Home Climate Control Settings

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?

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


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.

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

I have two settings:

Hot or Cold.

I like to keep things simple

Have you learned nothing from Mr. Ford?

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.

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.

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.