Title. We keep ours at 75F, parents do 77F, and in laws 68F. It made me curious what everyone else keeps theirs at?
Not American. What’s a thermostat?
The electronic thing on the wall that controls the temperature of your heater or air conditioner.
older ones are often electrical, but not really electronic. they use a bimetal strip that bends due to changing temperatures, to complete a circuit at the point you set the slider. it’s actually a really fascinatingly simple bit of tech.
Only God knows
Thermostat isn’t an American term.
I have been involved in many of these types of discussions, and I’m convinced that we are not experiencing the same temperatures when we set our thermostats to the same temperature. If I set mine any lower than 77°F, I would freeze to death. But many people here set theirs to below 70°F.
I have a few hypotheses.
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Apparently AC units can really only make the temperature about 20-25°F degrees colder than the outside ambient temperature. It is over 100°F in my area almost every day from June to mid September, so any temperature below about 78°F just means your AC is on 100% of the time. This is removing moisture from the air, making it feel colder.
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My thermostat is right next to my garage door, which is not insulated. This is probably where the majority of heat enters the house. So the thermostat thinks it is warmer than it is. Other people might be in similar or opposite situations and need to set their thermostats to account for that.
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People’s AC units are not actually cooling anywhere near those temperatures. The unit is just on 100% of the time at those temperatures, and they could realistically increase the temperature a great deal and get the same results.
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Humidity.
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Some people’s AC units/thermometers just suck. 65°F on their unit actually gets the space to the same temperature as 75°F on my unit.
Number 2 has merit. Here are a few more.
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Most thermostats do require calibration, and nobody has time for that. This has a similar effect to your second point. Proper air flow (or lack thereof) throughout the home is also important.
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Sunlight makes a huge difference. A temperature that feels comfortable at night may not feel comfortable at noon in a home with a lot of natural light. Same as a sunny vs a cloudy day, indoors or outdoors.
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Men and women have drastically different tolerances for comfortable room temperature. In general, non-menopausal women tend to appreciate a slightly warmer room than men. This plays out in office spaces all over the world, with many women running space heaters under their desks.
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Clothing obviously makes a huge difference. Some people prefer to dress for their desired temperature; others prefer to dress for their physical comfort and let the HVAC balance things out accordingly.
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Medical conditions and medications and diet can all drastically affect one’s body heat output. For example, anything that boosts serotonin is likely to make one run hot. Stimulants will constrict blood vessels and make one cold, especially in the extremities. And we all know what alcohol does (dilates blood vessels, allowing more heat to escape the body, lowering one’s body temperature despite actually making them feel warmer). Blood sugar levels make a difference. The list is endless.
But it’s interesting that most of your thought process went into how HVAC systems and humidity work, versus the simple fact that the people themselves are just drastically different (see points 3 through 5).
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My thermostat is right next to my garage door, which is not insulated. This is probably where the majority of heat enters the house. So the thermostat thinks it is warmer than it is.
I’ve got an Ecobee thermostat and they sell little temperature sensors that you can place anywhere in your house. You can configure which sensors are used at which time - for example I have a sensor in my bedroom, and configured it to only look at the bedroom temperature overnight. If you select multiple sensors, it averages them.
It’s a decent solution to this problem.
This is removing moisture from the air, making it feel colder.
That’s not how humidity works. Higher humidity means that cooler temperatures feel much colder and warmer temperatures feel much warmer. Even the heat index calculation shows this. Just try it out for yourself, or look at the formula. https://www.weather.gov/epz/wxcalc_heatindex
People’s AC units are not actually cooling anywhere near those temperatures. The unit is just on 100% of the time at those temperatures, and they could realistically increase the temperature a great deal and get the same results.
I don’t know why you think this. Maybe you only have a single stage AC or maybe you’ve never actually measured the temp with an extra thermometer, but you can get the ac 40-50°F cooler than outside, both by removing humidity (which decreases the “feels like” temp) but also through actually heat removal from the house. You might just have bad insulation as well.
If you live in a dry climate you can do the opposite. Pump humidity in using a swamp cooler, which places moisture in the air and then immediately causes it to evaporate carrying heat with it in the state change. You’re cooling the air slightly and since moisture exaggerates temperature changes it feels cooler to you.
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Europe.
Winter 20C/70F, but we only heat the bedrooms or rooms we mostly stay in. Kitchen, etc. can go as low as 10C/50F
Summer: no heating/AC at all. Open a window when cold air is coming inside. Close the windows when hot air is coming in. It’s never gone above 35C/95F, and that’s during a heat wave. Usually it’s 25C/80F max.
Sometimes when it’s too cold. You wear a sweater and thick socks. Sometimes it’s hot. Fan or live with it. Adapt our schedules accordingly, perhaps do groceries when it’s super hot or go on an errand that requires the car a drive so we can cool down in the supermarket/AC.
It’s never gone above 35C/95F
I think I speak for 99% of the people here when I say “FUCK THAT”
The climate’s fucked and inflation is rampant.
You’re frankly better off getting used to the occasional hot day.
It’s hot, but you get used to it.
It’s hot, but you get used to it
I’m not sure it will stay true in Europe. I think we might start to see more and more deadly heatwave, with temperatures to high to get used to it.
My view change on AC because of that, I used to think it was a luxury but it might become a necessity.
On the other hand fans can greatly improve the “efficiency” of AC, I’m comfortably sleeping with a fan and the AC thermostat setup at 28°C.
Ah. But that 35C was when it was above 40C. It was already extreme for northern europe.
If we ever head towards 50C, I suspect I’ll be dead before then, there’s always the basement. That’s ten or more degrees less than under the roof.
As climate change accelerates, and energy prices increase, we’ll have to adapt. Because when the power increasingly goes out, or when you end up paying hundreds per month on electricity, you’re fucked in a poorly insulated house even with AC.
It’s not environmentally friendly, it’s increasingly unaffordable, and it’s not sustainable on a societal level.
That happens quite often for me inside, it really sucks. Not much I can do about it though.
I think I misunderstood him. I assumed he meant that the inside of his house was 95, but I think he meant that the outside was 95. Still anything over 80 indoors I can’t handle.
Edit: nope just read his other reply and it was 95 inside. Again, fuck that.
Yeah, it sucks. AC is very uncommon in residential housing so there is not much you can do, especially if you’re like me with a hot computer in the house. Without a computer it’s still way to hot but it’s better.
Optimally you open your windows but you might not always want to do that, since there are quite a few insects outside. During night the mosquitos are fucking everywhere, so leaving a window open is possible, but it’s risky.
69° all year round. It’s nice.
Nice
Nice
I have a brand new apartment. On recommendation of the constructor (new walls contain lots of moisture that needs to go out), it’s set a little warmer than I’d usually go: 21C (70F). In my old place I’d put it at 18C (64F).
That said, currently it’s 25C inside (77F). This place is insulated like crazy, and we don’t have AC (that still isn’t common over here, even for new builds). For reference, current temperatures outside are 14C (57F)
I live in the Netherlands.
In the UK here, have you guys had a cool, wet summer too? And if so have people (not necessarily you as it seems you live in a modern well insulated home) needed to put the heating on? I’m in a flat in a late 1800s building and have put it on a couple of times to take the chill off, my mum’s in a 1920s semi detached and has had the heating on most days.
Our weather is nigh-identical to that in south-eastern England. I mean, after all, coast to coast theres only 100km between us. We’ve had a normal summer. Perhaps “cool” by today’s standard, but even on average for the last 30 years it’s been a normal summer.
June in fact was exceptionally sunny and dry. July indeed was a nothingburger, mostly rain rain and more rain. August was a mix, some good days some bad. What we didn’t have this year was any 35+ temperatures.
18 in summer or off and 22 or off in winter
21C in the winter and 19C in the summer
Why not just set it to 20 all year long?
My heating is set at 21°C (70F) for daytimes and 16°C (61F) for the night time, so it doesn’t come on at all during summer, and a lot of spring (UK). During winter when it gets colder out (like below about 6°C/43F) I will usually need to whack it up by a couple of degrees, or give it a little extra blast in the morning to warm up. Its an old building (late 1800s) and my flat has external walls on three sides, and a cold empty basement below, so it can get quite cold when the outside temperature drops.
Edited to make it clear i mean my heating thermostat, because I realised most people here are talking about AC and that’s very rare in homes here.
We set the AC for 18°C heating in winter, and 23° cooling in summer. I’m happy in 18-23 temperatures, doesn’t need to be the same temp year around.
18 when it’s 10ish outside feels nice and toasty, and be 23 when it’s 35ish outside feels nice and cool.
21, all year round. When the sun hits the windows and I don’t have the shades down, and it creeps up to 23, I can’t definitely feel it.
I’m going out my damn mind trying to work out what I should set it at. I’ve been obsessively adding more and more temperature and humidity sensors around my living space to work out exactly what my idiot brain thinks is comfortable.
I don’t understand why 23C/50% makes me feel like I’m in the fucking Amazon rainforest one day, but on another I feel like I’ve got ice forming on my damn face like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
I’m this close to buying a ZigBee rectal thermometer. Core body temperature has to be the missing piece. (I suppose any ZigBee environment sensor can be a rectal one if I bite down on something first).
(Oh and lux, I wonder if lux levels tricked my brain but that doesn’t seem to correlate either!)
This comes to mind https://youtu.be/KrcY6PXkGuE?si=ShC5paBmaDBcR66C
Make sure you get one with a flared base.
Right now in summer: 67 overnight while we sleep (helps that we have tiered power pricing where late night power is almost half the price of it during the day), 72 when we’re up, and 80 between 2 and 6pm when we have the most expensive power hours. Luckily we’re in an apartment that’s like three years old, so it’s surprisingly well insulated and hasn’t gotten above 73 during those hot hours.
Winter: 20°C when home/awake, 17°C when out or asleep. Before kids we used to drop it to 15°C at night. It was glorious
Summer: 22°C when home awake or asleep, 26°C when away for longer period, 24 for short periods
That’s interesting. When away from home I set a minimum temperature to avoid pipes freezing in the winter, but why do you put the AC on a max temperature when away from home?
Yeah that doesn’t seem very efficient to make the AC work so much harder when you return home.
It’s apparently a good thing to do: https://www.carrier.com/residential/en/us/products/air-conditioners/best-temperature-for-ac/
Maybe because the house is naturally warmer during the day when you’re not home, and it will cool down on its own before you come home. But idk, I don’t own an AC.
25°C at winter and 24°C at summer. It’s a small house that’s not too expensive to heat so I prefer slightly warmer than normal room temperature
Western suburbs of Chicago, IL. Summer it’s 77-79f (25-26c). Winter it’s 65-69f (18.3-20.5c).
In summer we open the windows at night and let the cooler air in and when the sun comes in I close the windows and run a dehumidifier to quickly bring down the relative temp upstairs especially. Helps a bunch.
When our new kid comes I will have to def adjust these numbers much closer to 72f (22c).
I was talking to friends who live nearby and essentially keep it at 72f (22c) year round and almost never open their windows they were using like 1040kwh-1600kwh per month last month where we were using 309kwh or about 50 bucks a month. This was for July. I think we may be the weirdos and we will have to get more on their level with a newborn.
Having an apartment with district heating, we don’t have a thermostat per se - we can control the inflow of hot water to our radiators, on a scale of 0-7. However, I try to keep the indoor temperature at at least 18-19 C during the colder period, and I try to reduce the indoor by opening the windows and ventilating any time the indoor temperature goes past 22 C during the hotter parts of the year. Any higher than that and my sleep starts to get compromised.