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What Temp Do You Keep Your House?

BoneheadNW

BoneheadNW

Active member
During these winter months, I was wondering what temperature you heat your house to. We have in-floor heat and use the fireplace in the living room for about 8 hours every day. Our basement (which is used as a classroom-my wife home schools our 9 year old) is kept at 70 degrees while the rest of the house is kept at about 65 degrees (without the fireplace). Heater uses propane.

O.K., how about you guys?

Bonehead :fr2:
 
House is 70 on the weekends. 70 in the evenings. 64 during the day using an auto-setback thermostat that brings the house up to 70 in the late afternoon. We heat with "natural gas." We have 28 windows on the west wall of the house, on sunny days we get enough solar gain to keep the house warm without the furnace running until the sun goes down.

Summer we keep the evening & weekend temps about 70-72. Those 28 windows on the west wall all have 'heat film' on them to moderate the excess heat gain in the summer, but we also suppliment them by keeping the blinds closed much of the time. It is amazing how good of a job the quality window films do in moderating the heat gain/loss. We have "gila" film on most windows, but we also had a professional contractor install a clear film (don't know the brand) on all the west windows after moving in that did a great job. So many of our windows have 2 layes of film. We thought the trees to the west would have provided more cover than they did, but after we built we figured out that the house is sitting on the top of the ridge and the trees are all a few feet below us so we don't get cover from them until early evening in the summer months.
 
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Man, that's a lot of windows Bob! :eek:

We keep it at 71/72. Considered getting a setback thermostat, but procrastinated. We heat with natural gas, and it's free. We keep it as warm as I can stand it. The wife is still a bit cool, but any warmer and I would be really uncomfortable.
 
I live in a one bedroom apartment with electric baseboard heat. I keep the thermostat at 60. when spring hits, until late fall, the thermo is turned off
 
Doc said:
Man, that's a lot of windows Bob! :eek:

We keep it at 71/72. Considered getting a setback thermostat, but procrastinated. We heat with natural gas, and it's free. We keep it as warm as I can stand it. The wife is still a bit cool, but any warmer and I would be really uncomfortable.
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I read remember reading somewhere that each additional degree in temperature increase/descrease amounts to a great deal of energy saving/loss. Not a linear function.


Anyhow.. each room in our house as independant heat, which is regulated by individual thermostats. So we are only heating rooms at 70-73 when they are in use and just prior to use. Othertimes they are allowed to cool down to around 64. Most of our time is spent in the living room which we heat with the wood stove which prevents the heater from kicking in the room.
 
Depends on whether I want to get lucky or not!!!:tiphat:


We mostly keep it around 60 to 65 even in the cold weather. It has been around 0 here so we did move it up to 65. Wife likes it cold and I just have gotten customed to it. The kids downstairs of our rambler have wirsbo and they keep it about 67. At 67 with the wirsbo you feel like it is 72 with the natural draft up.


murph
 
Doc said:
We heat with natural gas, and it's free. We keep it as warm as I can stand it. The wife is still a bit cool, but any warmer and I would be really uncomfortable.
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Bob-
How did you get free gas? I can understand the bit about the wife always wanting it warmer. My wife hardly ever (summers included) walks around in short sleeves. How can anyone be comfortable like that I will never know.

Cool Bonehead good, hot Bonehead no good. :whip:
 
BoneheadPA said:
Bob-
How did you get free gas?
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Doc posted that, not me. But if I got free natural gas I wouldn't be able to tell you since you banned me.
 
B_Skurka said:
We have 28 windows on the west wall of the house,
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Dang Bob, I don't think I could fit 28 windows on the west side of my trailer. Maybe if I went 2 deep in a few places...:whistle:

I didn't turn the heat on in my main house until this last week. :o If the wife and kids were cold, I told them to just sleep closer to a fireplace. By the way, I'm not at all impressed with the catalytic converter thing in the new insert. All it does is take up a lot of room inside the insert and not allow you to get in as much wood. My wife wants me to put the old one back (in my barn right now).

Now that I have the heat on, I don't recall what temp I have set on the thermostats. I have 5 of the programmable dudes. I don't even remember if I even programmed some of them. :o All I know is that the wife always bumps the temp up, and I always bump it down. She just figured out that the programmable ones go back to their programmed temp when the next time cycle (morning, day, evening, night etc.) hits. Now she checks the temp on the display about everytime she walks by a thermostat! I'd guess that during the day in the house she keeps it between 72 and 74.
 
Dargo said:
Dang Bob, I don't think I could fit 28 windows on the west side of my trailer. Maybe if I went 2 deep in a few places...:whistle:
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Each of those little glass blocks counts as 1 window. Right? :whistle: Besides, I have the long wall of my trailer facing west. Maybe you could rotate yours? :tiphat:
 
B_Skurka said:
But if I got free natural gas I wouldn't be able to tell you since you banned me.
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Obviously my line in another thread telling you that you remind me of my wife when you say that did nothing to bring you back to reality. Snap out of it or I will personally deliver LBrown59 to your house, handcuff the two of you together, and leave you to be psycologically reduced to jello. :whip: :whip: :poke: :poke: :flame1:

Bonehead

P.S. Sorry for the stupid mistake in my post above-I obviously was talking to Doc.
 
Thermostat is set at 70, and I don't change it based on time of day or whether people are home.

I've seen/read several of the reports that say how much can be saved if you turn it down when you're not home but after doing some testing, I never saw the benefits. It seems to take more energy to re-heat everything (air and the house/furnishings) then it does to just keep it at the same temp.

Dargo said:
By the way, I'm not at all impressed with the catalytic converter thing in the new insert. All it does is take up a lot of room inside the insert and not allow you to get in as much wood.
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Let's talk elsewhere so we don't hijack the thread, but the CC is the best thing going IMHO for the insert. Technique is important. You'll get a lot more heat with about 1/2 the firewood.
 
I heat with a wood furnace and pretty much have an unlimited supply of wood. To keep the funace burning half way clean; the temp stays around 72 degrees and we turn it down to 65 at night to sleep.
 
I just put a programable in our house. It goes down to 63 at night, and 67 during the day. I read that you save 1%(of fuel bill) for each degree you turn in down for an eight hour period.

I own two apartment buildings. They are one zone, controlled by the first floor tenant. While working on the second floor last week, I was told the first floor lady asked her,"has it been warm enough for you? I set the thermostat to 85 during the cold spell to make sure you stayed warm enough.":4_11_9: (I pay for oil heat) Needless to say, we had a long talk that night. On my next day off I'm purchasing two more programable thermostats with lock boxes around them designed for thermostats! I thought I was being good to them letting them control it. I also assumed after our talks that they would keep it reasonable.......... What is it they say about assuming....??? hmmmmmm:moon:
 
Rico, my uncle learned that same lesson years ago. Tenants sould either 1) Pay for their own heat. or 2) Should NOT be allowed to adjust the heat!!! Ditto for the AC in the summer!
 
BoneheadNW said:
Bob-
How did you get free gas? I can understand the bit about the wife always wanting it warmer. My wife hardly ever (summers included) walks around in short sleeves. How can anyone be comfortable like that I will never know.

Cool Bonehead good, hot Bonehead no good. :whip:
Click to expand...

Hey BH ....I'm just now seeing your question.
We have a gas well on our property. The previous owner still owns the mineral rights, but the well allows for one residential hookup. We negotiated for that when we bought the property. What a great deal that turned out to be. :)
 
65. We heat with Fuel Oil and wood backup for those nights when it gets below 20. When I build a wood fire I "might" let it get up to 70 before I shut it down for the night.
Air conditioning in the summer ? We all jist open dem dar winders.
I'm so good to her I hope I don't spoil her!
 
Lately I've been struggling to keep my house at 60.. it was 4 degrees F the other morning.. neighbor said his said 7. My steers watering setup hasn't frozen up yet.. but I've had 2 winters of practice of what works & what doesn't. The chickens waterer was frozen so solid.. I brought it into the house last night to thaw out.. still had ice chunks in it this morning.
 
4 zones - 2 upstairs and 2 downstairs all with programmable thermostats.

Downstairs zones go down to 61 at night & upstairs ones go up to 68. That reverses for the daytime.

Seems to be working out fine. Propane heat costs us approx 2000.00 / year now.
 
Our house first floor runs 70 most of the time. 66 at night and during the day upstairs, The basement is running at 80 degrees with the woodstove running 24/7 It was easy to heat the ranch house with this stove. Now that it is a garrison colonial it is much harder for the air to get beyond the first floor. Oh well, can't win em all. Next year may be the year for an outdoor furnace to hook into our forced hot water.
 
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