I have a home in the Northeast that I'm not at that much in the winter but am there enough that I don't want to just shut it down. This is the first winter I've gone through with the house so I'm still feeling my way around. To save on heat, when I'm not there I turn the thermostat down to 47 degrees. We've recently gone through the coldest days of the winter and everything was fine so I'm not worried about that setting being too low to keep the pipes from freezing. But, I want to try to reduce the heating bill further. It has a FHA heating system, half the cellar is finished and heated with the furnace and water heater on the unfinished, unheated side of he basement. Neither the water heater nor any of the water pipes are wrapped and there is no insulation around the FHA ducts. I figure I'm losing a lot of heat into the basement. I was planning on wrapping the ducts, and the water heater but then became concerned that if I did that, then perhaps the reduced heat in the basement could cause the pipes to freeze.
My question is, how do you go about finding that balance between setting the thermostadt as low as possible while also reducing heat loss from the ducts etc., and still keep things from freezing.
George