GolfHos

The wife and I are in disagreement as to the most efficient way to program the thermostat. I prefer it to program it variably depending on time of day and day of week, odds of being home, sleeping habits, etc, but never let it vary more than about 4 degrees from the desired temperature at peak operation. She believes we should simply program it to shut off when we're not home or are sleeping. I maintain when it turns completely off and gets too hot/cold relative to optimal desired temp, it has to work too hard to catch up and any savings in energy from it being off are lost on it having to catch up.

It's all very unscientific and we haven't actually done any kind of comparative study. I'm betting Clive has, so maybe he'll share his results. As for the rest of you, what say you?

whole house fan is as good as it gets.  [sm_smoking]

A.  LOL  Who had nothing to add and shut up and went away?   [sm_laughing]


B.  Ah, one of my favorite arguments.  Ranks right up there with good ol' 50/50.  I am firmly in your camp.  There is no way in hell you can save money by shutting the system off, losing whatever heat you have in the thermal mass, and then restart the system having it run constantly to attain the previous ambient temp.  Of, course as opposed to reducing/raising temperatures just beyond comfortable when allowable, letting the system run much less.

Ours is set to sleep times and away times (a good 10 degrees) but adjusted for weekends.

Good luck.

humid grotto

anyways, you should try to get it as close to your desired temp points as possible (within 2* or so) at the times of day when outside offers the least resistance, while minimizing the total number of on/off cycles where possible

We're in your camp too.  We got a new fancy schmancy lennox system with programmable doicky climate control and the lennox guy said to do exactly as you described.  So we do based on our normal week.

We tried making the home/away ranges greater once and it was obviously not the most efficient way.  When it is 80-90 outside in the evening and you set the house to 78-80 while at work it takes all evening to finally get it down to 72 running constantly. 

I have two settings:

Hot or Cold.

I like to keep things simple

that would be me.  ;D

Have you learned nothing from Mr. Ford?

Nothings ever simple for me.

I set it to a cooler temp starting at about 10:00 at night. (70)

Warm it up to wake up. (72)

Off while we're gone at work. When it's off like this the house usually doesn't cool down more than 4 or 5 degrees in the winter.

Warm it up to come home. (72)

rinse/repeat/ similar for weekends, different times though.

The hard part is the summer, when the furnace may not come on for a good two months, I may force fire it this year though.

Actually, I've not done any calculations.  I had a brief fling with programmable thermostats and went back to tried-and-true Honeywell hockey pucks.  Had issues with both the Hunter and Rockwell units (three in all): they'd lose the program and revert to some insane temperature, they'd lose the ability to be programmed (yeah, that's nice), or they'd just lose it.

Link (http://www.soundmoneytips.com/article/10816-tips-for-reducing-your-cooling-bill)


We keep ours at around 80 during the day, and take it down to 77-78 in the early evening.

Ours (the Honeywell Chromotherm III) has a function where, 1/2 hour before the desired time/temp setting, it slowly cycles itself towards the programmed temperature, I think that's so the furnace doesn't have to work to hard to catch up.

How does the HVAC unit work "harder"?  Do you guys have variable-speed furnaces/AC units?  Mine just have two speeds: ON and OFF.

It's on or off but when it has to cool or heat great ranges it runs for a long time to do that.  I'm guessing that is what they mean by work too hard. 

We like to have it perfect when we are home.  Downstairs and upstairs each have their own units.  And all our bedrooms are upstairs.

This summer since we are in the 90-100 degree range for months on end.

Down:  sleep:  72, wake 72, away 75, home 72 and it starts preparing for my arrival 30 minutes in advance

Upstairs:  sleep 68 (we like it very cool at night obviously), wake 72 (but it stays like 69-70 while we are getting ready for work), away 75 and home 72. 

At times we run it down a degree while home to circulate air and cool off for a bit.  The lennox unit was seriously the best investment we ever made on our house. 

Working "harder" simply means that the total time that the cooling unit is on will be greater if you turn it off completely and turn it back on when you get back than if you were to allow it cycle on and off all day while you're out.

Indeed, work "harder" is probably a poor choice of words.

'fredo- you keep your stat set at 72° in the summer?  [sm_shock] What does your electric bill look like? Ours is typically set around 78° when we're home and 82° when we're away. It's not exactly cool, but it's not uncomfortable.

It's supposed to reach 94° today and 100° by Monday. But it's a dry heat, so we've got that going for us, which is nice.

90 here today with our daily dose of  :airquotes: severe thunderstorms :airquotes: the fan is starting to smoke already. dew point is already at 70*  :help:

78° here and we'd be dripping sweat the entire time we we're home.  Kind of defeat the purpose of having ac IMO. 

Our bill isn't bad at all since the unit is very efficient and our house is protected by large trees so it is under shade a lot. 

The hot summer month bills like the one I'm about to pay June, July, Aug, Sept are $150-$175.  If we had a brutal month it wouldn't get above $200.  The other months of the year it is around $70.

It also depends on how much laundry a month we do as we have the suckiest most inefficient electrical dryer. 

I sit on a box of frozen peas.