S/O Thermostat Setting Thread - what is yours at?

[MrsJWine]

I'm too cold at anything below 74. I wear sweaters and bathrobes around the house, and I'm still cold if the thermostat is any lower than that. It's not awesome.

ETA: It would be set higher if it weren't for the extra cost. I would love it to be 78-82 year 'round.

[Dazi]

Well mine is a bit confusing.  It's set at 76 F, but it's the AC, not heat. 

It really hasn't been cold enough for heat this winter in Florida.  The few days it was chilly, I plugged the space heater in for a bit.  For me to turn heat on, the inside temp has to get below 65 F. 

I lived in a very old house when I was a small child and it was VERY expensive to heat, so it was set at 55 F or so...just enough that the pipes wouldn't freeze.  We had a space heater to plug in the bathroom before taking a bath, electric blankets and heavy pajamas.  Except for the bathroom and my hands, I was seldom cold and used to kick off the blankets and take off the pajamas because I sleep HOT (my DH jokes that I'm my own nuclear furnace at night).

[JoW]

Another question - how accurate is your thermostat?  I know a little about temperature measurement, and I know how inaccurate a thermostat can be.  Without regular maintenance and calibration your thermostat can be wrong by a couple degrees, maybe more. 

My heat and air conditioning is a heat pump.  I rarely change the temperature because the system takes such a long time to catch up.

[Outdoor Girl]

I know my thermostat is reasonably accurate - I have an indoor outdoor thermometer in the living room where the thermostat is also located and they are always within 1 degree of each other.  (And I haven't found the degree symbol on my MacBook yet.   )

[JoW]

I test industrial sterilization equipment for a living.  If my temperature probes are inaccurate by more than 1/2 degree C the test is void and has to be repeated.  (1/2 degree C is very slightly less than 1 degree F.  I'm in the US, but I usually measure temperatures in C.)

My point is, I doubt every thermostat mentioned in this thread is calibrated to the same standard.  70F by my thermostat may be 69F by your thermostat which may be 76F by someone else's. 

[Jones]

Mine is generally at 70F. I wish it was warmer but don't have the money. Sometimes when no one is home we turn it down to 65F, but as DH is a part time worker we don't program it that way because some days he's home.

The bathroom is poorly insulated so there's a space heater in there; far away from all sources of water, big big bathroom.It starts out around 45 in the early AM but toasts up pretty quick.

In the summer we keep the house warm. I very much love that; I was my happiest when we lived in a desert, and my daughter Jean takes after me on the temperature thing. The last month or so I've slept in her room and we used a space heater to warm it up a bit (DH prefers it cold).  I'll go back to my regular sleeping place in a month or more when it's easier to keep the house warm.

[Rohanna]

We have hot water radiators, and keep the house at a steady 68-70 all, depending on the weather. I don't vary the heat during the day because the radiators are "fast" enough to react like that. The previous owners had put in a programmable thermostat, but I've found it's actually cheaper to keep the heat steady, as it takes more gas to heat the boiler up from cold than to keep it ticking over all the time. Add the fact that it's a 100 year old stone house with 11 foot high ceilings, it cools off FAST. A lot of old "rich people" houses are built to stay cool, because air-conditioning didn't exist but coal and wood heat did... so you built for the summer and just heated like crazy all winter. The upside is in summer I can leave for work, and come back to a cool house, even though the AC hasn't been on for 10-18 hours.

[NbyNW]

We have a peculiar heating system (hot water pumped through pipes throughout the house and blowers with one control for temperature and several to turn on blowers) so it's hard to say exactly what the temperature is. A clock we have upstairs also displays the temp though and it tends to be about 64-69 according to it. Downstairs stays warmer overall so we usually don't run the heater on that floor unless it is exceptionally cold outside.

Summer is what it is--we have no air conditioning.

[Thipu1]

We keep our home at about 65 in winter.  Mr. Thipu is extremely sensitive to heat and I like my sweatshirts and socks.  As long as I don't need a hat and gloves in the house I'm fine. 

[CaptainObvious]

I have a rule in my life - I will not be cold in my own house.

When I visit relatives, I wear extra layers and shiver through my discomfort.  At home, I want to be comfortable while wearing my typical winter outfit of a mock turtleneck, fleece sweatshirt, jeans, socks and shoes.  For this to be possible, the thermostat need to be set between 70 and 72. 

On the other hand, 70-72 in air conditioning is brutally cold for me.  I've never quite understood why.

My Husband follows this same rule, our heat is usually set around 70-72 too. We turn it down at night and while we are at work though.

[ilrag]

I went to college in Maine, so I never really get cold. I now live in California. (It was 34 degrees outside when I woke up this morning.)

I have never used the heater since I moved back to Ca. My husband takes things to an even more crazy extreme. He likes all the windows open. So it's always freezing in the house.

It's weird because I always have people over - we just have the kind of house people drop by a lot. We have sweatshirts and blankets every where and everyone knows we hate the heater so if they don't like it they don't have to come over. I never really thought about it in the past.

[Sophia]

During the day, 73 in the winter and 78 in the summer. 

[MrsJWine]

My problem is that my feet, hands, and nose don't get warm on their own. Sweatshirts and blankets don't help if it's chilly enough. I grew up in South Dakota and Wisconsin, and I can't stand anything below 70 indoors and 50-60 outdoors while running around. It's like a sick joke.

[pixel dust]

In the 73-75 range depending on how cold it is. We're also renting an apartment with drafty windows (I swear, when I stand near the patio door I can feel a breeze) so it gets cold quickly. And I'm a total freeze baby. Luckily, Hubs wears t-shirts and shorts around the house and sleeps with a thin blanket on, so he never overheats.

[stitchygreyanonymouse]

We keep ours at 62°F when we are home and awake. It is scheduled to drop to 58° during times we know we’ll be gone (like at work), as well as overnight. Our thermostat also has an away setting that kicks in automatically during the day and if we leave the house for a while, which drops it as low as 56°.

Usually it’s not too bad and we just wear sweatshirts and slippers around the house. If one of us is not feeling well, sometimes we’ll bump it up to 64° or 65° to ward off the chill.

If we have company, we’ll usually bump it up to 68°.

In the summer, the only room with a/c is our bedroom, which we will set as cold as 72° at night, but otherwise we just open windows and keep ceiling fans going.

Ed.: I wouldn’t mind keeping it more in the 65-8° range, but I like the money savings, too. Our old apartment had no insulation—you could feel a draft through the walls in the living room!—so we got used to it then. Now with a house twice as large, our heating bill is half what it was in the apartment.

P.S. Outdoor Girl, the ° symbol is alt+shift+8 on a Mac