My wife has lost her mind. Yesterday it was 90 degrees, but this morning, she got up, turned off the cooling and turned on the heat, because she gets too cold in the morning to get up. And she’s doing this every day.
Is this okay for my heating/cooling system? It’s not going to break something, is it?
What kind of system(s) do you have? Starting up a cold oil furnace can modestly increase the level of soot and other exhaust products, that perhaps would reduce it’s efficiency by .0001%. Maybe you’ll reduce the life of the system by a day or two years from now. Other than wasting energy it shouldn’t be a problem.
I suspect that your wife is going through a time of her life when her body can’t regulate its temperature properly. My wife has the same problem - one minute sweating and the next wrapping up to get warm.
My AC unit and heating units are separate but controlled by the same thermostat. That is I have a gas furnace in my basement and an AC compressor outside the house. They are then tied together thru the ductwork with the evaporator coil (the part that release coolness) of the AC next to the furnace flames (but not too close). The two operate independent of each other but share a fan to circulate air throughout the house thru the same ductwork. I think this is pretty “normal” setup and switching from one to the other doesn’t “hurt” anything.
Ah okay. Thanks all.
And don’t assume this is a problem unique to women. I’ve been going through this for the past couple of years, and so far the furnace has held up better than I have.
This is common for us.
In March, it is often cool enough in the morning to need the heat, and hot enough in the afternoon to use the AC. We have a Heat Pump, so it’s no issue to switch back and forth.
I bought a thermostat that can auto switch between A/C and heat, so I just put a temperature and it decides which to use. Not sure how common that is now, but it is pretty convenient for me. Also, I can control it with Amazon Alexa, so that’s cool too.
Mine does this but it won’t work with less then a 4 degree difference. The difference between 68F and 72F can be huge. For a few weeks out of the year I’m still setting it to heat to 70F at night and cool to 70F in the morning.
I just set mine for 79 and it goes on its own, year round.
Get a small heater (I like the oil-filled radiator with heat and fan) and put it beside/near the bed.
She can quickly warm a spot in which to dress (clothes laid out the night before).
No reason to heat the entire house just to get dressed as warmly as she desires.
As Si Amigo pointed out, if you have both a furnace and a compressor, the only thing being used by both is the blower (air handler, in HVAC speak).
Either the furnace is burning fuel OR the AC compressor is using electricity. The only thing in common is the duct work and the blower.
If you look at your furnace, you will see a box well insulated sitting on top of the furnace. That box contains the AC evaporator coil, which absorbs the heat from the air as it passes.
On the bottom is the air handler, above that is the furnace, above which is the evaporator coil, and the stack is completed by the plenum - the box from which all the ducts draw heated/cooled air.
At least if you have the most common “central” heat/AC.
Heat pumps work in ways I do not understand. If you have a heat pump, you’re on your own…
No it’s not a heat pump. This seems to be my setup as described. At least that’s one less worry.
As long as she’s not in that large group of people who don’t understand how thermostats work you should be fine.
There’s a lot of people who think that if it’s 68 degrees and they’d like it to be 72 degrees, the temperature will get to 72 degrees more quickly if the thermostat is set on 80 degrees than if it’s set at 72 degrees.
Those people, and you know who you are, should not be allowed to touch a thermostat.
Ugh. She’s that too. But that’s a problem that can’t be solved.
What about using a programmable thermostat to turn the a/c temperature up (or off altogether) sometime early in the morning so that it gradually warms on its own by the time she wakes up? I like to sleep cool myself, but do wish it would be a few degrees warmer when the alarm goes off in the morning (it probably has to do with metabolism and such).
Regarding Bill’s comment about thermostats, that’s not entirely true. There are more and more systems out there that have multiple stages of heating and cooling. These are furnaces with variable speed blowers and modulating burners, and air conditioners with dual-speed compressors or modulating inverter compressors. Thus they WILL kick into high gear, so to speak, when the thermostat is turned up or down beyond their normal range. They’re still the exception rather than the norm, and since nobody ever remembers to set the thermostat back to where it should be until “damn it’s freezing in here” then you’re constantly chasing it around and uncomfortable anyway.
Usually the argument for this is that while it may be 72 where the thermostat is located there are cold spots throughout the house, so setting it to 80 takes care of that.
There are a lot of people who specifically think a higher temperature will make the furnace heat faster without ever thinking about cold spots.
With a forced air heating/cooling system sharing the same ducts, the only way it may harm your system would be to allow the a/c to run for a period of time and then quickly switch to heat while the a/c coil is still cold. The sudden change at the coil from cold to hot may allow the coils to expand too quickly and develop cracks, allowing freon to leak. If you switch from a/c to heat or vice versa, it’s usually best to wait about 15 minutes or so after the last running cycle as this will allow the coil to return to a more ambient temperature.