We keep ours 24/7 during the summer at 75.
When my AC is in “AC mode” (as opposed to “heater mode”) I run my apartment at 68 during the day, and have it drop to 66 from 12 to 6 to help me sleep. I like it cool.
I’m in a lower unit of an apartment complex with another unit above me, which probably helps mitigate the blatant waste of energy.
Kinda funny. When ever I pay attention to our electric bill, it highlights about OMG you are using SO much more electricity than your neighbors! Eh, yep you bet. We live here full time. 90% of the people in the valley use their houses as vacation getaways maybe once a month.
All I can come up with is that the EPA basically is trying to say “Don’t run your AC at night” without actually saying that.
Setting the AC to 82 would pretty much prevent it from running very much at all during the night in like 95% of the country.
And yeah, it’s kind of puzzling to hear about places where it doesn’t top 90 when you’re from Texas. 80 is like a nice April/October high temp, or a ghastly awful summer low temp here.
The Lovely and Talented Mrs. Shodan has essentially two settings. From May to September she is too hot, from September to May she is too cold. So she likes to crank the AC to near-Arctic levels during the summer and then roast to medium-rare during the winter. Dual controls on the electric blanket are the only thing saving me from death by heat stroke when the temperature drops below 70[sup]o[/sup].
We have supposedly reached a compromise, but the Thermostat Fairy sometimes resets the control while I am at work. So in theory the AC is set to 76[sup]o[/sup] by day, and 72[sup]o[/sup] by night. Unless the temperature drops below that at night, in which case I can sometimes persuade her to “open a window, for heaven’s sake - I’m freezing my ass off here”.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is. Especially when the practice looks at me with innocent blue eyes.
Regards,
Shodan
Thermostat is set at 78.
But about half the week I sleep in the basement, where it’s 60-65 year-round. My wife has to get up very early and has trouble getting to and staying asleep, and I work a somewhat unusual schedule and tend to stay up really late anyways, so I sleep in the basement where all my stuff is so I don’t bother her.
80° 24/7, unless the outside temperature gets up near 100°, in which case too much sun beats down on our southern-facing utility closet and the A/C can only manage 82°.
I live in Florida, so cooling the house to the low 70s would cost thousands of dollars. We vacillate between 76 and 77; I voted 77.
We have a highly zoned system - six separate thermostats, two variable speed heat pumps, each heat pump has a damper system to control which zone(s) it is cooling (or heating in the winter).
Bedroom is on its own zone. Set to 81 during the day, 78 in the evening, 76 overnight for sleeping. Living spaces 78 during the day, 81 overnight. One zone in a workshop stays at 85 unless I need to be in there, in which case i set it to 78 (and it cools down within 10 minutes). Guest room stays at 81 unless we have a guest, in which case the program for that room switches to mach the master bedroom.
We also do a precool/setback cycle on weekday afternoons (precool rooms to three degrees cooler than normal for a couple hours, then three degrees higher than normal for 3-6PM) to take advantage of a special pricing plan from our utility.
When I sleep? I leave it off. I have the kind that turns itself off and on every few minutes, and that keeps me awake.
I also leave it off when I am not home - it doesn’t get that hot or that cold while I’m at work. (When I am home, my heater is 65, and my AC is 75.)
My home is on the east side of the Big Island in Hawaii about 3/4 of a mile from the water. We don’t have/need A/C as the trade winds blow most of the time and keep temperatures mild year round even though the humidity is high. We have fans if we need them.
Other, which is to say I don’t set a thermostat while sleeping. I live in New York City in one of the older apartment buildings. It has radiator for heat, which comes on according to the outside temperature between October and May. Not only that, but I turn the bedroom radiator off at night, because it’s more enjoyable to snuggle under a down comforter even when it’s 20 degrees outside. As for summertime, I have an air conditioner in my living room, which I keep at, oh, 70-75 degrees until I go bed. This makes my bedroom comfortable enough for the night, and also, and AC might keep me up at night.
I voted “74-76,” but that’s only because 75 is where I usually keep the temperature during most of the A/C-using part of the year.
My point is that I don’t change it for sleeping, because doing so is a great way to make it hard for me to sleep at night. I just can’t stand a room that gets too hot, and too hot is defined entirely based on what I’m used to during the day. And then, even if I do, I’m going to forget to turn it back down, and then get hot during the day, and it takes longer to cool back down than to just keep the temperature where it was.
Sure, we do lose body heat while we sleep, allowing it to be cooler. But that’s what covers do. I still need the air itself to be cooler, or I feel too hot.
At least I’m not like my bunkmate back at summer camp, who cranked the A/C down as low as it could go at night, as it was the only way he could sleep–while I had foolishly brought only my thinnest cover for my bed.
82 degrees and sleeping are mutually exclusive for me.
I don’t know what to vote. I don’t use the air conditioner when I’m sleeping, and generally speaking I don’t turn it on during the day until it hits 81F and 65+% humidity. The thermometer in my room says that it’s currently 79.7F (61% humidity) and I’m perfectly comfortable with just the ceiling fan.
And, unfortunately, I freeze 4-5 months of the year, because heating the house that hot would be irresponsible. Generally speaking, in the winter I turn the heat down to 64-67F before bed.
You can’t get much more north than here, Buddy. According to Accuweather it’s 75F right now both here and in Portland, OR.
This.
No A/C. Summer night temps here are usually no higher than 70s, might get into the 80s when we have a heat wave, but I sleep fine with the fan.
No air-conditioning here, and the idea of cooling your house to 28°C is an alien one. But the advice sounds backwards to me; you want it colder at night so you can sleep, and warmer during the day so you can dress appropriately for the season. I don’t see the point of making your house so cold you have to put on jeans in midsummer, but many people seem to love Arctic temperatures.
Ours is set to 77 during the day and 76 at night but my wife still wears a sweater during the day and might turn on the electric mattress heater at night (dual controlled thank God). I think she would prefer 82 at night and 92 during the day to include the winter.
I did the best I could with the poll. We set the upstairs to 80 at night, but use a window A/C in our bedroom. It just has a cooler/warmer knob with no digits so I don’t know what it is. The one time I checked with a thermometer it was 78 in the room (after the little A/C had run for a few hours). During the day the upstairs is set to 85. I drop it to 80 and switch on the window unit as soon as home in the evening.
Downstairs is set at 80 during nighttime, and I don’t think it runs at all. I drop it to 77 or 76 during the day and leave it there.
I’ve never set the A/C below 76 in summertime. I’m too cheap, and a healthy adult can manage at that temp.