summer and a humidifier in the winter though. Humidity control is almost more important IMO for comfort.

Having an apartment with district heating, we don't have a thermostat per se - we can control the inflow of hot water to our radiators, on a scale of 0-7. However, I try to keep the indoor temperature at at least 18-19 C during the colder period, and I try to reduce the indoor by opening the windows and ventilating any time the indoor temperature goes past 22 C during the hotter parts of the year. Any higher than that and my sleep starts to get compromised.

I'm going out my damn mind trying to work out what I should set it at. I've been obsessively adding more and more temperature and humidity sensors around my living space to work out exactly what my idiot brain thinks is comfortable.

I don't understand why 23C/50% makes me feel like I'm in the fucking Amazon rainforest one day, but on another I feel like I've got ice forming on my damn face like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.

I'm this close to buying a ZigBee rectal thermometer. Core body temperature has to be the missing piece. (I suppose any ZigBee environment sensor can be a rectal one if I bite down on something first).

(Oh and lux, I wonder if lux levels tricked my brain but that doesn't seem to correlate either!)

Make sure you get one with a flared base.

25°C at winter and 24°C at summer. It's a small house that's not too expensive to heat so I prefer slightly warmer than normal room temperature

18°C in the winter, and off completely in the summer.

To save energy, I set my AC at 28℃ in the summer, for a couple of hours in the afternoon. In the winter if my room temperature wasn't below 8℃ I don't use heating. Otherwise I set it to 12℃.

Apparently I don't understand the very energy consuming 20℃ summers/winters.

you are the only one i can read, all the others keep using uncivilized measurements (fahrenheit... btw, so many americians here. ew. 🤢)

When I lived in England, I felt like I was going to freeze if it got colder than 17°C, usually had the heat set to 19°C. During the summer, probably around 22-24°C.

I now live in Phoenix, AZ, and set it at about 65°F in winter and 74°F in summer.

My area also has high humidity, 12°C is indeed freezing. We add lots of layers...

Right now in summer: 67 overnight while we sleep (helps that we have tiered power pricing where late night power is almost half the price of it during the day), 72 when we're up, and 80 between 2 and 6pm when we have the most expensive power hours. Luckily we're in an apartment that's like three years old, so it's surprisingly well insulated and hasn't gotten above 73 during those hot hours.

wait you can control the weather in your house?

I'm genuinely confused in this thread. do people really use climate control to keep their homes the same temperature year round? WTF? a but of AC on the hot days for us, and hardly ever turn heating on (don't really need to here tbh)

but year round? unbelievably wasteful

Quite a lot of people are commenting separate winter and summer temperatures.

Also the thermostat likely controls heating as well, so the AC might be off but to not freeze you need heating on.

You'd use climate control year round too if it was typically in the 90F during the summer, in the teens during the winter, and spring and fall each last about 3 weeks.

90f...32C you have to be joking me mate. thats early spring temps here, what we call a nice warm day. If you need year round climate control for a slightly warm day.. i have idea what to tell ya. I might add we deal with it with some pretty decent humidity too. if you were in a dry area 32 is literally nice weather.

Temps just below freezing, sure on the colder days maybe, could also just layer up like we do if on the very rare occasion it gets below 0c

Must be convenient to live somewhere that isn't currently 113°F.

Keep in mind thermostats are generally not tightly calibrated devices. I prefer 71°F at home, but recently visited relatives and thought their mini-split was FREEZING at 29°C (84 F)

Also humidity plays a huge role.

In Northern California my AC is off as much as I can help it. When it's on it's set at 82. Energy bill is still at least $250 for my one bedroom apartment...

Summer when overnight doesn't drop below 70F: 75F first and second floor, 80F on third floor

Summer when overnight drops below 70F: All window open.

Winter: 58F during the day when we're at work, 63F when we get home, 60F overnight.

Thermostats are bourgeois American imperialist decadence.

21 in summer, though it hardly ever kicks in with the awesome isolation we have.

23 in winter, cause I like it toasty.

That's how we keep it cool in our house too, we don't have any guests so the door doesn't open and ruin our air conditioned isolation.

Airconditioning? You're probably American then.

No airco here.

Canadian. It is getting slowly too hot to not have it here. In my province, around 700 people died a few years ago during a heat dome event.

73 day, 70 night.

I prefer it a little cooler, but my apartment isn't insulated for shit so anything less and the ac basically never turns off.

Hasn't turned off a whole lot with heat waves lately.

I do 76F in the summer for AC and 68F in the winter for heating. Try to use minimal heating and air and still maintain a comfortable range. Can get expensive if working the system too hard. If it wasn't a matter of cost I'd leave it on 72F all the time.

Evaporative coolers are great if you live where you can use one, much cheaper to run and they can work pretty good as long as humidity isn't too high. I had one in a house I lived in before along with a regular AC system. It was a good to have and saved a lot on the electric bill. If it was dry enough out the AC unit was not needed.

Haven't used a heat pump before and don't know much about them. If they work as well and cost less to operate that would be a good option, but I wouldn't use one if it's a downgrade in performance. Rather pay for the comfort.

23.5 in day and 22.5 at night. For summer, at least. I realized too much AC really affects my joints. Too little is unbearable. Humans are a fickle bunch...

Might for 22.5 day 21.5 night for winter.

Only have heating, no AC. So 19C over the day and 16 at night for the winter

We don’t have a thermostat. We have storage heaters and criminally insufficient insulation. I’d like to keep the flat about 21C (69F), a little lower at night. I can only afford to keep the flat above 17C (62F). Cost of living crisis sucks.

18° in winter. 24° in summer.

However I would only put the heater or aircon on somewhere between 40-60 days a year and only for a couple hours. And often it's just to take the chill out of the house or cool the bedroom before bed. I have a modern well insulated house which is a rarity in Melbourne or Australia in general, houses/apartments are built like shit here.

Australia has some of the worst built houses in the western world, especially houses built in the 20th century. I think the average was 0.5 stars out of 10. Thankfully we have the most amount of solar of any country so we are offsetting the crappyness.

75F basically all the time, cooling only no heating. I also always turn it off at night and open all the windows/vice versa in the morning to save energy. I'm not a dad but this is totally a dad thing that I started doing when I turned 30.

This is in the southwestern US.

70F (21C) during the summer time, and usually its off during the winter (we just have the windows open, and might briefly use a space heater if its really really cold).

In fall and spring it just heavily depends on the day and how it feels.

In the winter, 68, 69 if I'm particularly cold, In the summer I don't turn on the AC unless I'm absolutely dying, and then it only goes to 77. I'm a lizard, I love the heat, but I also hate paying high gas bills.

During AC season, 71 during the day, 68 at night. Geothermal FTW.

We live in Seattle. There is no thermostat.

WTF 70s? I'd be roasting.

69 is usually what I keep it at in my car.

My folks keep it at 79°F during the day and 72°F at night.

In the summer? I have no AC at my house but it doesn't usually go above 77 - 80 on it's own. It's in a unique part of the city where we're surrounded by the woods and trees which provide a lot of shade and cool the air. Also the house is built into the side of a mountain and surrounded by massive retaining walls, so the first floor is basically a story underground. Our bedroom is also on the first floor, so I don't really go upstairs except to do laundry.

In the winter, usually about 64 - 67. It goes down to 60 during the day on a schedule or whatever.

Summer time - 75F during the day, 72F at night. Winter time - 68F during the day, 62F at night.

I live in the Midwest US

Our heater is set to 60F in the winter.

If i want it warmer than that (usually) it's up to me to keep the wood stove fired and fed!

I program mine to run less when we're not home. On top of that I set a "super cool" routine on weekends when it's going to be hot outside.

You see, the a/c is most efficient when it's cooler already. So in the last hour of darkness in the summer I set it to run down to 68 or so. Then it doesn't have to run as long to do that. Then it doesn't have to run again for several hours as the temperature is set back to 72.

I also clean the outside coils annually and put up a sun sail so that the outside unit is shaded all day. This has helped save a lot of money along with the thermostat programming.

The simplified version

Summer: Day: 76°F (24°C), Night: 73°F (22°C)

Winter: Day: 78°F (25°C), Night: 73°F (22°C)

We're in Canada so we use Celsius but I'll convert for our farenheit friends:

23C/73.4F most of the time we try to keep the heat/AC off in spring/fall when it makes sense to do so.... We seem to generate a lot of heat inside (we have a lot of computers in the house) so it has to be quite a bit cooler outside to justify opening windows. something like 16C/60F, then between the heat from everything inside and the cold outside, we tend to keep rather comfortable.

My last place was an apartment and we didn't have control over the heating. Whenever it was on, we were cooking, so we left all the windows open all winter (the super knew about the situation and recommended we do this). The valves for the baseboard heaters were extremely old, didn't have knobs, and the super said he could try to adjust them, but there's a decent chance that they could snap and flood the apartment. Nobody wanted that, so we just left the windows open. For summer, I only turned on our AC at the apartment after the haters shut off. I wasn't going to pay to run AC to cool the place down while they were actively heating it up.... I'm glad we don't live there anymore because of that, though, everything else about the place was stellar. The landlord tried to get the owner to Green light the replacement of the valves while the system was not in use (namely in summer when they turned it off) since it would be easy to drain the system and do the work, but they didn't, so year after year, Windows open in winter. It kinda sucked, but we did what we had to. I installed a netatmo temperature system and at times in the dead of winter with all the windows open, the inside temps would read in excess of 30C/86F which wasn't fun. Hanging around in boxers with all the windows open in the dead of winter, and still sweating by doing nothing at all, wasn't great.

My new place has it's problems with airflow, but it's much better overall.

72 during the day and 68 at night.

74 in the summer and 68 in the winter. Before I met my wife I would keep it at 60 in the winter but she wasn't having it lol (heating oil is expensive). I didn't have central air so my bedroom (window unit) I'd keep at 68-70.

Summer - cool to 76 around the house. 68 for sleeping.

Winter - warm to 70 around the house. 65 for sleeping, with a heavier comforter.

75 summer, 71 winter. Would love to conserve more but my body is a picky jerk.

I'd like to have it at 71f, but it's not going to happen. After a $$$ AC repair i can now get down to 74 instead of 78. Usually around 68-70 in the winter. How come it's always so hot indoors when i go to places with a cold climate?

19C in the winter, around 28C in the summer. It helps that in the winter I just keep a space heater near me (I get cold and turn it on at what a thermometer in my room calls 19C).

21oC in winter, off in summer. I ain't going to waste energy when you can just close the window if you are cold.

I don't have aircon either, not that I would be able to afford it even if I did have it.

Oh and the thermostat lies anyway and is actually just on or off so. 30 minutes in the morning and 1 hour in the evening. Well except last winter where I decided food was more important than warmth and just turned it on when necissary to keep the place habitable.

I live in a campervan and so have no temperature control in the traditional sense. Closest thing would be the Maxxfan with thermostatic fan control and it's set to 68F. As long as external temps are lower than internal temps it does a reasonable job.

70F set it and forget about it until i woke up freezing at the middle of a night.

I usually do 19C in the winter, and 24C in the summer, my parents do 22C (72F?) year around

Currently set to 67F (19.4C) for heating, and I don't have air conditioning but would probably keep it around 76F (24C).The weather here is mild enough that we usually don't need AC in summer.

We're starting to have more and more hot days during summer though, so I'm getting the gas furnace replaced with a heat pump HVAC (which is the term Americans use for a reverse cycle air conditioner) this week. The furnace is 22 years old so it was due for a replacement anyways. I had an 11.2kW solar system installed earlier this year, so I'm trying to move away from gas appliances.

No, Americans call those heat pumps, never heard the term reverse cycle air conditioners.

Re-read my comment :) I'm saying that Americans call them heat pumps while other countries call them reverse cycle air conditioners.

Edit: I reworded it, hopefully it's clearer now!

It's weird in the USA because everything is so expensive, and you can still get air conditioners that can't also heat the house. Heat pumps are standard in many other countries. In Australia, pretty much all of our ACs are reverse cycle, and you can get a mini split for less than $1000 fully installed.

Kiwi here, we call them heat pumps over here. In fact it's the first time I'm even hearing the term "reverse cycle air conditioner" lol.

Oh OK! They're called reverse cycle air conditioners in Australia. I like that name because it better reflects what the system actually is.

A heat pump is just a device that moves heat from one place to another, using refrigerant. A bunch of things have heat pumps in them. Your fridge uses a heat pump (a fridge is really the same concept as an air conditioner - move the heat from inside the fridge to outside the fridge). You can get clothes dryers and water heaters that use heat pumps too.

In US. I can go to the store and grab a mini split for under $750 and install it my self. People get AC without heat because you have to get an emergency heater with it in most parts of the country anyways. Gas is cheaper as a general rule so it's far more cost effective to get AC with a gas furnace. Places in Cali and Texas we just put in cooling only because they don't ever use heat. Heat pumps are more the norm nowadays here with hybrid heat so your emergency heat can still be gas. In those below freezing times

I'm having a cheap Gree Flexx installed at the moment, and even it can heat down to -22F (-30C). People use them in Canada without heat strips.

I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area so it doesn't get too hot nor too cold here. Very rarely goes above 86F (30C) or below 41F (5C). Good weather for a heat pump. We did actually use the old furnace last winter - it got colder than usual.

I've got 11.2kW of solar panels too, so electricity is much cheaper than gas for me :)

Sure lots of heat pumps can "heat" that low, you're not getting very much heat though. I'd be surprised if they don't have some kind of supplemental heat source. I didn't see any actual engineering documents to see what the outputs are at those ranges. To heat a space you should have output temps minimally in the low 90F range. Some of the heat pumps now are heating the refrigerant seperately in those low temp conditions. So kind of cheating.

I have an evaporative cooler it really doesn't have temperature control. It is kind of whatever the outside temperature is -20f degrees with 75% humidity.

68F-72F in summer 66ish in the winter. In live in the South East United States and humidity is a bitch

Those numbers are backwards.

No? Set termostat to a lower temp in the winter so the heater doesn't stay on as long. Higher temp in the summer so the AC doesn't stay on.

Another reason to keep it closer to the outdoor temp is clothing. I loathe places in the winter that have the heat cranked up, I dressed for the cold, I don't want to melt because businesses crank the heat up to 80F for some reason. Same with the summer, I'm shivering cause I dressed for 90F but inside is in the high 60's.

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In the summer 78F during the day but I spend most of that time in the basement because that's where my office is and 68F at night to sleep.

During the winter 68F all day err' day

There is no one right temperature — it depends on the humidity. In the winter I often have heat at 71. In the summer 68.

I don't have AC and haven't really needed it this year. I'm way north in New Hampshire.

We keep the heat at 63-65f(about 17c) in the winter, but occasionally go up to 67 when it's warmer out and the furnace doesn't have to work as hard to keep it there.

Just moved into a house with ac for the first time and it is well insulated and lots of shade from trees. At night before bed I set it to 68, and in the morning I set it to 74. Even when we had 100 degree days it never got above 73 inside, so basically I only run the AC at night.

Usually 72° F / 22.22°C. But my wife likes to turn it down on the really hot days were the AC doesn’t quite keep up. I try to explain the AC is running all out, turning it down does not help. And we certainly do not have one of the high end units that can throttle, it is either on or off.

At some point it will freeze up, stop working, and you can say "see?!" while it thaws. But no one will acknowledge you were correct and tried to warn them. But you'll know.

Dude I even have graphs that show when it ices up and stops working. No one will listen.

Now, let's get into proper dishwasher loading.

Metal and ceramic on the bottom, glass and plastic on top, bowls overlap no more than 50%, spoons and forks all curve in the same direction. Run it on express wash with no heat, remove to the drying rack when done.

Minimum, but it still doesn't get below 23C in the winter

Mine is set at 80 degrees during the summer. During the winter it is at 60 or maybe 65. I live in an over 100 year old dog trot style house in Alabama with only attic insulation and the original single pane double hung windows.

You don't have to live like that.

Even this way, $200+ per month electricity and gas bills are normal. I am working on making some wooden storm windows that should help. Still iffy on spray foam insulation, I've heard of older homes having moisture problems afterwards.

65° while I sleep, 68°-70° while I'm home, off while I'm not

76F in the summer, 72F during the day in the winter, 68F at night in the winter.

Chiming in to say comparing thermostat settings between houses is comparing apples to oranges. Your AC is only "on" or "off," changing the thermostat setting only changes how much time it's on vs how much time it's off.

On a 100° day, the HVAC in a well-insulated house with double paned windows and solid weatherization is going to be able to maintain 77° with little effort, where a poorly insulated, leaky house may struggle to even reach 77° with the HVAC running continuously. These two houses may have their thermostats set the same but their internal temperatures and energy usage will be different, maybe even radically different

I like to keep my home at 16°C (60.8°F) when possible. Summers are hell.

https://www.relay.fm/cortex/145

In which CGPGrey discusses ordering parts to replace inside of hotel A/Cs so that he set the room temp to 16º. Quite chilly, btw, why do you need that??

Why does anyone need any temperature? I find it most comfortable! I've also noticed sleep is a lot better when the air is a bit cooler. Anything above 18°C just makes me feel uncomfortably warm.

68-75. This means if it's between those numbers, the HVAC doesn't turn on.

Does it turn off at the near or far end of that range?

What I mean is, if it were 76 and your cooling turned on, would it shut off at 75 or at 68?

It would shut off at 75. If I wanted it to shut off at 68, I'd set both numbers to 68.

Doesn't that do the exact same thing as just setting it to 75 for cooling, and 68 for heating?

The 68 does nothing if AC is on, and the 75 does nothing if heat is on.

I'm in Denver Summer: 80° in the day, 70° at night Winter: 73° in the day, 63° at night

In winter I light the fire, in summer I open the windows, the temperature range goes from chilly to toasty. I don't have exact numbers on that.

I don't! My windows are open all year here in Chicago.

Even last week when we had the 3 days of 100+ heat? When it's above 85, I have terrible air circulation in my place and need to turn the AC on.

I was uncomfortable last week: made due with box fans, drinking water, and cool as it would get (warm) showers.

Today was lovely though

You have your windows open in winter in Chicago? In a single family home your pipes would or rather could freeze in winter. In an apartment depending on how warm the neighbors get their place and heart can radiate through walls that might work. In the summer though Damn that would get warm.

I do! I am on the first floor of the building and get direct sunlight between 4 and 5pm from May to July. This keeps the place cooler in the summer, it's like a cave. Then in the winter, my unit sits on top of the boiler room for the building so I have heated floors. It's really not so bad and a feature of my exact unit.

Last week with the 100+ was hard

For A/C I like it warmer than most office buildings, around 27°C/81°F, which means it's usually off outside of summer heat waves. My current place in Vancouver has no A/C.

Winter the heater's usually at 21°C/70°F.

27?! I would actually die. We keep ours at 19.

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Cincinnati. 66 at night 70 during the day during the summer, sometimes 72.

Winter 70-72 all the time.

Programmed for 19C during the day and ramping up to 21C at night.

16C flat at all other times.

I let visitors change it at will, but I always keep it above the minimum temperature for water to evaporate as a temperature reference.

Summer for ac it is about 76f

75f if it gets extra humid for some reason then we’ll push it down by one degree

But at night 78f for the ac.

Although if it’s nice outside we’ll turn it off and open windows.

Winter it’s 69 or 72 for during the day depending on a few factors. If I’m just sitting working in the computer it’s closer to 72 but up and moving around maybe 69.

66 f at night

Btw I’m in Minnesota US.

We do somewhere between 72 and 76. But at night in the peak of summer we'll bump it down to 70. Our bedroom is on the top floor and can often be several degrees hotter than the lower floor where the thermostat is, so for a few weeks in the summer we have to really crank it.

I'm told we should look into a vent fan to help distribute the air better but I haven't taken the time to put in the effort yet, I'm sad to say

24°C / 75°F during summer, 20°C / 68°F during winter.

Summer Cooling 22C - 23 C (71.6F to 73.4) in Winter Heating 20 C- 20.5C (68 F - 68.9 F) Since we have large summer and winter seasonal temperature differences we are all dressed more warmly in the winter so a lower over set point.

86F/30C. Turn on the fan and it's cool

You actually have your thermostat set to 86, or are you joking?

Eh not thermostat, I use AC and it only cools down, no heating. And setting it to 30 actually makes it cooler than 30

If it were up to me 17°C/63F, I can manage pretty good by blinds and windows open in the evening but I like to run the A/C an hour or two a day to help. In the winter, just leave the windows open to cool off its like -20°C out that's good enough to cool it to whatever feels good. I can't stand heat.

It's been mid 70s here in the day and mid 50s at night just about all summer so far. Bought two window air conditioners but never bothered to install them. We open windows at night and close them in the day.

Usually around 74F in the summer but I'll bump it if the temps outside hit the mid 90s. 64 in the winter, I like it cold. I run a portable AC in the master bedroom during the summer while we sleep. Bit of a story there.

During summer 78-80. 78 is for husband. But prefer windows open as much as possible. Winter 70 or so. 75 if I’m really feeling like being a little less uncomfortable and paying out the ass for it.

I’m weird though. I generally think 80ish is my happy place.

If I had one and was unbothered by energy, probably around 18-21 C. As it stands, I'm planning on storing a couple of spray bottles full of water in the fridge and having a fan pointed at me at all times when summer comes around.

We don't have a set temperature for all year, that seems silly to me. The outside temperature, the price of electricity/gas, the energy efficient of your house, so many variables...

Apologies for not converting, but in the winter we stick to the mid to high 60s when it's in the 40s or below outside. For the summer if it's getting into the high 90s or low 100s we have to go up to the high 70s to avoid going broke on electricity.

PS go clean out the heat exchange fins on your compressor outside, sometimes animals or weather will clog them up with debris which kills the efficiency of the compressor.

In the summer: usually 78, but sometimes I'll drop it to 75 if I'm feeling hot. We spend most of our time in the basement and most of the time it cools off at night enough to just open the windows.

In the winter: somewhere between 65 and 68. Our house can feel chilly pretty easily so I tend to bump the heat up a bit.

Off. Type error: null is not a number.

I don't live somewhere that it gets to 0°C / 32°F, although it can get close in the middle of the night in winter, so I don't need to worry about the cold killing me.

Electricity is expensive though. I just dress in layers and use blankets or a hot water bottle when it's cold. When it's hot I might turn on the aircon to get myself to "not miserable", but that usually only happens a few weeks a year. I try to acclimate to whatever the outdoor temperature is.

I also keep my windows open all year. The idea of keeping an entire house (not my small city shoebox, that is at least insulated by other shoeboxes) at a constant temperature year-round is sort of weird to me. Most people I know will use the aircon or heater at home maybe half the time, they're nowhere near as avoidant of using them as I am.

I just find it hard to justify the expense, both financially and environmentally, unless I'm truly miserable and not just slightly uncomfortable.

on winters, I don't go above 20°C. on summers, I completely turn off the heater and even cut the gas, have all the two windows fully open for the rest of the season. I have an AC system installed, tho it's really old and consumes too much power for my likings. In my country they fucking rob people with electricity/gas bills, it's the fetish of our president. Also the AC unit is in a wrong place and haven't even cleaned it in years, so... it's just decoration at this point.

my luck is that I have neighbors on two sides and under me (I'm at first floor) so I don't really need to crank up the heater, because I'm already surrounded by heated homes. since my home is small, heating with gas is extra cheap for me.

I'm from Europe.

I do 80F during the day and 78F at night in the pacific northwest US. It usually gets cold enough at night that opening windows will cool my house to the low 70s overnight. In the winter I have it set to 68F. I use ceiling fans and appropriate clothing to stay comfortable within those parameters.

Hah, thermostat

I'm the top floor apartment

My AC is set to 70f, it's currently 82f inside at about 0100.

My bedroom is 85f

If it could do the job I'd have it set to 75f and ideally keep it there but unfortunately I have to set it to 70 because the area near (like within a meter) the AC gets cold enough to get it to kick off any higher while the apartment cooks

I have electric panel heaters so there isn't a thermostat. I'd normally turn one on in the main room and bedroom for a couple of hours each day during winter, but last winter my electricity rates were so high that I just used them on the coldest days. The thermometer in my bedroom dropped below 10°C, it wasn't fun.

House only has a traditional heating system with no temperature control. In summer I just drink a lot of water and wear short sleeves, in winter it's the lowest setting that can keep me from freezing.

You could probably just replace the dumb thermostat with an electronic one that regulates by temperature if you want. They are quite simple.

24 Celsius, which is about 76.5 f. My husband disagrees.

18.5 celsius, which probably translates to 17.5 in some corners of the house. I used to put it on 20.5 C, but the insane gas prices and the limited gas supply motivated me to put it at the minimum I can live with. Although when working from home I usually put it lower (like 17 degrees Celsius) and use an electric heater instead in my working room. And obviously when I'm away from home it goes to like 15 degrees.

This is all caused by the insane energy prices here in Europe last year. I think my energy bill increased like doubled or tripled. While I can pay it, it feels like an absolute waste of money (and gas) to do that. We had to work together to keep the supply high after Russian gas stopped being an option.

Edit: this is for the Fall/Winter/Spring. Currently it's at 16 or something and hasn't turned on in months.

I generally try for 18-19c in winter, and I usually see 24c in summer, though the AC can bring this down to about 21 most of the time. With the AC off, it's more like 26-28.

I'd keep the windows open more, but climate change has been causing massive wildfires where the air is too unhealthy to breathe....

Whatever my renting company sets it at.

It usually is around 20-21C