I’ve decided to keep my thermostat at a lower temp than usual. Last winter it was set to a nice and warm 72 degrees. What I’ve been doing so far this colder season is dropping it down to 60 when I am at work and when I get home, I raise it to about 65 degrees. It feels cold in the house, I’m not going to lie. I don’t know how long I will be able to keep it at this temperature.
What temperature do you keep your place in the fall/winter?
This Web site is recommending 68 degrees when you are home and 55 degrees when you are sleeping. That 55 degrees seems really cold to me.
Growing up, we always kept ours at 69. Woebetide if you ever touched the dial. My dad subscribed to the theory that keeping the house at a constant temp 24/7 was most cost efficient.
Here I maintain the 69 tradition, but we do turn it off completely at night. Steve subscribes to the theory that turning it off when not needed is most cost efficient. Lately it has been getting really cold (I notice if Julia wakes me up to eat in the middle of the night), and by really cold I mean the thermostat reads about 62 or 63. In those cases I just turn it on when I get up and leave it on for the day.
Hmmm…I wonder if my comment is awaiting moderation because of a certain number at which I keep my thermostat.
Your comments are always moderated! Can’t trust you and your dirty, poison pen! 🙂
Generally, 66 or so when I’m not here, 72 when I am, and back down into the upper 60s at night.
Currently we use a pellet stove as our primary source of heat and we love it. It’s an old model without a thermostat so I don’t have a lot of control over temperature. The house has electric baseboard heating but it’s too expensive to leave that on.
Supposedly for every degree you turn down the thermostat you save 3%. 55 seems a bit chilly. Note the asterisk next to that 55 on the web page “* Or as low as health permits”.
A note of caution about shutting heat down altogether.
You must maintain some heat to keep pipes from freezing. Remember some of your plumbing may be run through outside walls or near windows/doors. Even if the room temp is 50 degrees does not guarantee the pipes will stay above freezing.
A friend of mine tried to save money by shutting off heat in his basement. bad idea. During a stretch of sub-freezing temps his pipes froze, shutting off heat to other portions of the house. With the money it cost to repair the burst pipes he could have heated his entire home for 4-5 years 🙁
One thing I found useful when I worked from home a lot was one of those desktop space heaters. It seemed I could not keep my “mouse hand” warm unless the entire room was well heated. With the desktop heater I was able to blow warm air across the keyboard/mouse and not use the room heat at all.
If all else fails, I recommend Stone Imperial Russian Stout 🙂