When selecting the temperature to set a thermostat, people generally want to balance personal comfort and cost, including energy costs and maintenance costs. Here are a few things to consider when making that selection.
People are all different when it comes to their preferred temperature. Preferences can even be affected by such things as level of activity (working out vs. watching TV), external climate (summer or winter outside), or even wardrobe (t-shirts or suits). However, these changes are usually predictable and usually happen in the same general pattern every day or week: for example, it is generally warmer outside during the day than at night, and many people are more active in the afternoon and sleep (low-level activity) at night. Knowing the patterns of a household can help people understand how their personal temperature preferences change through the day and can help guide setting a manual or programmable thermostat.
Another important consideration in setting the thermostat is power usage. Knowing your household schedule and personal preferences can be a first step in considering how much power the HVAC system is using to maintain temperature. In general, people are comfortable within a few degrees of their ideal temperature, so adjusting the temperature one or two degrees from ideal will still likely be comfortable, but over the long run it will save money in power consumption. Setting the thermostat a few degrees higher when no one is in the house, or while everyone is sleeping will also help reduce power use.
External temperature has a large effect on the work an HVAC system has to do to maintain a temperature. The greater the difference between internal and external temperature, the faster heat transfer between the two will occur. The closer the two temperatures are to one another, the slower the transfer. This means that if an air conditioning system is trying to maintain an internal temperature very different from the external temperature, the intrusion of heat will be far greater and the system will have to run more often to maintain that temperature. Knowing this can help when setting a thermostat. Keeping the temperature setting higher in the summer and lower in the winter will minimize the work the system has to do to overcome heat transfer.
All Day Air Cooling & Heating offers the Thermidistat Control system and Housewise, both very easy to use temperature control systems that are compatible with smart phones and other devices and make controlling the atmosphere inside your home simple and easy from wherever you are. Call All Day Air at (239) 357-0727 today for more information.
See our previous article about what to look for in a new thermostat.
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