Rat’s mouth, eh? We’re just a few miles north of you.
Our AC is at about 80 while we’re at work and at about 75, maybe a bit cooler, while we’re at home. We experimented with turning it up to 85 during the day but it took too long to cool down.
The outside temperature here is usually 110 (sometimes up to 120) during the day and maybe (if you’re lucky) drops to about 90 overnight. The AC in the lounge room stays on about 75-80, but hubbie likes it cold when he sleeps so the bedroom AC is usually set to 68.
My car has a thermometer in it to show outside temps, and I remember celebrating last November the first time the temp dropped below 90 for the first time in 6 months!
My window AC seems to cool more efficiently and effectively on max cooling/medium fan (and recirculating air rather than fresh intake, natch) than on max/max. The medium fan is still strong enough to help disperse the cooled air away from the intake.
The downstairs unit is at 78, upstairs at 76. The temp here (Kansas) has hit 108 the past two days, and should do so today and tomorrow, and the upstairs unit just can’t keep up with that (and, yes, I cleaned the air filter and the outside compressor unit Tuesday evening; been 26 years since we’ve had a heat wave this bad).
It’s not my A/C, but the one where I live is currently set at 60. Of course, it is the only A/C in the whole apartment, which is on one level and is about 2000 square feet.
- We used to program our programmable thermostat for different temps, but our local REA provider had an article in their magazine recently that 78F constant is the most efficient setting for air conditioning.
The thermostat is set to 78F pretty much all the time in the summer. If the outside weather is cooler, we’ll turn off the AC and open windows. Occasionally, we might nudge it down to 76F to help reduce the indoor humidity when it’s really hot out (or when I’m having particularly bad hot flashes), but we have an automatic thermostat that will automatically reset the temp to 78 at specific times of the day.
For the most part, perimenopause aside, it’s relatively comfortable in our house, which has central air and replacement thermal windows. I find myself hiding out in the basement more than I would normally, because it’s dryer and cooler, but the main floor isn’t exactly uncomfortable. However, the AC is more than 30 years old, and it has started really showing its age in the last couple of years. Like tonight, I had the thermostat set to 78F (the default setting). My 15yo daughter complained that it was too hot, so I checked the thermostat. Yes, it was still set to 78F, but the temp reading was 80F, and the AC was definitely not on. I nudged it back down to 76F, and it’s running happy again.