House cooling

JagFarlane

Gone Hiking
Joined
Apr 14, 2003
Posts
9,713
Hmmm curious, what all temperatures does everyone keep their places at?
Here, if its below 75 out I open the windows etc etc before I leave. Come home a couple of hours later, the roommate has em all closed and the AC on set to 73F [its 72 outside right now]
 
In the winter time I try to keep the thermostat set at 72 degrees. it's a nice room temperature that keeps my fingers from freezing up when using the computer.

In the summer, most of our house is just open windows with fan blowing. I have the only air conditioner and it doesn't have a thermostat. just a knob like the one in your car that can be set to a range from cold to warm. I keep it just cool enough so that my fingers don't freeze when using the computer ;)
 
I live beside the sea.

It is a rare day when the wind doesn't blow. To cool down we open one or more windows and doors.

We don't have, and never have had, any form of air-conditioning.

Og

PS. We run our heating when the temperature inside the house drops significantly below 58 F but have it set to shut off at 65 F. We don't run it when we're in bed or not in the house.
 
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Hmmm curious, what all temperatures does everyone keep their places at?
Here, if its below 75 out I open the windows etc etc before I leave. Come home a couple of hours later, the roommate has em all closed and the AC on set to 73F [its 72 outside right now]

Dude, you have no idea how much that gets on my nerves...Im not chained to the ac and believe that if you can cool your house down before it gets hot outside, you can close the windows and use a fan instead of the higher amperage draw of the AC. We just got a more efficient window unit so well have to see what the overall impact is on the power bill.
I prefer about 72-76f inside... cool enough that I know it when I come inside.
 
We keep the heat at 68 unless we're freezing. Logo has a belief in no heat after May 1st, though, so we had a few days that were below 68 in the house. I'm not used to that yet!
As for summer, air conditioning is a little rare up here and we don't have it. We have windows open and use fans, so the temp is whatever it is. On the few days it breaks 90 here, we tend to find a friend with AC and hunker down. Again, I'm not used to that yet.
 
During the winter, we usually keep the heat on 70. For the rare couple of weeks where it's not hot as hell (we usually go straight from cold to damn hot with no cool/warm in between), we open the windows and keep the ceiling fans going. During the summer (well, our summer weather actually starts in spring), it fluctuates. I've had it on 73, but when I use my laptop, I sit on my bed right beside a vent, and I freeze, so sometimes I'll bump it up to 75. That's the downstairs unit. I have no idea what the upstairs unit is on. His majesty controls that.
 
No AC here. During the summer, I open the house in the morning then close up by nine am. The fan in the attic draws air up through the house when it hits a certain temp in the attic. I also have a hassock fan, kind of like a ceiling fan but on the floor.

For heat, I keep the thermostat set at 65 and supplement with wood stove. Turned off the heat on May 1st and just used the wood stove.

It's always been my opinion that if you give your body a chance it can generally acclimate to warmer or cooler temperatures.
 
In the winter around 70 and down to 65 at night. I live on the top of a big hill with lots of windows so I try not to turn on the AC until the cats start sleeping in the bathtubs and the rest of us begin snarling at each other. I turned it on today because the cleaning lady was supposed to be here. I usually have it set around 78 degrees.
 
Whatever...

Right now it's 78F outside, the windows are open and I have a fan going...I'm in an unused upstairs bedroom which is always 10F warmer then downstairs.

The thing that gets me is during the winter...68F just isn't warm enough for my wife. But 68F in the spring is throw open all the windows time. To me 68F is 68F no matter when it happens.

:cool:
 
The A/C in our place is set to 80° which is comfortable for us.

For most of the year we have the windows open and just deal with the heat. It is only when the temps rise above 90° for long periods and the humidity goes up that we close up.

Cat
 
In winter 68 days, 60 nights (with extra blankie and pile balaclava :D ). AC whenever inside temps get above 76 or so in summer, but just a single-room unit and used with some frugality.

Combination of frugality (cheap) and not liking to be wasteful. Plus I like to sleep in a warm bed in a cool room.
 
In winter, 63 when we're sleeping and 65-67 if we're around the house. The only time it's above 70 in the winter is if someone is sick. Flannel jammies, socks and hoodies are the rule.

Our house is like a little oven in summer. Right now it's 83 in here. We've got all the windows open and several fans blowing, but it's still sticky. We hold out as long as we can against turning on the air; and if it gets too bad, we can go sleep in the basement, it's a lot cooler down there.
 
What is this heating you speak of? ;)

We have central A/C. It's at 76f in the daytime, 73f at night, 10 months of the year. The other two (Dec-Jan) we open the house up and let the cool breezes blow.
 
Southern Arizona in the summer, when it's 105 in the shade, 80 is comfortable, 75 is freezing. Going to the bank is ridiculous. I have to bring an extra shirt, since they've got the AC set at 70, or so it seems.

Those of us in the lower income brackets use a swamp cooler instead of AC. A swamp cooler is a tin box on the roof with water running on grated aspen pads. A fan pulls the air through the pads and into the house, which raises the humidity inside. This is a good thing when the humidity outside is something like 7 percent for months on end. When I have to turn on the AC for client comfort, or during monsoon season, the house dries out and the allergies hit.

Considering that Americans use 25 percent of the world's energy in the pursuit of comfort, I can't see this lifestyle continuing for much longer, but by the time the shit hits the fan, I'll be six feet under, at a constant and comfortable 70 degrees.
 
It depends on the humidity level. During our brief dry season, 76 is comfortable. This month, the same thermostat temperature is beginning to feel progressively less comfortable as the air becomes more humid.

At night, the colder the better. I could spend Donald Trump's fortune keeping the house as cold as I like it at night. I love to hibernate; I'd have made a good bear.
 
During the winter, we usually keep the heat on 70. For the rare couple of weeks where it's not hot as hell (we usually go straight from cold to damn hot with no cool/warm in between), we open the windows and keep the ceiling fans going. During the summer (well, our summer weather actually starts in spring), it fluctuates. I've had it on 73, but when I use my laptop, I sit on my bed right beside a vent, and I freeze, so sometimes I'll bump it up to 75. That's the downstairs unit. I have no idea what the upstairs unit is on. His majesty controls that.

ditto this, pretty much.

Our air stays on usually from mid-May (at the latest) until the end of September. Can't breathe otherwise.
 
It depends on the humidity level. During our brief dry season, 76 is comfortable. This month, the same thermostat temperature is beginning to feel progressively less comfortable as the air becomes more humid.

At night, the colder the better. I could spend Donald Trump's fortune keeping the house as cold as I like it at night. I love to hibernate; I'd have made a good bear.

Bare what?
 
Southern Arizona in the summer, when it's 105 in the shade, 80 is comfortable, 75 is freezing. Going to the bank is ridiculous. I have to bring an extra shirt, since they've got the AC set at 70, or so it seems.


Considering that Americans use 25 percent of the world's energy in the pursuit of comfort, I can't see this lifestyle continuing for much longer, but by the time the shit hits the fan, I'll be six feet under, at a constant and comfortable 70 degrees.

We have only just recently turned off our heat, with the cooler weather that Northern Illinois has been having. Growing up in southern Arizona, if it's below 75, I need a jacket. So we keep the heat set at about 71-72, although we will adjust it down to 69 or so when it's really super cold out. In the summer, we try to air out the house as much as possible.. sometimes with the use of our attic fan, sometimes with the central air fan (no A/C running). When it gets really warm out, we can go down to the basement and relax, or we will turn on the A/C - which we usually keep set around 77-78.

We have not had the A/C on at all so far this year. I'm happy about that.
 
Southern Arizona in the summer, when it's 105 in the shade, 80 is comfortable, 75 is freezing. Going to the bank is ridiculous. I have to bring an extra shirt, since they've got the AC set at 70, or so it seems.

Those of us in the lower income brackets use a swamp cooler instead of AC. A swamp cooler is a tin box on the roof with water running on grated aspen pads. A fan pulls the air through the pads and into the house, which raises the humidity inside. This is a good thing when the humidity outside is something like 7 percent for months on end. When I have to turn on the AC for client comfort, or during monsoon season, the house dries out and the allergies hit.

Considering that Americans use 25 percent of the world's energy in the pursuit of comfort, I can't see this lifestyle continuing for much longer, but by the time the shit hits the fan, I'll be six feet under, at a constant and comfortable 70 degrees.

I have dealt with a Swamp Cooler when I visited friends in AZ. I was amazed at how well it worked. In a dry climate this works wonderfull.

One of the old styles of cooling here in Florda was a vent fan in the roof. It pulls the air in from ground level and vents it out the roof. This also works well. (A swamp cooler wouldn't work too well here in southern Florida. It's too humid for the drying of the water to cool things much.)

Cat
 
I love the fresh air and cannot tolerate being in "artificial" air, particularly at night.... Even here in the Urals/Siberia in the winter, I keep the window open a little and just pile on the blankets! Or squeeze in another dyevushka, of course.

But the perfect place for me was when we lived on Bay Farm Island in Alameda on San Francisco Bay... don't recall ever turning on heat or the a/c (heat pump) on our townhouse... Just opened or closed more or less windows...and the ceiling fan. Almost zippo for utility bills...all year round. Ahhh those bay breezes....Of course, it was always too damp and cool to sit out on the patio in the evening.. even in the middle of the summer.... And those pesky earthquakes...

And then we moved to Kansas where it seemed like it was ALWAYS too cold or too hot, usually in the same day and those even peskier tornados!. There is simply no excuse for the place except for the Sweet one….:rose:


-KC
 
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