Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Thermostat Poll

For those of you officially (or unofficially) participating in the thermostat reducing challenge, Freeze Yer Buns, I thought I'd check in with you all and see where you are keeping your thermostats these days.

Half the U.S. is experiencing bun freezing weather and the other half has seen warmer conditions. How has this affected where you keep your thermostat? Have you found that, as the winter has worn on, you are keeping it at lower temperatures, the same or raising it because it's so dang cold?

What do you keep your thermostat temps at during the day when you are home (in degrees Fahrenheit)?


32 comments:

mudnessa said...

I don't actually have a thermostat and I live in north San Diego but I haven't plugged the heater in once in over a year. I think the lowest I saw it in here was about 55 one morning when I woke up.

Robj98168 said...

Once I got over my annual cold/flu thangy, no problem keeping it at 55 during the day! The warmer erather helps though!

Anonymous said...

We live in a cold all winter area and keep our thermostat at 67 degrees all day and night. Kudos to those keeping it colder!

Aimee said...

The record breaking warm winter has helped
me
out a lot here in western Washington. I always keep the stat at about 62, but this year that temperature coste a lit leas propane than
it did last year!

Shannon C. Carpenter said...

It sure is warmest winter as far as I remember. We normally keep it at 61. The world is becoming really different nowadays!

Kate said...

Our programmable thermostat heats just three rooms in the house to 64 during the day. Many sunny days the room we spend the most time in gets well above that due to solar gain. I've seen this room as high as 69F this winter! Believe me, I'm not complaining.

Aydan said...

I'm not sure which option to pick-- my thermostat and heater have been off all winter. My apartment usually stays between 58° F and 68° F.

kidk4m said...

Prior to it being cold enough to start up the wood stove, the house was 58F at night, the bedroom at 55F. For a few hrs each morning/each evening the heat kicked up to 61F.

Once the temp dropped below 25F consistently (we live in Northern VT)we started up the wood stove. Now the house has been staying a balmy 65-67F day/night.

The stove has been going since the middle of Dec. We will be shutting it down for the season in another couple of weeks. We will have used ~2 cords of wood this heating season.

If there's an upside to being unemployed for going on 2yrs now..it's that the house has been toasty all winter! When we both were working we only used the stove on weekends. We won't leave the stove going all day when someone isn't home to watch it.

Sense of Home Kitchen said...

Funny, I was just sitting here thinking how cold it was in the house. We set our thermostat at 62 at night and I haven't turned it up yet today. The temperture outside this morning is -2, so that's not helping.

Tree Huggin Momma said...

Currently the house is set to 55 at night, when we are away or when its just DH at home. When the girls are home it gets set between 60 and 64. I tend not to adjust it up from 55 until everyone is up and moving.

Philip Rutter said...

No thermostat here, wood stove. I have chief responsibility for feeding it, but not 100%, which leads of course to lots of "geez, the fire is almost dead! I can't believe you didn't feed it! It's Zero outside for cryinoutloud!"

Reality rules here in Minnesota; inside temperature will vary with outside. If we're having mild winter (day 25°F, night 10F), inside will be 50° in the morning, 65-70° during day. In really cold winter (-20° night, 0° day), it will be 36° in the morning, 50-55° day inside the house.

Plenty cosy, really- particularly if you have sense enough to put on a sweater when it's really cold, and take it off when it's warm. And flannel lined pants.

HUGE HINT - for the really hard-core folks. The rest of you close your eyes and hum. :-)

Your body adapts- to everything. IN TIME.

If you REALLY want to be comfortable at 55°F all day- keep the house at 45°F for two days.

It'll feel damn cold.

Then; you turn the thermostat up to 55° - and as far as your body knows, you're basking on the beach in Bermuda.

Two days of "damn it's cold in here!" "so put on another sweater, dummy!" - can pay off big.

One day- won't do it.

Samantha said...

i live on a boat in san diego with no heat. our inside temp has been as low as the 40's when i wake up some mornings (i even took a photo as proof! http://raghaulers.blogspot.com/2009/12/cold-feet.html)

Throwback at Trapper Creek said...

We heat with wood, so no thermostat here, although the barometer is registering 50F this morning.

Like Aimee our mild winter has been a boon to the woodpile - we aren't using nearly as much :D

lizo said...

Down to 50 at night & when we're out of the house, around 60 during the day when we're home, and try to keep it low (62-65) in the evenings... i love my wool socks & cozy sweaters!! :)

Brad K. said...

I lived in the San Jose area in California in the mid 1980's. The solar fad had about peaked, for the moment, and regrets set in. It turned out that the most cost effective application for solar was in preheating for the water heater.

When freezing buns, has anyone considered - turning off the water heater? Letting the tank impart a bit of "room temperature" to the water entering the tank from ground temps?

Umm, Robj98168 - about getting over the cold/flu? Try adding another tshirt, another blanket, and stick to non-caffeine, hot drinks for the duration. Keeping the place warm actually favors the illness virus. I find that Saline Nasal Mist (or the more manly Neti wash) helps a *lot* with the discomfort and . . . drainage, along with metamucil/psyllium husk for detoxing. For bad days I like Alka Selzer Cold Plus - it is reasonably effective and non-recreational.

Get well soon!

Anonymous said...

Except for a few nights that got down into low 20s and teens this winter we've been turning off the heater while sleeping - great for planet and great for electric bill :)

Anonymous said...

I have no idea how cold it is in my house but we use A LOT of blankets, sweaters, merino wool socks and each other to keep warm :)

We haven't turned on the heater once this winter, even during the very bitterest parts where I actually cursed myself but the bonus aside from less fossil fuel usage is the insanely low electricity bill each month.

Lisa Nelsen-Woods said...

I keep it at 58 degrees during the day. I work at home. We've had record snows this winter in Ohio. To stay warm we dress in layers and have sealed the air leaks around doors, windows, and outlets. It's not as sexy as other green practices, but it WORKS. In a strange but true way, my computer actually puts out quite a bit of heat. I built it with an energy efficient processor, but it's powerful because of the type of work I do and puts off a surprising amount of heat. So does my husband's (which means we often swap parts back and forth - which we couldn't do if we worked exclusively on laptops.) which means in the summer, we have to run an extra fan in our computer room because of the heat.

Kristijoy said...

Over the course of winter we kept turning the thermostat down. My partner lowered it to 51 at some point and I didn't even notice!
Have gotten used to it.

S.N. said...

My apartment thermostat also controls the entry hallway for the entire 3 family house we live in. The sensor for the thermostat is in our (warm) apartment and so it rarely goes on, but then the hallway begins to freeze. So, our landlords have us keep the 'stat at 68-69ish so that it isnt -freezing- in the entryway.

camelama said...

No thermostat here - early winter freeze week I used it a lot to keep pipes from freezing, after that didn't use it at all. But I think I've turned on the heater about once a week during the past month, on evenings where I'm sitting on the loveseat in front of the heater and want to baby myself for an hour or two. Emotional turmoil after a death in the family seems easier to handle with heat. Strange but true for me!

Katy said...

I kept the heater off at first. One hardly needs a heater in south Texas. But its been a long winter and I'm getting sick and tired of being cold. So I broke down and bought socks, a second sweatshirt and turned the heater up to 60

Oldnovice said...

We're in North Texas, keep our temp at 72 and everyone talks about how cold it is in our house when they visit. It's cold to us, as well. We must wear slippers or suffer cold feet and wear double long-sleeved layers to stay warm enough inside.

Long gone are the days when we (as interlopers from the north) could guffaw at the Texans whining about how cold it was. Once blood thins, it's all over.

Farmer's Daughter said...

I wake up sweating every effing night now! It wouldn't solve the population problem, but if everyone just got pregnant, nobody would need heat.

Anonymous said...

Thermostat is on 55, pretty much 24/7. When we are home (which is evenings, not during the day, usually), we throw a couple logs on the fire. We aim for 63 degrees in the living room but often overshoot...still, we cut our propane use almost in half this year!

Anonymous said...

We don't have a thermostat either-- just the wood stove-- so can't give an exact number, but overall we've been averaging about 52 in the living area over the past month (colder in the bedroom). We're planning to consider the heating season (such as it has been) officially over on March 6. Glad to see so many people still playing along with the challenge!

Mike Ginn said...

Coldest winter I can remember since living in South Louisiana since 1986. May not seem much to my Northern friends but we should have quit needing the heater a couple weeks ago. Snow is forcast tonight,go figure.

This year we have kept heater at 65 during day and 61 at night. I know it is hard to compare since natural gas prices may different, but last year was much milder yet my gas prices are less this year compared to last year. Thanks D for the urging.

Mike G
Baton Rouge

Robj98168 said...

@Farmer's Daughter- If I get pregnant I am blaming YOU

@Brad K- Thanks for the advice. I am still going to kick and scream next winter, when and if I get the flu, and probably turn it up to a balmy 66 or 67

Jezamyn said...

I'm such a wuss when it comes to cold! During the day ours is btn 70 and 72. I wear 4 layers of shirts and usually have a blanket on, plus using a blanket at the computer etc, and multiple comforters at night, and am still usually cold!

On the bright side I hardly want the a/c on at all in the summer!

Sarah said...

I live in (usually) sunny Tucson, AZ. I haven't used the heat and it is currently 60 degrees inside.

Allie said...

I put in the poll that I kept my thermostat at 50-55, but that's actually not true. I don't run my heater at all (to the best of my knowledge, it's broken), so my house is sometimes colder than outside and sometimes a little warmer. Which means my house has ranged from under 40F up to 60F degrees this winter (and don't ask my why it's sometimes colder inside than out. I personally find that quite disturbing).

DK said...

I feel the need to revise my vote from earlier. We got our electric bill the day after this poll posted. Ridiculous! Our thermostat has been jacked up ever since before we moved in and this was the last straw. We got a new programmable thermostat (that will be replaced with the old one and taken with us when we move to a new rental place once this lease is up), sealed up the laundry closet (we'd already sealed up all outer doors and windows) and got space heaters for the living room and bedroom. Now the thermostat is set to 55 constantly. Come to find out, even though we had the thermostat set to 65 it was being heated to well over 75 on occasion. I just thought it was a mild winter but apparently that wasn't necessarily the case. I'm now undergoing my yearly acclimatization to winter temps about the time winter is getting set to end.