Thermostat winter setting: keeping the peace

[Lsbcal]

Thanks for all the responses so far. There is quite a range of answers but I know there are all kinds of reasons for this.

DW has pushed the temp up from 66 to 67. This has to be a joint decision and we joke about the choice. I really don't know what the cost is to push the average temp up a couple of degrees. At this time of the year I suspect it is modest.

BTW, our utility company has started showing a nice graph with the monthly bill. It shows the broad monthly picture for a year and daily as well. Here is the monthly:

Maybe sometimes I get too carried away trying to be efficient. With energy consumption it becomes kind of a patriot sort of thing but maybe I'm going over the top.

This thread is providing a good grounding.

 

[Jack_Pine]

I'm looking forward to snowbirding this winter. Our house in MD is really big, and even with geothermal it's pretty expensive (MD Eastern Shore electricity is pretty high). This winter I'm going to get to set it to 45, and with the lack of other electric use I suspect we should be saving a couple hundred dollars/month. And since the house in FL is pretty small and Jan - March should be mostly without AC, I think we're going to have a huge energy consumption difference.

Ordinarily we'd keep the main house zone at 67, the bedroom zone at 64, and the upstairs (empty) zone at 45.

We are going to snow bird as well. 45 seems a little low too me. Not much buffer to freezing if you loose power.

 

[FIREd]

We neither cool nor heat our apartment (San Francisco), letting the temperature rise and fall with the seasons (62-85F inside temperature throughout the year). We mainly use the sunlight to heat up the place in the winter, though it sometimes needs to be supplemented with a space heater when I am sitting at my desk.

 

[harley]

We are going to snow bird as well. 45 seems a little low too me. Not much buffer to freezing if you loose power.

We'll be turning off the water and draining the pipes, but we also have a propane generator that will keep the heat, fridge, and other necessary devices going. I think we're covered, unless we have a multi-week outage.

 

[brewer12345]

67F around the clock in the winter. We heat with natural gas and it is petty inexpensive. We supplement with a wood stove. The stove has a fan that circulates air around the firebox and with the help of a ceiling fan I can pretty much heat the whole house with it. An hour before bedtime we turn on the central air fan to circulate the heat better to the bedrooms. I make it a point of pride not to pay for firewood. Thus far, I have gotten so much free wood from suburban tree trimming/cut downs that I turned some down when offered. When I am running the stove it is pretty easy to get the ground floor to 73 or better.

In the summer we set the central ac to 73. I wish we had a swamp cooler instead, but we also use the whole house fan to cool the house down at night.

 

[F4mandolin]

Quote:
Originally Posted by F4mandolin
I'm planning on moving back to N Yorkshire in 3 years....I need to set the temp to "don't die".

I know exactly what you mean. We also plan on moving to N Yorkshire in 3 years time, but only during the summer months.

Hell.....that IS during the summer.....or whatever they call the time during June/July/August. Wife was back at the end of May last year.....she has been spoiled living with me and my liking of fingers that aren't frozen......her family doesn't use much heat. I TOLD her to take her thermals with her.....but noooooooo, she wouldn't listen.

 

[Jack_Pine]

We'll be turning off the water and draining the pipes, but we also have a propane generator that will keep the heat, fridge, and other necessary devices going. I think we're covered, unless we have a multi-week outage.

We are on a well, so I suppose I will drain pipes and they shut off the breaker to the well. Not sure if there is any down side to that. We will have a genny as well.

 

[travelover]

We are on a well, so I suppose I will drain pipes and they shut off the breaker to the well. Not sure if there is any down side to that. .........

I turn off the power to my well pump when I travel. The downside is air in the pipes when I return. The upside is no burst plumbing and resultant water damage.

 

[Jack_Pine]

I turn off the power to my well pump when I travel. The downside is air in the pipes when I return. The upside is no burst plumbing and resultant water damage.

How do you handle the air in the pipes when you get home?

 

[REWahoo]

How do you handle the air in the pipes when you get home?

Turn on the vent fan in the bathroom.

 

[travelover]

How do you handle the air in the pipes when you get home?

Take off the aerator screen on the highest faucet and let the hot and cold water run until the air is gone. If you don't take off the screen, sometimes the coughing out of the air dislodges mineral deposits and clogs the screen, in which case you have to take it off and clean it anyway.

 

[samclem]

How do you handle the air in the pipes when you get home?

Dislodging the air can be rough on old/not quite perfect piping. After the hissing and coughing is done it is a good idea to take take a look around and see if there are any obvious leaks. If it's inside a wall, well I guess you'll eventually learn about it.

 

[imoldernu]

Hmmm... Re: Turning off the water...

Where? In our house, the shut off is in the utility closet... ( we have a crawl space underneath house.)

We call the city and have the water shut off at the street. In the case of a long term hard freeze, any part of the piping that comes from the city water main is vulnerable to freeze and bursting. This happened to us once when the shut off was in an unheated garage... the pipe burst and the garage flooded... fortunately with no serious damage.

The main shut off (at the street below the frost line) is usually a gate valve, which, over time, can leak, but still keeps the pressure down, and avoids serious flooding.

A small point on shutting off the water. Of course it means shutting off the HWH too. On coming back and turning the water on, we have had a problem in two houses.. relighting the HWH... The solution for us, when pressing the ignition button...to click (snap) the button multiple times quickly. Cost me a $80 service call to find the out... offered here, for free!

One more point on shutting down... Paid $4 for a thermostatically controlled electric switch that I connect to a desk light, set in the window facing my neighbors house. I set the temperature to 35 degrees, so that if the furnace goes off, the light will alert the neighbor.

Will keep the thermometer set at 50 degrees when we leave this year, instead of the 55 degrees in the past.

 

[NW-Bound]

I forgot to say that when we are not at our high-country home, I always shut off the water at the meter, which is at the curb. I also drain the house plumbing.

It's standard practice here to put in the plumbing such that the main hot and cold lines in the basement or crawlspace are sloped towards a lower corner of the ground under the house, and ended up at two outside frost-free faucets. Opening these two faucets will allow draining of the inside plumbing.

One year, we had the water meter frozen. It was 2 ft deep. The record low temperature here was -25F (-32C). I have since run an electric line out there to power a heat tape, although the frozen meter was replaced free of charge by the water co-op.