Is It Just Me or Are More People Keeping their Heat Turned Down?

A couple of years ago my house was known as the “cold” house.  Every time my sister came to visit she made sure she brought along sweaters and coats.  At that point in time my thermostat was set at 69 degrees during the day and 62 at night.  With the temperature at 69 I could easily walk around the house with a T-shirt on and not feel chilled.  Every now and then I’d get a bit of a shiver but if I wore a sweatshirt, all was well.  Meanwhile it seemed like most of the people I visited kept their house above 70 degrees 24 hours a day.  Frankly I always felt that people threw money away by keeping their homes any warmer than 69 degrees.

This winter things seem to have changed.  I’m walking in to more and more houses that have the heat turned down to 62 or 63 degrees.  That feels cold to me but if you are prepared for that temperature with appropriate clothes, it’s really not that bad.  Up until two weeks ago, the record cold house was my good friend’s place.  He keeps the heat at 50 and has for years.  He’s a single guy and just bundles up because he hates the idea of sending large checks to the utility company.

A couple weeks ago I was on a teleconference for work and a lady made the comment that it was 45 degrees in her house.  My first comment was, “Oh I’m sorry.  What’s wrong with your furnace?”.  “Nothing is wrong with the furnace, we are just trying to save money”, she said.  WOW.  That’s cold.

So, how can you measure the benefit of keeping your heat down?  If you drastically turn down the heat in the house like my coworker or friend did, you will obviously see some significant savings in your monthly heating bill, but how much?

The general rule of thumb is that turning your heat down by 1 degree can save you 3% on your heating bill.  In the dead of winter, even with our furnace at 69 during the day and 62 at night our bill was approximately $200 per month.  By turning it down to 68 during the day and 61 at night, I could expect to save almost $20 each month.  Not bad.

In an effort to only “take what we need” from an environmental standpoint and to save a little money, I’ve been turning the heat down during the day when I’m working from home by myself.  I’ve found that if I keep the office door closed I can keep the temperature in my office around 69-70 with the heat that my computer, monitors, laptop and I make.  Meanwhile the rest of the house is set at 64 degrees.  I haven’t really noticed a big difference in the heating bill, mostly because the temperatures have been so crazy around here with our interesting weather.  I can tell you that, as I posted about in an earlier article, our energy consumption is far below a standard homeowner with a similar house and we’re even more efficient than what our power company terms an “efficient” homeowner.

If I had to guess, I’d say we are saving somewhere around $25-30 per month since we do turn the heat up to 69 degrees in the evening for a few hours when my wife and daughter are at home.  Every little bit helps………