I agree with you and so does my husband. Our thermostat stays at a steady 65 degrees and when we have company we turn it up to 67 or 68. We feel just fine at 65. We have lots of warm comforters on our bed and we keep blankets in the living room and cozy up when we watch tv. Our kids’s rooms are upstairs and seem to stay more warm in general.

We are comfortable AND we are saving energy and money!

I generally agree with your posts, but not this one.

For one, I would disagree that a heater needs to work “harder” to bring a house up to a higher temp in the morning than if the setting was constant. Two reasons here… First, while the heater will definitely be on more during the morning “recovery period” It will be off, likely for a longer period, in the evening as the house is allowed to cool down. Second, keeping the house at a higher temp through the night causes more mini-cycles as the heat come on and goes off. Like many machines i suspect that this cycling is the source of wear and tear.

You asked if people get cold at night and if it is generally colder at night. Yes and yes, but this is not reason to leave your thermostat set high. For one, the only time that 90% of someone’s body is routinely covered in three layers of insulation including a down comforter, is at night, so they’d be less likely to catch a chill. Second, from a comfort point of view, the temp outside and the thermostat setting are not related. If you set your thermostat at 68 to be comfortable, then it doesn’t matter if it is 10 or 45 degrees outside. Oh, yea I think it probably also makes a difference that a person is unconscious for most of the night which makes the sacrifice almost unnoticeable. Lastly, there is no need to be cold in the morning if you set your programmable thermostat to revert to a daytime setting an hour before you wake up.

Lastly, an adjustable thermostat can really save you money. Check out the following link to calculate how much you could save:
http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/cool_change/downloads/CalculatorProgrammableThermostat.xls

Wow.. the only sound advice in this post is the last paragraph! I guess the first paragraph is accurate too.

Horrible stuff.. readers, please ignore the ignorant.

I agree with Bill. You’re info about the heater having to work harder if you turn it down during the day is simply wrong. This bogus advice appears year after year but it is not true. If you want to save energy, turn down the thermostat. As for wearing out the heater, that’s false, too. Your heater actually runs much more efficiently when running for an extended period rather than in short bursts. It is those short cycles that cause more wear and tear.

It’s kind of funny. We bought a programmable thermostat but since my wife and children are home during the day we actually have 4 time zones per day programmed to the same temperature and have a M-F and then a S-S setting of that.

I agree to a very small extent. My experience is it cost about the same to heat the house to 60 degrees as it does to 68, so we just heat it 68. If we turn it to 70 it does seem to run a lot more, so 68 is kind of the sweet spot.

Why? The reason for us is we like it cold at night and we do turn off the heat at night. So if we kept it at 60 inside and turned it off at night, it would drop into colder territory. So we would pay about the same to turn it to 60 every morning anyway.

I also agree with you if we leave the house for like an hour. We just leave on the heat – certainly cheaper to maintain for short periods of time.

Otherwise, I disagree. If you live in a very cold area, I could buy that perhaps that would wear out your heater a little faster. Our heater really doesn’t work that hard, so eh. It generally heats up the house in the morning and is off most of the day and night, so I am kind of with Bill on that part. If we kept it on all day at a constant temp it would cycle on and off a lot.

I have to agree with Bill on this. I believe it’s the short cycling that wears out the furnace and uses more fuel. We always turn the heat down at night and when we’ll be away from home for more than a couple of hours.

I’m afraid this posting leaves me with more questions than answers at the end. Are there any studies from Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) organizations that support this theory? Do any heater manufacturers advertise this theory as being true? The only evidence you give is comparing your bills with your neighbors. What range of temperatures do they use (yours is 68 and 78)? Are you comparing gas bills, electric bills, propane? You may be onto something solid, but I need more evidence before jumping on board.

Lori, and all, here is what the US Dept. of Energy says about programmable thermostats. According to them, you can save up to 10%/year on heating and cooling costs by turning down the thermostat at night or when you are away from home.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/consumer/tips/thermostats.html

Here’s another article:
http://www.care2.com/greenliving/10-thermostat-tips-save-money.html

And here is a physicist explanation of why you should turn down the thermostat. Read the cartoon and then click on discussion.
http://www3.amherst.edu/~physicsqanda/Thermostat.htm

All the experts! Shut up! You save about 6 dollars a month to be uncomfortable in your own home. Great, and no thanks. I like comfort. Dufuses!

Uh, what are you backing your assertion on? Can you provide proof that it does take more to heat a cold house then it does to maintain the heat?

The physics are pretty straight forwards (and someone can correct me if I am wrong) but once your house has lost a certain amount of heat (the rate of the heat loss slows the temperature difference with the outside drops), it can’t lose anymore heat, but constantly heating it to a set temperature means that you are constantly losing heat at a high rate.

My explanantion probably makes no sense, but here is a link to a site that explains it better…

http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cooling.html

The explanation is for leaving the A/C unit on when you are not at home, but the physics are the same (in reverse).

“Heat goes to where it’s not. That’s why heat from outside goes into your cooler home. With the AC off, at some point your house will be so hot it can’t absorb any more heat. When you come home and turn the AC on, the AC removes all that heat.

But if the AC is on when you’re gone, then you’ve turned your house into a heat magnet. But keeping it artificially cool, there’s no limit to the amount of heat it can absorb. It can always absorb more heat. And your AC has to remove that heat constantly. Your AC kicks in and removes some of that heat, then the house is cooler so it sucks in more heat from outside, so your AC kicks in again and removes that heat, and so on.

This means that throughout the day, your house has absorbed way more than one houseful of heat. And your AC had to remove it all. By contrast, with the AC off all day, then it has to remove just one houseful of heat when you come home and turn it on.

Let’s say you leave the AC off, and your house absorbs 20k BTU’s of heat and then stops, because that’s all it can absorb.

Now let’s say that you have the AC running instead. The house absorbs 5k BTU’s of heat, so the AC kicks in and removes it. Then it absorbs another 5k BTU’s, and your AC kicks in and removes that. Repeat that process several times during the day.

The actual numbers will vary, and I haven’t tested this to see exactly how much the penalty for leaving the AC on during the day is, but there is zero question that running the AC all the time uses more energy than turning it on when you get home. This is not a gray area, it’s simple physics, and no person with any knowledge of this subject disputes it. Running the AC when you’re not home wastes energy, period.”

@rod gozinya

Your comment is a great glimpse of what is wrong with our current ‘me’ society. Just because you can afford it, doesn’t make it right. You have a responsibility to lower your impact on the environment. If not then we can all drive giant 100 litre Hummers and leave them idling so we can be comfortable – as long as I can afford the gas! Big deal it’s only a couple of bucks!

Big picture. Millions of people saving $6 a month, or even reducing emissions by 10% would have massive implications on our world.

So, M. Beddingfield, have you read any of these comments?

Do you have ANY urge to correct your ignorant post? Or better yet, remove it completely?

Yes Stephen Waits, I have taken the time to read the comments. I realize that this is a controversial subject, but everyone is entitled to an opinion. Even professionals who work with heat systems will have different opinions as to what works best. I simply wrote what works for me. Perhaps I have a different system than others?

I noticed that all who replied seemed to dwell on what they disagreed with. The point was made in the article that you shouldn’t keep adjusting the thermostat every time you felt cold or hot. Why do you think businesses have locks on their thermostats?

Just because you disagree with something doesn’t mean you should put the person down and call them ignorant. This post opened up a discussion and that’s a good thing.

First of all, these aren’t opinions. We’re talking in facts here. It’s simple science.

Second, we’re disagreeing with you because you are flat out wrong. You’re now acting like you said “you shouldn’t keep adjusting the thermostat every time you felt cold or hot”. But you didn’t …

.. in actuality, you said “Many people turn down the thermostat when they leave for work or are away from home for a day. No one will be there to get cold, so why leave the heater running? It doesn’t make sense to heat an empty house. That’s where I say they’re wrong. It does make sense to heat an empty house because it’s easier for your heater to maintain a certain temperature than to spend an hour or more trying to bring the heat up to a comfortable level.”

Which is a complete falsehood. You lied.. not intentionally, just ignorantly. You decided you think you know how something works, without doing ANY research, and then you posted it.

You’re spreading BAD information, that will COST PEOPLE MORE MONEY instead of helping them SAVE.

The name of the blog is SAVING ADVICE.

So, M. Beddingfield, it’s time you step up to the plate and, either update or delete this post. It’s hurtful, bad, ignorant advice.

http://www.greatinspector.com/faq-hvac-thermostat-set.html

OMFG.. joe & bubba’s hvac says something, so it must be so!

Look, the links have been posted.. you clearly haven’t read them, or your ego won’t let you admit you were wrong.

Meanwhile, you’re hurting people who may read this post. You’ll cost them money.

SAVING ADVICE.. not living up to the name.

Arguing with ignorant people is a waste of time. I tried to help, for the sake of others who may read the post, and sadly join the ranks of the uninformed. I’m done here, this is my last post on the subject.

Best of luck to you M. Beddingfield.

“Why do you think businesses have locks on their thermostats?”
There are a couple of main reasons for this and they have nothing to do with the topic of this thread.

1. Business owner doesn’t want every random employee adjusting the temp up and down throughout the day just because he or she happens to be hot or cold. Owner wants to set one temp that is comfortable for most people and leave it at that.

2. Business has a programmable thermostat and owner doesn’t want people messing with it and overriding the programming.

3. People screw up. They raise the heat because they’re cold and forget to turn it back down so the heat ends up blasting all night, resulting in a huge bill. Or they turn it down because they’re warm and forget to turn it back up so the next morning you arrive and it is freezing in the office.

I was going to look for examples of other ignorant posts on the internet to help prove a point to the ‘author’. I figured I’d show some links to people who think the world is still flat, and people who think the president is an alien, and the earth is the center of the universe etc. Sadly, there is no shortage of misinformation on the internet. Now I am depressed.

I hope people who read the article take the time to read the comments and then take the time to figure out the laws of physics. Better yet, I hope the author takes the advice of previous posts and updates this article.

There’s nothing wrong with admitting you made a mistake. I used to think that ‘revving’ (spell?) my car engine made the heater warm up faster. I learned. I’m smarter for it…

[...] http://www.savingadvice.com/blog/2008/12/15/103563_dont-adjust-thermostat.html [...]

I keep my programmable thermostat at 72 Fahrenheit when the humans are gone, 74 when the humans are awake, and 72 overnight. However, it is hard to leave one’s bed so early in the morning, so I raise the temperature to 76 shortly before the alarms start waking everybody up. This has helped me cut down on heating costs.

I have my room ’stat set to 19, and if chilly I put another layer of clothes on. I turned the ’stat down on my hot water – if you think about it, most people add cold water to a bath etc to bring the temperature down, so why heat up water so it’s piping hot, just to cool it down again? There could be an issue with Legionnaire’s disease, but as long as the water temp. is at 55 to kill any Legionnaires disease bacteria [though this is mainly a large scale water system problem, rather than domestic], you’re okay.

The physics is straightforward. The rate of heat conducted across a boundary is proportional to the difference of temperature. That means that when the thermostat is set high when you aren’t there, or covered with blankets you lose more heat per hour than if you had the interior temperature set lower. That is a fact, not an opinion.