WHAT THE HELL IS A FARENHEIT 🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺
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You guys can control the temperature in the summer?
Right? I'm over here looking at my thermostat set to Off.
Username checks out.
Tried to set ours here to around 20°C (~70°F), but it barely even reaches 23°C (~74°F) even in the middle of the night. I still consider myself lucky being able to run the AC for most of the day though, so I'm not complaining.
Europe.
Winter 20C/70F, but we only heat the bedrooms or rooms we mostly stay in. Kitchen, etc. can go as low as 10C/50F
Summer: no heating/AC at all. Open a window when cold air is coming inside. Close the windows when hot air is coming in. It's never gone above 35C/95F, and that's during a heat wave. Usually it's 25C/80F max.
Sometimes when it's too cold. You wear a sweater and thick socks. Sometimes it's hot. Fan or live with it. Adapt our schedules accordingly, perhaps do groceries when it's super hot or go on an errand that requires the car a drive so we can cool down in the supermarket/AC.
It's never gone above 35C/95F
I think I speak for 99% of the people here when I say “FUCK THAT”
Some of us do enjoy hot weather. I hardly ever use my air conditioner.
Not American. What's a thermostat?
The electronic thing on the wall that controls the temperature of your heater or air conditioner.
older ones are often electrical, but not really electronic. they use a bimetal strip that bends due to changing temperatures, to complete a circuit at the point you set the slider. it's actually a really fascinatingly simple bit of tech.
I have been involved in many of these types of discussions, and I'm convinced that we are not experiencing the same temperatures when we set our thermostats to the same temperature. If I set mine any lower than 77°F, I would freeze to death. But many people here set theirs to below 70°F.
I have a few hypotheses.
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Apparently AC units can really only make the temperature about 20-25°F degrees colder than the outside ambient temperature. It is over 100°F in my area almost every day from June to mid September, so any temperature below about 78°F just means your AC is on 100% of the time. This is removing moisture from the air, making it feel colder.
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My thermostat is right next to my garage door, which is not insulated. This is probably where the majority of heat enters the house. So the thermostat thinks it is warmer than it is. Other people might be in similar or opposite situations and need to set their thermostats to account for that.
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People's AC units are not actually cooling anywhere near those temperatures. The unit is just on 100% of the time at those temperatures, and they could realistically increase the temperature a great deal and get the same results.
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Humidity.
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Some people's AC units/thermometers just suck. 65°F on their unit actually gets the space to the same temperature as 75°F on my unit.
Number 2 has merit. Here are a few more.
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Most thermostats do require calibration, and nobody has time for that. This has a similar effect to your second point. Proper air flow (or lack thereof) throughout the home is also important.
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Sunlight makes a huge difference. A temperature that feels comfortable at night may not feel comfortable at noon in a home with a lot of natural light. Same as a sunny vs a cloudy day, indoors or outdoors.
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Men and women have drastically different tolerances for comfortable room temperature. In general, non-menopausal women tend to appreciate a slightly warmer room than men. This plays out in office spaces all over the world, with many women running space heaters under their desks.
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Clothing obviously makes a huge difference. Some people prefer to dress for their desired temperature; others prefer to dress for their physical comfort and let the HVAC balance things out accordingly.
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Medical conditions and medications and diet can all drastically affect one's body heat output. For example, anything that boosts serotonin is likely to make one run hot. Stimulants will constrict blood vessels and make one cold, especially in the extremities. And we all know what alcohol does (dilates blood vessels, allowing more heat to escape the body, lowering one's body temperature despite actually making them feel warmer). Blood sugar levels make a difference. The list is endless.
But it's interesting that most of your thought process went into how HVAC systems and humidity work, versus the simple fact that the people themselves are just drastically different (see points 3 through 5).
This is removing moisture from the air, making it feel colder.
That’s not how humidity works. Higher humidity means that cooler temperatures feel much colder and warmer temperatures feel much warmer. Even the heat index calculation shows this. Just try it out for yourself, or look at the formula. https://www.weather.gov/epz/wxcalc_heatindex
People's AC units are not actually cooling anywhere near those temperatures. The unit is just on 100% of the time at those temperatures, and they could realistically increase the temperature a great deal and get the same results.
I don’t know why you think this. Maybe you only have a single stage AC or maybe you’ve never actually measured the temp with an extra thermometer, but you can get the ac 40-50°F cooler than outside, both by removing humidity (which decreases the “feels like” temp) but also through actually heat removal from the house. You might just have bad insulation as well.
If you live in a dry climate you can do the opposite. Pump humidity in using a swamp cooler, which places moisture in the air and then immediately causes it to evaporate carrying heat with it in the state change. You’re cooling the air slightly and since moisture exaggerates temperature changes it feels cooler to you.
This is a trap to identify the Fahrenheit users for future re-education, isn't it?
21C in the winter. 23C in the summer. Well at least these are the settings during the daytime. During sleeping hours they are set to 19C in the winter and 25C in the summer.
Winter: 20°C when home/awake, 17°C when out or asleep. Before kids we used to drop it to 15°C at night. It was glorious
Summer: 22°C when home awake or asleep, 26°C when away for longer period, 24 for short periods
I have a brand new apartment. On recommendation of the constructor (new walls contain lots of moisture that needs to go out), it's set a little warmer than I'd usually go: 21C (70F). In my old place I'd put it at 18C (64F).
That said, currently it's 25C inside (77F). This place is insulated like crazy, and we don't have AC (that still isn't common over here, even for new builds). For reference, current temperatures outside are 14C (57F)
I live in the Netherlands.
18 in summer or off and 22 or off in winter
Western suburbs of Chicago, IL. Summer it's 77-79f (25-26c). Winter it's 65-69f (18.3-20.5c).
In summer we open the windows at night and let the cooler air in and when the sun comes in I close the windows and run a dehumidifier to quickly bring down the relative temp upstairs especially. Helps a bunch.
When our new kid comes I will have to def adjust these numbers much closer to 72f (22c).
I was talking to friends who live nearby and essentially keep it at 72f (22c) year round and almost never open their windows they were using like 1040kwh-1600kwh per month last month where we were using 309kwh or about 50 bucks a month. This was for July. I think we may be the weirdos and we will have to get more on their level with a newborn.
My heating is set at 21°C (70F) for daytimes and 16°C (61F) for the night time, so it doesn't come on at all during summer, and a lot of spring (UK). During winter when it gets colder out (like below about 6°C/43F) I will usually need to whack it up by a couple of degrees, or give it a little extra blast in the morning to warm up. Its an old building (late 1800s) and my flat has external walls on three sides, and a cold empty basement below, so it can get quite cold when the outside temperature drops.
Edited to make it clear i mean my heating thermostat, because I realised most people here are talking about AC and that's very rare in homes here.
83F day 78F night. These temps are mainly chosen to not give my AC a heart attack.
During the winter I’m pretty hands off and will let it get down to 20-30F and just layer up next to a small space heater.
20 - 30F?! You have no water pipes??
If it does get down below freezing it’s usually not for long. And once I’m up and moving and have a space heater on its probably in the 50s by the afternoon.
I live in an RV - you kind of just work with the weather you get.
We typically keep our house at 68F in the summer, and in the winter it’s 63F during the day, 55F at night. We like it on the chilly side.
To help those unfamiliar with Fahrenheit (like I am)
68°F = 20°C
63°F = 16.6°C
55°F = 12.8°C
We set the AC for 18°C heating in winter, and 23° cooling in summer. I'm happy in 18-23 temperatures, doesn't need to be the same temp year around.
18 when it's 10ish outside feels nice and toasty, and be 23 when it's 35ish outside feels nice and cool.
72 daytime 68 nighttime.
76F to 78F in the summer.
68F in the winter.
My Dad does 85F summer and 65F winter though. I though I was being luxurious with my settings lol.
I do run a dehumidifier in the summer and a humidifier in the winter though. Humidity control is almost more important IMO for comfort.
I'm going out my damn mind trying to work out what I should set it at. I've been obsessively adding more and more temperature and humidity sensors around my living space to work out exactly what my idiot brain thinks is comfortable.
I don't understand why 23C/50% makes me feel like I'm in the fucking Amazon rainforest one day, but on another I feel like I've got ice forming on my damn face like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
I'm this close to buying a ZigBee rectal thermometer. Core body temperature has to be the missing piece. (I suppose any ZigBee environment sensor can be a rectal one if I bite down on something first).
(Oh and lux, I wonder if lux levels tricked my brain but that doesn't seem to correlate either!)
Having an apartment with district heating, we don't have a thermostat per se - we can control the inflow of hot water to our radiators, on a scale of 0-7. However, I try to keep the indoor temperature at at least 18-19 C during the colder period, and I try to reduce the indoor by opening the windows and ventilating any time the indoor temperature goes past 22 C during the hotter parts of the year. Any higher than that and my sleep starts to get compromised.
I keep it the same year round, about 71F during the day and 68F at night.
Summer when overnight doesn't drop below 70F: 75F first and second floor, 80F on third floor
Summer when overnight drops below 70F: All window open.
Winter: 58F during the day when we're at work, 63F when we get home, 60F overnight.
62F in the winter and 72F in the summer… I like It chillier than warmer :-)
To save energy, I set my AC at 28℃ in the summer, for a couple of hours in the afternoon. In the winter if my room temperature wasn't below 8℃ I don't use heating. Otherwise I set it to 12℃.
Apparently I don't understand the very energy consuming 20℃ summers/winters.
In Northern California my AC is off as much as I can help it. When it's on it's set at 82. Energy bill is still at least $250 for my one bedroom apartment...
My landleach pays for energy, so, 72F at all times and a small data center running in the corner