What temp do you keep your A/C?

[runwad]

If you have a 2 story house here's a little trick I do to keep the upstairs cooler, not as cool as downstairs but cooler. I have a tension rod that I put over the top of the stairs and I hang a king size sheet from it. That keeps the hot air from coming up the stairs and into all the rooms (heat rises). It's amazing how when we go up the stairs we can feel all that hot, stale air trapped right there. I had to get a king sheet so that it hangs on the floor and would trap the cool air from upstairs, or else the cold air would blow the sheet away and all that cold air would fall downstairs. It really does work. I thought my neighbor was nuts when I walked in her house and she showed me how she did it, she uses a shower curtain. But it does work to keep it 5-10 degrees cooler then what it would originally be without the sheet.

Oh and to answer your question we keep the house at 74 during the day and 72 at night.

 

[Friendly Frog]

When we were younger we kept the house around 78. I just can't take the it that warm anymore so I guess it is closer to 75 now.

We put a small window ac in a side window of the bedroom as "emergency air" when our main unit went out one summer. Since the bedroom window can't be seen from the street and we didn't use that window for a view, we just kept it there. It is great as I can sleep cooler without having to cool off the whole house! This might be an idea for those with upstairs cooling issues, especially if you mostly use the upstairs rooms at night? We also use ceiling fans in every room.

 

[chicagodisneyfan]

70. My husband sweats when he sleds - he is so warm blooded.

He works 56 hours a week generally - all of it outside in the heat - so if he wants it to be 70, I am ok with it.

 

[pigletto]

I must have the most high efficiency air conditioner on the planet. It doesn't matter where I set it, the house gets too cold really fast.
Dh and I were just discussing this today in fact. If we turn it on because it's getting muggy and uncomfortable it never stays on more than an hour or so and the house is COLD.
My bills are reasonable, and I'm not really complaining, but even if I set it for 78 it doesn't seem to stop there.
I think I need a programable thermostat so I can make sure it's set exactly where I want it.

 

[danceintherain]

We don't have central A/C, so when I run the A/C it has to be cooler that it would be otherwise.
I usually set it on 22C which is around 71F and I put a fan in front of it to help circulate the air. We have smaller units in each of the bedrooms, which I run during my son's naptime and at night.
Our electric bills are crazy here. Last summer I was paying over $200/month to cool a 1400 sq ft apartment. Luckily the military subsidizes it for us.
For some reason the A/C doesn't seem to be working as well this summer, so we probably need to get the filters replaced.

Definitely try to block off the air into the lower rooms (block the vents). When I do run my A/C I close the doors into the room where I am to contain the cool air and run fans. It works well for us, and somehow our electric bill is lower than that of a lot of other people.

 

[Ed J]

I'm an air condoning guy and I've read some really bad stuff in this thread.

First don't close or block any vent especially returns. If you
block returns you can kill the compressor. A fan can only blow out what it gets back, blocking the area from which it gets the air back from can and will cause damage. Blocking supply vents doesn't make the air that would have squirted out the closed vent squirt out somewhere else, it cases the fan to move less air over all.

Anything to do with systems with a pully is over 20 years old, modern furnaces or air handlers do not have motors with pulleys in residential applications.

If you live in an area that is an arid climate, running the fan all the time is good. If you live in a green grass or humid climate running the fan all the time is a bad idea. AC systems drop the air temp and remove moisture from the air, if you run the fan all the time, when the thing out side shuts off the coil in the duct that extracts the heat from the house will "give up" a lot of that moisture you just paid to remove. On average a home with the fan running all the time will maintain a relative humidity 10% higher than a home that lets the fan cycled as needed.

I keep my systems at 76 or 77, but they keep the humidity down around 40% so even at those higher temps it is real comfy in here.

 

[delmar411]

we keep the house at 68* year round. I don't like to be hot so this works for us. Our electric bill is never more than $150 in the summer so it's not expensive to keep the air running.

 

[alice99]

I keep it at 76-78 during the day , that's usually low enough to keep the humidity down and it's still 10-15 degrees cooler than outside.

I keep it at 71 overnight, I push the temp down to be assured the AC will turn on enough , We also use ceiling fans at night to keep air flowing.

 

[mom2rose&john]

We keep our at 74 degrees and use ceiling fans.

 

[si-am]

We have a programmable thermostat and since I'm too lazy to figure out how to re-program it, we kept the settings we "inherited" when we bought the house five years ago.

6am-8am: 78
8am-4pm: 85
4pm-10pm: 78
10pm-6am: 82


Now, the reality is that if I'm home during the day, I'm turning it to 78. At night I push it down to 76.

We have cats, and I would feel guilty about leaving them with such hot temps during the day, except we have a full furnished basement that stays pretty cool and comfortable, so they can always hang out down there if they are hot.

 

[fall08CP]

Not sure how you all do it! It's off completely in the spring, but we're up near 100 now and I can't go higher then 74.

 

[Friendly Frog]

danceintherain;45252668 Our electric bills are crazy here. Last summer I was paying over $200/month to cool a 1400 sq ft apartment.

Where are you? In the heat of summer it costs me about 400.00 for 2900sq feet and I have all the upstairs (about 900 sq ft) with the vents completely closed off.

 

[Shanna-like-Banana]

we have a 2 story house and each floor has it's own thermostat, therefore they are on seperate "zones".

At night we bump the air upstaits to 75, so we don't sweat our pa-tooties off, and we we get up in the morning, it goes up to 78. Since we aren't home during the day, or most of the day we're downstairs.

The exact opposite downstairs. We bump the downstairs air to 78 at night, since we're in bed and in the morning on days we stay home, we turn it to 75, some days when it's super hot and the kids are going in and out all day down to 73º

We have ceiling fans in every room in our house and we use almost all of them on low all day long, everyday. It just helps keep the air circulating and keeps things from getting "stale"

Now, when we know that we're having ppl over for say a BBQ and drinkin', I'll turn it down to 70º it gets real hot real quick, when we break out Phase 10 and Johnny, Jack and Jose show up too. (of course, after we put the kids to bed, make the couches into beds and blown up the air mattress for over night guests)

 

[disneymomjcs]

78 degrees in the summer. It is high 90's now so I have put it down to 75 but mostly 78 degrees when we are out of the house or in the morning and bedtime.

 

[cornflake]

Y'all are out of your minds. Seventy-eight? Eighty-anything?

< 64, though it doesn't always get down that low depending on the heat/humidity.

 

[tasha99]

Y'all are out of your minds. Seventy-eight? Eighty-anything?

< 64, though it doesn't always get down that low depending on the heat/humidity.

Me too, if I had AC. My apartment was scorching hot today--second floor, and the landlord hasn't put in screens (we're getting them asap). I had the windows open anyway, but our state bird, the mosquito, was starting to find my house too inviting. When I came home from work today, it was 82 in here! Gross.

 

[cornflake]

Me too, if I had AC. My apartment was scorching hot today--second floor, and the landlord hasn't put in screens (we're getting them asap). I had the windows open anyway, but our state bird, the mosquito, was starting to find my house too inviting. When I came home from work today, it was 82 in here! Gross.

Ew, poor you. I've always been told I'd enjoy your state.

Hope it's cooled down... have some ice, on me -

 

[Ciao Mickey]

I'm an air condoning guy and I've read some really bad stuff in this thread.

First don't close or block any vent especially returns. If you
block returns you can kill the compressor. A fan can only blow out what it gets back, blocking the area from which it gets the air back from can and will cause damage. Blocking supply vents doesn't make the air that would have squirted out the closed vent squirt out somewhere else, it cases the fan to move less air over all.

Anything to do with systems with a pully is over 20 years old, modern furnaces or air handlers do not have motors with pulleys in residential applications.

If you live in an area that is an arid climate, running the fan all the time is good. If you live in a green grass or humid climate running the fan all the time is a bad idea. AC systems drop the air temp and remove moisture from the air, if you run the fan all the time, when the thing out side shuts off the coil in the duct that extracts the heat from the house will "give up" a lot of that moisture you just paid to remove. On average a home with the fan running all the time will maintain a relative humidity 10% higher than a home that lets the fan cycled as needed.

I keep my systems at 76 or 77, but they keep the humidity down around 40% so even at those higher temps it is real comfy in here.

What he says.

I have always been told not to close off any vents by my AC guys.

http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/myths/vents.html

I keep it on 74-76.

 

[The Wise One]

Y'all are out of your minds. Seventy-eight? Eighty-anything?

< 64, though it doesn't always get down that low depending on the heat/humidity.

I know! I always keeps ours at 68-69 but I am completely intolerant to heat which is why I hate living in Florida.

 

[bjscheel]

This is one thing holding me back from getting central air. We only have one vent upstairs and I'm afraid we would never get the upstairs cool without freezing the downstairs. So, we have a window air conditioner for the upstairs hallway, but it isn't even in yet. I have mixed feelings about it because if we put in the a/c, then I can't use our only south window upstairs. I prefer to just keep the house shut during the day and open everything up in the evening and use fans. We are on a hill in the country and get breezes. 90% of the time this works just fine, so I hate to block off our south window since that is where most of the breeze comes from.

So, we are still holding out. We have had a couple of 95 days this week, but there was a good strong breeze. We didn't grow up with any type of a/c, I guess we are used to it. I hate being in an overly cold a/c building. It's finally summer, I don't want to freeze!