Wow, Where are you coming from? The lower the setting the longer the setting. You save energy. I am talking about how much saving. Just it saves. Our 'stat is set to 17C from midnight. Back up to 20C at 7 in the morning. It does make a difference. Now our NG price is 3.80 per GigaJoule. Electricity is 7 cents/KWh
Nope. If you lower the thermostat, gone for an hour, takes an hour to cool off the house, then come home and turn it back up it takes twice as much energy to heat up the house and all the contents than if you had left it alone. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Now if you go to Florida for 3 months and turn it down to 50 degrees, yes you save a bunch.
I think part of this is because we tend to think of the heat needed to heat something from the outside temp to what we want inside. But what the furnace does most of the time is just replace heat that is lost to the outside. And still it runs a lot.
So it runs even more when it has gotten colder than normal inside, because it was on setback. But it has run not at all perhaps or much much less the entire time people were out and the thermostat was set back.
Looked at another way, the furnace is usually just raising the temp one or two degrees, from the temp at which it turns on, 67^? to where it turns off, 69^?, and still it runs a lot when we are home
Then tell me exactly what that magic length of time is. Is is 3.2 hours, 12 hours, 23.5 hours, or some other time? I did build one new home with zoned hot water heat and it was great heat but we still turned all three thermostats down when we left to save energy and it definitely did.
Don
"Stormin Mormon" wrote in news:hcc1f8 $85c$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:
How did I know this post would have a large amount of replies just by the subject before even expanding it? And know the replies would range from Yes to No with everything in between?
Luck I guess :-)
Hmmm, What kinda dummy is set the 'stat back when going for an hour. We're talking about typical situation, all day or all night set back. Be reasonable. Dig out a research test result done by such as Honeywell and utility outfits. Saving energy is proven thing no matter what. Also no matter what, insulating house well is pre-requisite for things like programmable 'stat. Your argument does not have legs to stand on. Forget it.
.
RickH-
Looks like there is very little hope for you understanding the thermo of setback....
Walter made a very simple / concise statement of the value of setback but you still choose to disbelieve it. :(
The energy saved is the amount of energy used to maintain the house at the setback subtracted from the energy that would had been expended to maintain the house at the higher temp.
outside temp 50F inside temp 70F (without setback)
outside temp 50F inside temp 60F (with setback)
house at setback temp loses ~1/2 the heat that the house at "normal" temp
cheers Bob
now if we could just get people to not top post
Hmm, Talking about manually doing it? No, doing it with intelligent programmable 'stat.
This is veering away from the original question a little, but -- This time of year, and also in spring, we have days where it will be in the
40's in the morning and 80's in the afternoon. I know lot of people who turn the heat up to 70 or more in the morning, then by early afternoon they have the a/c on. If they would just leave it off and tolerate being a couple of degrees cooler for an hour or so in the morning, the house would warm up on its own and be comfortable for most of the day, and just before it might get a degree or so too warm, the sun will go down and it gets comfortable again. They will then have used ZERO energy where the others have used both heat and a/c. No replies to the question about wives turning the stat all the way up/down so the heat/a/c runs faster. I doubt there are 1% who DON'T think that. My ex certainly did, and it was a total waste of time trying to explain it to her. Unfortunately, women don't have a monopoly on that kind of thinking-- I know a lot of guys who think the same thing. Larrysnipped-for-privacy@webtv.net (Lp1331 1p1331) wrote in news:2367-4AEA87C9-16@storefull-
3171.bay.webtv.net:
You haven't been thru menopause, have you? You'd know what being hot and then cold would really mean, then.
Six of one, half dozen of the other. Depends on how long you are gone. Leaving the thermostat at a steady temperature saves energy. On the other hand, a lower difference between the inside wall and the outside wall means lower heat loss. So lowering the thermostat does save energy in the long run. Now, constantly raising and lowering the temperature for short periods wastes energy. When you raise it you have to reheat not only the heating system but the entire inside wall, floor and ceiling not to mention all the furniture and appliances. When you lower the thermostat, all those items lose all their heat again the heat is drawn out into the room and the room loses it through the walls to the outside. So....use your little noggin.
A couple weeks ago, one of the guys at church mentioned to me that it's cold in the primary (kids) room. Sure enough, about 65F. He'd gone in the mechanical room, and turned the thermostat up a couple degrees. Which didn't help much, cause the furnace had flamed out. I managed to get it to restart, and then the kids had heat again.
They would be different, in that boilers recover much more slowly.
I'm not sure the Russian education is any better. Might be, I've never been there. I've seen some reports and video clips that they have a massive problem, with alcohol and homeless kids. Much more so than USA.
Some pets have fur coats....
That's the wild card, is the price of various types of heat. My home is natural gas, with no electric emergency heat. I hadn't thought of that.
I did ask about energy, but the different prices is a very important thought.
Boilers are typically left hot, so there isn't a bunch of humidity in the boiler, rusting it out. And, boiler systems often do take a LONG time to recover temp.
The energy you buy is the same energy as what's lost. Cold house loses less heat. The recovery swing is a lot less heat than keeping the house warm.
I don't have a pipe, and that nonsense wouldn't light, in any case.
Yeah, I figured the same :-) So far there doesn't seem to be too much arguing.
Personal view: depends on the system type and the period of turning it down. Anything with a lot of inertia, like slab heat, is best left alone unless the period's very long. Something like forced air seems to recover quickly (we turn our 'stat down to 60 overnight and it takes 3 or 4 mins of burn to get things back up to temp in the morning. The electric baseboards take a little longer, but not too much)
cheers
Jules
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