Insight on Energy Savings HVAC Settings

An excerpt from a permaculture design energy audit discussion. Your feeling of room temperature is situational. Save energy by setting your thermostat higher and spending more time outside.

Energy Star recommendations are to set your thermostat at 78 degrees for air conditioning and 70 degrees for heat. This setting saves households $2,200 a year.

I prefer cooler temperatures, so I set my thermostat to 68 degrees in the winter. Yet, my body adapts to higher temperatures in the summer. As a result, my HVAC turns on due to home efficiencies.

You can do more to have a comfortable home with insulation, airflow, and solar aspects than HVAC alone. To learn more about permaculture design, join us at https://www.prosperityhomestead.org/newsletter/?utm_source=001-l1101a&utm_medium=spreaker&utm_campaign=o0227b&utm_content=why-air-conditioning-set-at-78-degrees

#EnergyStar #EnergyEfficient #AirConditioning #SetThermostat

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Let's talk about energy consumption. Whenyou set your air conditioner or you're heating
at a energy saving seventy eight degreesfor cooling sixty eight degrees for heat,
it feels initially a little warmer ora little cooler than you might desire.

(00:21):
However, that's almost a thirty degreedifferential with your body temperature, and over
time your body will adjust. Now, what is the value in that energy
saving? Well, first off,and most systems are designed to be energy
saving, and they use those measures, then they're going to run more efficiently

(00:44):
at those temperatures and you'll save energy. But to go over those temperatures,
you'll have to consume an exorbitant amountof energy because you're going significantly above or
below the ambient temperatures outside the compressorof the air CONDI sure works a certain
way, and if you have totake a significant amount of energy to change

(01:08):
or capture the temperature, then you'vegot you have no benefit. You might
feel more comfortable, but you're birdiea lot more fuel to be comfortable.
There are certain laws of thermal dynamicsthat need to be considered, but we
also have to look at is howquickly does a house retain or lose heat

(01:33):
or cooling. So that is afactor of insulation, window, the vacuum
of the house. You know,how sealed is the house. So here's
a challenge. Do you adjust yourheating and air conditioning to your preference or
do you adjust it according to somethingthat's going to get you to like an

(01:57):
ambient temperature or an equilibrium temperature assoon as possible. Well, I'll tell
you right up front that your preferenceis going to be wholly dependent on maybe
you come in from the cold andyou want to warm up quickly. It's
got to be very subjective where gettingyour home to an ambient temperature is going

(02:19):
to be something that's more of ameasured or a metric. Here's the deal.
I used to keep it as coolas possible in the summer, and
I didn't worry about it getting toowarm in the winter. There is no
difference between setting it at seventy eightand getting used to it, or setting

(02:43):
it at sixty eight in the winterand getting used to it. Because you
can adjust your body temperature with asweater or wear shorts in the summer,
you can adjust more quickly than yourair conditioning system or your heating system can
change the air temperature in the entirehouse. You also save a significant amount

(03:04):
of energy. And what happens isyour system doesn't come on it very often,
doesn't come on very often, turnal, it doesn't stay out for very
long because your house reaches an equilibriumthat the air temperature is closer to the
thermostat than it would be otherwise thandramatic shift in temperature from what you've perceived

(03:28):
the outside to be to what youperceived the inside to be. It takes
a large amount of energy. Andthe reason I'm frustrated in giving you this
lecture is because my tenants are runningthe ship out of the air condition here.
They got it. It's cool aboutforty degrees outside and they've got the
inside temperature about seventy eight degrees.It doesn't make any sense. It's going

(03:53):
to cause them to warm up theirbodies so much that when they get outside,
the difference is going to be dramatic. They're going to be uncomfortable,
they're going to have an higher thanthan usual expense associated with their their electric
they're going to wear out my system, and it pisces me off