Now that the cold weather is replacing warmth in Indiana and the rest of the Midwest, it’s time to reset your home’s programmable thermostat. You’ve probably had it set for the cooling season, with higher temperature settings during the day when nobody’s home. Now it’s time to program new settings for wintertime energy savings.
A programmable thermostat differs from a standard, old-school thermostat. It provides an easy way to program temperature changes ahead of time. You can simply set it and forget it. This is unlike a standard thermostat which requires constant adjustments that you’re sure to forget, resulting in no meaningful, long-term savings.
How to Reset a Thermostat for the Heating Season
Basically, you’ll want to program lower temperatures during the day when nobody’s home, and at night when everybody’s sleeping (most people prefer cooler sleeping temperatures). Following is a sample weekday schedule for your programmable thermostat:
- In the morning, shortly before the household awakens, the thermostat should raise the temperature from the cooler overnight setting to around 68 degrees. That way, the house is warm and toasty for an hour or two while your family prepares for the day. (Skip this temperature change if everybody’s up and out of the house quickly; it’s not worth wasting energy to raise the temperature 10 degrees for a half hour.)
- During the eight or nine hours when everyone’s at work or school, use a cool setting of around 56 degrees.
- Program the thermostat to return to a comfort setting – 68 degrees – shortly before family members begin returning home in the afternoon.
- Whenever the last person goes to sleep, program the thermostat for cooler overnight temperatures, perhaps 58 to 63 degrees.
In general, try to avoid short (under eight-hour) setback periods; this really doesn’t save much energy. Also, avoid frequently overriding programmed settings. This defeats the purpose of your programmable thermostat.
For more helpful advice on resetting your programmable thermostat, please contact us at Mowery Heating, Cooling and Plumbing. We provide superior HVAC and plumbing services to the greater Indianapolis area.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Brownsburg, Indiana and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).
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