I live in Northern NJ. Townhouse approx 2000 sq ft. Gas Heating. I used to turn it on and off on my own accord without using the auto function and my bills would be around 180-200 a month. Now, I want to wake up to a warm room so I keep it at 69 all day during the winter to keep things decent and hope that pipes don't freeze over. My bills recently spiked to 350-380. I thought the thermostat set at auto with a 1° differential would keep things efficient and lower my bill by maintaining a certain temp.

Where am I goin wrong?

 

I can't stop looking at your avatar long enough to post a reasonable response

 

Sorry... I had to remove your avatar. While I'm an ass and money man myself, it just wasn't appropriate. Please feel free to put something else up.

With that --- Your pipes won't freeze at that setting. If you're not home, you can turn things down. When we're not home, the upstairs and downstairs thermostats are set to 62.

What do you have it set on when you're home? 69 is not unreasonable at all (when home). FWIW, my wife is always cold so we keep it at 72 when we're home. And yes, our bills are insanely high.

1 degree is supposed to save 3%. If you're not home, reduce the thermostat down another 5 degrees. 62-63 will not cause any issues. Also helps to have an efficient furnace. Do you know the efficiency rating?

 

63 during the day and 67 evening when home, back to 65 during sleepy time

 

We've had a few of these before, but probably time for an updated one

They are both programmable thermostats, so we have it down to a science in both the winter and summer. If we're talking heat... we use the downstairs thermostat only during the winter.

56 when we're not home and at night, 67 when we are... timed for when we wake-up, leave, return, and sleep.

Our gas bill in the winter is typically around $120-$140/mo depending on how cold it gets. In addition to heat, our fireplace and dryer are gas.

This is for a 4500 square foot home.

 

When talking heat it is 69 when we wake up, 67 when we leave for work and 68 in the evening. On some really cold nights I will bump it up to 69. I have a heat pump so I can't turn it down during the day more than a degree or it will run my bill up like crazy when it heats back up. With my heat pump any more than a 1 degree change and it kicks in the aux heat.

 

Our thermostat is capable of 4 different settings per day. Mornings and evenings are set for 70, daytime is set for 58 (we're usually away at work) and nightime is set for 65.

 

My house is 2200ft^2, new construction and we live in southern WI. The furnace has a 92.5% efficiency with a programmable thermostat.

During the "sleep" time it goes down to 70 degrees (we have a 21 month old that doesn't stay under the covers yet). The "wake" mode is set to 73 degrees to get the house a little warmer for when we wake up. During the day I work from home so it only goes down to 68 degrees. My office is the warmest room in the house.

The weekend settings are virtually the same, except I keep the house warmer during the day, since we are usually home.

I just paid my December heating bill yesterday and it was $190. December was fairly cold with lows regularly in the low single digits and highs in the teens. This month is going to be a little higher, since we've been in the negatives, sometimes as low as -15F, for the past couple of weeks.

We also have a gas hot water heater, cook top, and fireplace.

Hope that helps.

 

nice. gives me an idea of what other people pay and set theirs at. I guess I'm going back to electric warming blankets and waking up cold and feeling the ice cold wood on my feet in the morning.

i miss my avatar apologies to the mods.

 

Also have a programmable thermostat. When at home it is set at 67°F, when at work it is set at 65°F. I found that if I set it any lower when not at home, the thermostat has a delay function and the furnace won't kick on no matter what the temp goes down to? I haven't been able to figure it out yet, even called Honeywell and talked to the customer service, but that was useless. If I change the thermostat setting from "Heat" to "Off" then back on, it works fine Any one else ever experience similar issues with their thermostat?

 

I set mine down to 62 when I leave for work, then usually on 67-68 in the winter, but when the temps get into the single digits or teens the heat pump can't do the job so I have to put it up to 71 so the aux heat kicks in, but that uses a lot of electricity. Normal winter electric bill(house is all electric) is from 160-175, this past month was real cold so it jumped to 250. We have a newborn too, so I have been keeping it a little warmer for his ass.

 

You might want to get your system checked out

I have a heat pump as well and I live in PA so I have a similar climate. My house is also all electric and my highest bill was last month at $125. If you have to turn your heat up to 71 to get the aux heat to turn on then something isn't right. My thermostat kicks on my aux heat anytime it thinks the regular heat isn't working fast enough. Also try not setting it down to 62 while you are at work. You are then asking for your aux heat to run to to bring your whole house up 6-7 degrees. Your goal with a heat pump in the winter should be to keep the aux heat from coming on at all.

 

I agree with spdy... may want to have the system checked out.

As mentioned above, we set our heat really low when we're not home or overnight (56 degrees). That said, the temp never really drops below 60 unless it gets well into the teens. Let's say our thermostat is programmed to come on at 7pm for 66-67 degrees. What it will do is go into "Recovery Mode" which means it will turn it on earlier for short times which ensures the temp does not drop too low and the heat does not have to run forever at the time it's set to get up to the temp it's set for. Cool little feature but took me a while to get everything programmed properly to take advantage of it.

Point is you may have a similar feature and it may be disabled or not working properly which is why the thermostat is not kicking on below 65...

 

Ours stays pretty much at 69-71 depending on how cold the wife is (while we are at home) during the day i typically drop it to 66 and the same while sleeping. My heating bills are up this winter (around 204.00) My furnace is about 12-15 years old and am thinking about looking into a newer more efficient unit(house has all new windows/doors and new insulation)

 

Yeah I guess I could. Overall I am happy with it though, it is only in this extreme cold that I have seen a spike in the electric. Other months are around $150, they used to be lower but the wife is always running the oven and washer/dryer all the time. I talked to a guy a while back and he said that the heat pumps tend to struggle in the extreme cold. Maybe my particular thermostat doesn't turn on the aux on its own, on the other hand there is an "emergency" setting under the heat setting, maybe if I keep that selected it will come on by itself. Once we are out of the single digits and teens it will be back to normal anyway.

 

If your thermostat is wired correctly and programmed correctly I wouldn't turn the emergency heat on unless its an ...... Emergency.
The emergency heat option turns the aux heat into your main heat in case your heat pump dies. This way you can stay warm until you can get a repair person out to check it out.

If your thermostat is older I would suggest replacing it. If its newer I would suggest checking the programming and the wiring. Thermostats have to be programmed specifically for each type of heating system.

 

I don't turn it on.

 

Hmmm I keep my A/C on at 72 ish during the day and 69 at night ...

 

72 downstairs, 68 upstairs (sleeping area).

 

69 when we are sleeping or at work, and 71 when we are home and awake.

We have a heat pump and only 1500sqft split level.

Our electric usually gets to 250 during the coldest part of the winter. most winter months are between 120-200

 

our downstairs doesn't heat too well since there is only 2 registers down there. When we moved in, there was only one. I installed one more and also installed a 6' baseboard heat hooked up to 220. We only use it if we are going to be downstairs for a while.