What is the school of thought on changing the set temp for the A/C throughout the day? I've heard that it might not be very cost effective to set the temp to, say, 80 during the day when you're gone and having it lower to about 76 when you get home. I know it sounds weird, but is it better (money-wise) to just leave it at 76 all day so it doesn't have to work hard during the hottest part of the day to bring it from 80 to 76 at 6pm or so?

I noticed last night when the inside temp was 77 and the A/C was crankin the temp went up to 78 for a few minutes I figured if I kept it at 76 all day (as opposed to 80 all day then moving it to 76 around 6 pm) it would be a lot more comfortable in the evening, but would it be a lot more expensive to do so??

 

you already know my haha!

75 when home

77-78 when at work

73 when sleeping!



oh and i forgot to tell you, my parents were saying their AC guy said once to just leave it on 75 all day long and it will still actually shut it self off once it reaches 75 and just run the fan instead.......

 

Well you do the same thing, just different temps. I'm asking if it's more cost-effective to just leave it at the same temp all day.

 

With BGE's recent 50% increase in electricity, they love you very much if you leave it all day. I shut it off when I am not at home.

 

Well, with a pregnant wife at home., I can't say too much about efficiency.

My wife likes it at 68 degrees at night, and we keep it at about 73 during the day. We'll see how our electric bill is in a couple of days!

We keep it at auto. It turns to 68 degrees at 8PM-6AM, 73 degrees from 6AM-4PM, and then 71 degrees from 4PM-8PM.

I'm thinking of hiring some of those efficiency experts that tell us where we are losing heat or energy in our house. Will electric companies do this for free?

 

Turning it off during the day is bad. When you do that, the air has to run longer to get to the set temp. I have mine set for 74 during the day and 72 when I'm home.

 

I called my energy company today to set up a free appointment to have someone come by the house for an energy audit. I'll report the results.

Nicky, that's not always true. If the outside temperature during the day is not that high, and the house is well insulated, then the air doesn't have to be on all that long.

 

^^Well what if it's very hot? Friday evening around 6 pm I came home and the thing ran for 2 hrs straight to bring the temp down 4 degrees.

 

Well, I guess you would have to monitor the temperature. If I know, for example, that the temperature is going to be 90+ degrees during the day, I will leave the air on during the day. The school of thought there is since in the morning you probably have the temperature set at a sensible level, it won't take that much time, money, or energy to keep it that way (or even a few degrees above that set temperature).

If the temperature during the day is going to be 70 degrees or even 80 degrees during the day, I will leave the air off. My house is relatively energy efficient enough to overcome that kind of temperature increase.

 

It is defintely better in terms of efficiency to bump the temperature up during the day when it is warmer than your setting outside.

Your A/C doesn't work "hard". It just works. If it runs for two hours to lower the temperature when you come home, it would have run longer than that during the day to keep the temperature lower all day.

 

Not necessarily. It depends on a multitude of factors: including how far away the main cooling source is to the thermostat, how much and what type of insulation you have in yoiur attic, how big your home is, how evergy efficient it is, what type of windows you use, the type of climate that the house is in, etc.

I have a pretty efficient home. I have an R-value of about 26 (12-inches of insulation) in my 1,897 sq. ft. one-story Florida home. It was buitl in 2003. Heck, I'm thinking of adding about 3-9 inches of blown-in insulation in my crawl space.

I have all energy-star appliances, but to me, that's not good enough.

 

Be careful not to "insulate"/close-in your house to an extreme.... It's good to have at least some air exchange and circulation throughout the place. If you seal everything up, the indoor air becomes more polluted or of a lower quality than even the outside air, which isn't good considering you breathe it in all day.

 

i keep mine at 73 all day and sometimes 72 at night.

once i find a temp i like i will program it for a couple degrres warmer during the day and to cool down before we get home.


we also run our ceiling fan to circulate the air

 

Yep, hence why it's good to change out the air filter every month.

 

Do you run the ceiling fan during the day when no one is home? If so, that is wasteful. The only point of a ceiling fan is to cool PEOPLE, not the air. The ceiling fan does nothing for humidity. You probably knew that though.

 

Any news on the enrgy audit? Was it free? Was it performed by the utility company?

 

It's friggin' amazing the amount of energy and miscommunication that comes when you ask something of companies that are out of the ordinary.

Friday morning comes (last week). I get up around 9AM. The appointment is from 9-12PM. Earlier in the week I had requested that the energy company put something in the work order about calling me when they were on their way. I confirmed this with the company.

The POS fucker did not call. I get in the shower and grab both my house phone and cell phone, to make sure I didn't miss the call.

I get out of the shower, get dressed, and check the front door. I get a piece of paper saying they missed my appointment.

After swearing every word in the book, I get on the phone and call my utility company. I DEMAND that the fucker come back. The person on the phone said she could only leave a message with the scheduling department. I was livid.

So now I have to wait until next Friday to have them come out. It's in the afternoon, and I'm going to leave a note on the door. If they come and leave, I'm going to blow up the utility company.

 

NO, its not more cost effective to leave it at the same temp all day. Sure your A/C is going to work a little harder to initially cool down the house at night, but its still better than having it running all day to keep the house at 76.

 

Dude your avater reminds me of Aliens for some reason.

 

wow you guys keep your air coooooool. I bought a 5/2 programable thermostat, during the week and actually the weekend I keep it on 82 for 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. then from 7:30 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. its 81, then at 8:15 p.m. it goes to 78 unil 2 a.m. where it goes to 79 till 8 a.m.

Last year I only had two electric bills in the hundreds and that was durring the summer and one was 100 with change and the other was 110 or something. During the winters I average in the $50 range.

What do some of your electric bills run?

 

My bill is $85 at the highest and $30 on the low end....thats for a 1000 sq ft condo.

 

Same here. And we run the ceiling fans all day too.

 

That's not a good idea. Unless you are home, underneath those fans, you are wasting elecricity and energy. The ONLY, and I mean ONLY purpose of fans to to recirculate air. That's it. It doesn't cool and it doesn't condition (lower the humidity) of the air. If you are leaving your fan on during the day with no one home, turn it off. You're wasting electricity.

 

wow gatrhumpy, you sound just as energy efficient (cheap) as me! My wife gets made sometimes but I just see no point in wasting electricity! Just like when it rains I turn my sprinklers off. I guess some people have money to burn, i would rather save. Just got my electric bill for last month, may14-june-14th, 70 bucks for a 1700sq house. I'm not complaining!

 

My problem is if I set it at 77-78, its comfortable downstairs but hot upstairs.

 

My new house (new to me) came with this little guy:


It's fantastic.
I just set the schedule, and it's perfect in my house at all times.
On weekdays in the summer:
71 from 7-9am
77 from 9am-5pm
70 from 5-11pm
74 from 11pm-7am

On the weekends:
71 from 7am-midnight
74 from midnight-7am

My client who is an "energy specialist" says that if you raise (or drop, depending on season) your set temp just 5 degrees, you can save as much as 15-20% on your energy bill.

 

Exactly. My thermostat is on the 1st floor, so at those temps, the upstairs would be 83-84 and the basement would be like 69-70.

 

Another air conditioner?

 

I don't plan on being here very long (<1-2 yrs) so I don't want to invest a ton of money into something that I wouldn't get much use out of. I'll probably end up getting one of those portable room A/C units for ~$400 or so. (HOA doesn't allow window units)

 

I had one of those in my townhouse. What a difference it made in the bedroom. However it took much longer to cool a room than a window unit would. I had to turn it on 3 hours before I planned to goto sleep.

 

For my 2,000th post ( ) I'll type:

I want to get a window air conditioner for our room, but the wife won't allow it because
1.) She doesn't want anything ugly sitting in our window
2.) Why get a window air conditioner when we have a central air?

I wanted to get a window A/C unit because we could save electricity and energy just cooling our room and not the entire house. Oh well.

I'm currently researching how to get and pay for a solar powered system for our house.

 

The energy audit it tomorrow. I'll let everyone know what I find.

 

Well, the guy showed up from Clay Electric. He was extremely courteous and knew what he was doing.

Since my 1,950 sq. ft. house was built in 2003, there's not a whole lot he could do. My home is already pretty efficient.

The first thing he did was to take a temperature reading of the attic in the garage and in different parts of the house. Mr. Smucky Schmuck never put more insulation around the in-ceiling speaker that I had installed, so I have to go up in the attic tomorrow morning to put more insulation around the speaker. The temperature around the speaker was around 85 degrees, while that in the rest of the house was about 75 degrees. Since a temperature gradient has the hot trying to displace the cold, the heat from the attic is getting into our house from those two spots.

Also, there was a return air duct that was not insulated in our master bedroom, so when I am up in the attic tomorrow I have to either put the insulation back on the wall. Other than that, our house was pretty buttoned up.

I wish he would have done an air test to test our front door and everything, but whatever. I'll have to pay for that.

He then tested the water temperature. He said the ideal water temperature is supposed to be around 120 degrees, and ours was that temperature on the dot. He did have a few recommendations, including: putting insulation on the two plactic PVC pipes coming out of the hot water heater, and getting curtains for most of the windows. Our roof is black, which does nothing but absorb the heat here in Florida. If I didn't have an HOA, I would put either tin or a metal roof on our house. That would save a lot of money, but the stupid fuckers at the HOA are only worried about property values. Oh well. Maybe I'll ask anyway, at least on the part of the roof that no one can see from the road.

I also recently wrapped the hot water heater with a blanket, so that helped a little. I have been reading about solar systems, and if we got one just to power the HVAC system, then we're looking at about $30K, slightly more than I thought. Right now, solar power is at something like $8/watt.