Yeah, I’m this way. MrTao grew up here, so having the AC set to not go on until it’s 85 is completely normal to him, whereas I can literally tell the difference between it being at 75 vs. 74. At 75, I am still sweating a little, and uncomfortable. At 74, I am good. And he indulges me, 'cause he apparantly doesn’t really care as long as it’s not so cold he can’t type, which is apparantly how his office gets sometimes, lol.
I told him that when we move somewhere colder, he can have the heat set to whatever he wants in the winter.
Oddly enough, I’m the first one to turn the heat on, too. He has his own weather system or something; he’s comfortable most of the time regardless, I’m uncomfortable except for a narrow temperature range. >.< He weighs 3 times what I do; I imagine that body fat is insulating, but how about for keeping cool? Hrm…
Also, I’m out in the heat for several hours a day no matter what, 'cause I’m still a smoker. And I’ve yet to get used to the heat, bleargh.
My mom doesn’t like to turn on (or up!) the heat. I spent my entire childhood freezing my ass off, and I vowed then that when I became an adult I didn’t care how poor I was - I would not be cold. I’m not.
I’m only really comfortable in a fairly narrow range. Too warm and I feel drained (plus I don’t like sweating while I’m sitting still). Too cold and my fingers stiffen uncomfortably. I also tend to find having my home too cold depressing, probably for reasons similar to Curiosity’s (a lot of times spent being cold while growing up in part because of the cost of heat).
I’m surprised to learn that there are heating systems in use in 2012 that don’t have thermostats. (Not as surprised as I was when I found out that you can’t get mail at your house if your ZIP code is too small, but still surprised.)
So, how does it work? Do you just have on and off, and you leave it on until you get hot and off until you get cold?
‘Out of principle’ is more so out of financial need, as many people have stated. I live in the northwest where it can get pretty damn cold in the winter. But even so, the thermostat is always no higher than 62 during the day and 60 at night. Even then, our electric bills for our little 1200 square foot home skyrocket up to $300 or more a month. The fact that the house was built in 1953 and has NO insulation in the walls definitely is a contributing factor. But if we can barely afford the electrical payments every month, there’s no way we can afford insulating the whole house.
Regarding the mandated heat/cool seasons in base housing: That’s pretty much still the case on most Air Force bases. Believe it or not, it can actually save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in heating and cooling costs. That said, at least at the bases I’ve been to, it was driven by average outdoor temperatures for any given 5 day period, rather than by a date on a calendar. Still didn’t mean I wouldn’t get irate phone calls from people all day insisting that their facility having working AC was vital to base operations*, despite the fact that it had somehow never been added to our list for such facilities before.
As an aside, this period also gives our HVAC people a pretty handy time to get into the guts of all the HVAC systems and do any needed maintenance or cleaning when they’re not in use without having to take them offline when they’re really needed. And it’s just as hot or cold in our offices as it is in anyone else’s during this time.
Regarding what I would do… eh, in places where I pay the bills? It depended on the apartment. I had one apartment where the insulation was crap, one room (the bedroom, actually) never warmed up or cooled down with the rest of the apartment, etc. So the live-in-girlfriend and I slept in the living room when it was too hot in the bedroom, and used a space heater when it was too cold. After the lease expired, we moved into a much nicer apartment (we were married by then, and both getting housing allowance from the Air Force), and we tended to keep the heat or AC running all the time, though we’d set it to a closer-to-outdoor temperature when we were leaving for a while to save costs a bit.
Now that we live in base housing, we just have the AC running all the time, except of course for the No Heat/No Cool season when we basically just have the fan portion of the AC running.
I once received a call where I was told that, no kidding, the base gym having AC was absolutely vital to base readiness because people couldn’t workout during the one time of year when the outdoor temperature in Korea was in the high-70s/low-80s instead of either boiling hot or freezing cold.
But yeah, everybody’s situation (and their own tolerances) are a bit different. My first instinct when it is a bit cold in my apartment is to put on comfortable sweats. If it’s a bit hot, I switch to shorts and a t-shirt and have a cold drink. Outside a certain temperature range, I will go straight to the thermostat, though.
We can have big temperature changes in my state during early Spring and Fall. Spring, we might average 65 degree temps. Then get three days at 82. Then back to 65 for a week. I try not to turn on the AC for the occasional warm day in Spring. The Attic fan feels great.
I give up and turn the AC on once its apparent the temps will stay above 80.
I can’t stand cold weather. If the temps drop below 58 then my heat has to come on.
Good heavens. If I could I’d give everyone in the thread a cookie of their choice I would. OP clarified what she meant, we all understood she’s not talking about the poor people, we moved on.
Say, would it be a hijack if I added that for some people who rent, the landlord determines when the heat gets turned on for the season? I would then also add that its because of this that some towns have calender dates by which they are legally obligated to provide their tenants heat.
Now, I know I’m reaching here… but that mindset, if you grow up in it, could be long lasting. Is it possible that someone who grew up as a renter with land-lord controlled heat, but who now owns a house, could refuse to turn on the heat before date X on the calendar out of habit?
Sure, statistically that portion of the population might be so small as to be insignificant. But it is possible.
I’m one of those people who waits as long as possible to turn on the heat. Partly because I have a moderately decent tolerance for chilly temperatures. Partly because I have an ancient colonial house with not enough insulation and oil heat. For these reasons, in the winter, I keep the temperature around 62 (except for when the wood stove is on). So when I can maintain that temperature without turning on the heat, I guess that’s fine.
I can afford to heat the house and if I get uncomfortable enough, I’ll go flip on the furnace, but the longer I can go without turning on the heat, the happier I’ll be. (It’s also forced hot air which doesn’t do my allergies any good.)
And what the heck, the environment is probably benefiting a tiny bit if I’m not burning oil when I don’t need to be.
Right now, it’s about 62 in the house, but I have both a 17" MacBook and a cat in my lap, so heat isn’t really an issue at the moment.
This is similar to my experience. So far last night was the first night this month when the room temperature even hinted at being cold enough to turn on the heat. I didn’t refuse to turn on the heat because it was only 10/9, but because I knew that it wasn’t going to stay that cold for very long. I put on my fleece pajamas and put extra blankets on my bed.
Today it’s 70 again. I try and not turn the heat on until it needs to be on pretty steadily.
I am more inclined to say “it’s the principle” about having to bring the window AC units up from the basement before April. That makes me cranky.
My husband likes to tease me every year that he won’t turn on the propane to the house until October 15th - that being the date that the heat was turned on to the barracks when he was in the army back in the '70’s. However, once the inside temp gets below 63, the heat gets turned on. I do have some say so in the matter.
In the winter, we keep our house at 63 degrees during the day and 61 at night. (summer: 73 degrees)
Recently, I was discussing this topic at my bank, and one of the tellers told me that she and her husband never turn on the heat until Thanksgiving! She just puts on an extra sweater. Ok, this is in Ohio. Burr!
Holy cow, I never imagined this thread would get so heated (NPI). I’d just like to point out that I started the first thread mentioned in the OP, and I explained my personal reasoning in more detail in post 34 of this thread.
Long story short: I can afford to heat my house. In fact, I can afford to heat my house solely by slow-roasting expensive cuts of meats in the oven. I didn’t want to turn the heat on because I still want it to be summer (the “principle” part), because the weather was warming up in a few days anyway, and because it wasn’t actually that cold in the house to begin with.
We don’t have central heat that we can just push a button and have the house quickly heat up. It takes a few days to heat the mass of the house and it’s contents, we have to reverse the ceiling fans, check the water level in the system, flip breakers, etc to get the old thing running. It’s enough of a process that we only like to do it once a year, when we’ll actually need it for a long time at a stretch. Therefore it’s sort of an event in the house, where someone actually says “OK, it’s time. From here on out the heat is on. Keep your windows shut, don’t leave the back door open, and the last person to leave in the morning has to make sure the blinds are up.”
A typical home heating system[sup]*[/sup] turns on the furnace until the temperature reaches a certain value, then turns it off. While on, it uses the same amount of fuel per time regardless of the temperature rise resulting. In other words, it doesn’t “work harder” (use more fuel) if it is raising the the temp from 40 to 60 or 65 to 70. It is a simple function of (cost of burner per hour) X hours.
A typical thermostat that is “left on all the time” doesn’t keep the burner on all the time, but cycles it on and off according to the temperature.
[sup]*[/sup]There are some hi-tek devices that control burner levels at other than 0 or 100%, but these are not common.
My two cents: Right now it’s cold overnight but rather pleasant during the day. More importantly the house isn’t buttoned up yet, meaning the plastic isn’t on the windows and the storm windows aren’t closed. Turning the heat on 24/7 would be a waste. Once it gets colder and we button the house up for winter, then by all means turn the heat on.
Any kind of waste, including heat and the money it costs bothers me. Between the big windows in front and back, the house warms up pretty nice during the day. Heat is only on from the time we get home to the time we go to sleep in our electric mattress pad having bed and then maybe for an hour before we go to work. It will not be on constantly until the ouse is closed up for the winter. Put a sweatshirt and slippers on. Geesh, let me have a couple cheap months.
My baseboard heat has a basic dial like that of the average one-handle faucet control. Turn it to the right and it gets warmer. It doesn’t shut off once a certain temp is achieved.
The thing is, if it warms up outside, it takes a day or two for the apartment to cool down once you turn the heat down/off. Not a good thing when the days are 70-75 and nights are down in the 40-50s. It’s easier to sleep under covers and wear warmer clothing when needed until the temps outside stay consistantly cold.
Here in the midsouth, most apartments that I’ve lived in have this type of heat (my current apartment is 20 years old). Not terribly efficient, but we don’t tend to get the extreme cold that folks up north do for anywhere nearly as long. On average, in an upstairs apartment, I only have the heat on for 2-2.5 months a year.
In our house, heating and cooling isn’t a simple matter of changing the thermostat. In order to turn on the heat, I have to go out the the boiler room and crawl around on the floor to turn on the gas and light the pilot. Then I have to coax the gas jets into staying lit long enough to warm them up so they’ll light from the pilot without my assistance for the rest of the season. I also have to turn off the water and disconnect the copper tubing to the swamp cooler, climb up on the roof and disconnect the tubing on that end, drain the pan, unplug the motor, and securely tie the canvas cover over the whole thing so that the wind won’t blow it off during the winter. And, if I want to keep any of that hard-earned heat in the house, I’ll have to climb up on a stepladder in the upstairs hall and install the baffle that closes off the cooler’s roof vent.
When I want to turn on the cooler, I have to reverse that sequence. And, almost inevitably, I have to replace parts of the cooler that fail within the first days (or hours) of use, which means several more trips up to the roof.
Now, I’ll claim that I’m conserving energy and money, but it’s out and out laziness. There’s no way I’m going to do either of those procedures if I’m not pretty convinced that the weather has turned for the season. You can bet I’ll be thinking of foods to cook that’ll justify having the oven on for long periods of time around this time of year! It makes up for all the salads and take-out that we end up having in the spring, while I pretend that a stand fan is actually cooling us off adequately.
