I never thought I would be saying this. I am always the one who is cold and wants to turn up the heat in our house. When I was a kid, making it warmer meant inching up the thermostat until the furnace fired up, the heat emerged from the baseboards and the house warmed up. Voila! When I moved to the Southwest 25+ years ago, we had wood heat. Wood acted a little differently. Now when I got cold, I hauled in some wood, stoked up the stove and coaxed the fire to a roar. By the time I did all this I was already warm from the exercise. Warming up the house with wood heat was a lot more work than turning a thermostat dial and I could actually see how fast that wood burned up (read $$$) just for a little more comfort. So, I learned to deal with a cooler house by wearing more clothes and moving around more.
Now we have radiant floor heating and it acts differently, too. It is not effective or efficient to control this kind of heat by constantly dialing the thermostat up and down. You fuss with the thermostats at the start of the cold season and leave them pretty much alone until it warms up outside in the spring. There is sometimes a lag of a few days between adjusting the thermostat and when the system stabilizes the room temperature (really, zone temperature – there are several rooms in one zone). By the time the temperature adjusts, it no longer needs adjusting. For instance, today it is cloudy so there is not so much solar gain in our house. It feels a little cool in here right now, but if I turned up the thermostat, by the time the radiant heating raised the room temperature, the sun would be out, the house would be warming up on its own, and between the sun and the increased heating it would be so hot in here we’d have to open the windows for relief. As you can see, it again makes more sense for me to put on turtlenecks, sweaters and thick socks to keep warm rather than turning up the heat.
These experiences have taught me to be more tolerant of a cooler house and to be more aware of how much it costs to turn up the thermostat. I’ve learned to dress more warmly as a first line of defense. You can save some significant bucks by monitoring your thermostat-adjusting practices.
On their website Madison (WI) Gas and Electric has a tool that calculates how much you can save by setting your thermostat back. For instance, if you set your thermostat back 5° you can save 15% off your heating bill. They recommend during the winter setting the temperature at 68° while you are at home and 55° while you are sleeping or not at home. There is lots of other helpful information on this site including “Power Fiction & Facts”. Did you know that the thermostat isn’t like a gas pedal on a car? It is either calling for heat or not, so setting the thermostat really high does not warm up the house faster. In fact, this practice may cause you to overshoot the desired temperature, making the house too hot and wasting dollars.
For the record, we have our thermostats set back to 65° and this is requires me to bundle up sometimes – especially at night and on cloudy days like today. If I can do it, you can do it, too. Give it a try and let me know how it’s going.
Watch for Tip 3 on January 18.
