Been in this home 11 years, never had a problem (was always a comfortable temperature in the house) till we got new thermostat. By the way, I live in Florida and the AC is used most months throughout the year. My complaint is about the AC setting. Here’s my problem… lets say I find 77° to be comfortable, and set the AC thermostat for that temperature. The AC will go on and run till the temperature in the house drops to 74°. It stays off till the temperature in the house reaches 80°. Then the AC goes on once again and runs till the temperature drops back down to 74°… and so on and so on.
At 74° I am ready to put a sweater on and feel it’s too chilly in the house. At 80° I am breaking out in a sweat while sitting doing nothing. Day and night, I am hot, then cold, then hot, then cold. In bed at night I sleep with a thick blanket, then throw it off when the room is hot and stuffy, then I have to pull it back over myself when the room is chilly, then throw it off. I’m going crazy with the temperature bouncing back and forth between hot and cold.
My husband and I argue about this all the time. I say there must be some way to set the thermostat to cycle between a fewer number of degrees. My husband insists this is normal and the way ALL thermostats work, that we have no problem, and that it’s impossible to reprogram it to function any other way. I say our original thermostat didn’t do this, and with modern technology there must be a way to correct the problem I feel we have.
Can anyone with knowledge about this please help me? I am tired of being uncomfortable in my home and feeling like I’m going through menopause.
All thermostats do that. In engineering-speak we call it the thermostat’s deadband. Your old thermostat had a deadband as well. All thermostats do. Your old thermostat’s deadband may have been narrower (a 6 degree span does seem a bit wide, though not too much), but your old thermostat definitely had one.
Depending on how fancy your thermostat is, you may be able to adjust the deadband to get tighter control over the temperature. You don’t want to set the deadband too tight, or you’ll end up short cycling your AC. Short cycling means that it turns on and off quickly, only running for a very short time. This is very bad for your AC unit. If you can adjust yours, make sure you leave at least a few degrees of deadband in there or you’ll destroy your AC unit fairly quickly. Usually, if it’s adjustable, it will have a minimum span of 2 degrees or so and won’t let you set it tighter than that.
ETA: Look for a setting called deadband, hysteresis, or span in the thermostat. Yours might not be adjustable. Deadband can also refer to the region between heating and cooling in dual-mode thermostats, so that might be confusing.
What kind of thermostat is it?
Electronic, programmable ones usually have a setting for this (it’s known as Hysteresis, but the manual may call it set point swing or something else).
Since the default swing setting is 0.5F, something else is going on.
The thermostat might be located in a poor location. Too close to an outside wall, poor airflow near it, or some such.
One thing I found helps is to put a thin sheet of insulation (like the stuff they use under wall plates, but without holes) between the thermostat and the wall. It will now register the air temp better with less interference from the wall temp (which has a huge lag).
Thanks everyone. I’ll discuss this with hubby. Will check to see if it is set at the default 0.5F. If it is, will then look into the thin insulation sheet ftg suggested. If that doesn’t remedy the situation, then will adjust the ‘swing’ slightly smaller. Thanks again.