It’s more about humidity than temperature for me. I’m pretty quick to run the AC.
This. The humidity kills me and I absolutely refuse to feel sticky in my own home.
To simplify this, going to the second paragraph above: If I keep my house at 75 and the max temp is 75 that day you’d keep the windows open, right? What about 80? 85? Do you close them at 77?
Just because it’s 75 outside and you have your windows open, that doesn’t mean your house will necessarily also be 75. You house is a box, with the sun shining down on the roof, warming the air in the attic or top level rooms. Additionally, body heat, electronics, appliances, etc all add heat to the home. And you have insulation in the walls designed to keep heat in. Unless you have very good ventilation and air movement, your interior will get warmer than 75 pretty easily.
Yup. Last weekend it was roughly 20 C (68 F) all weekend. The we had our windows open and the house was about 76 F in the afternoon.
What? Do you live in a greenhouse?
To simplify this, going to the second paragraph above: If I keep my house at 75 and the max temp is 75 that day you’d keep the windows open, right? What about 80? 85? Do you close them at 77?
Just because it’s 75 outside and you have your windows open, that doesn’t mean your house will necessarily also be 75. You house is a box, with the sun shining down on the roof, warming the air in the attic or top level rooms. Additionally, body heat, electronics, appliances, etc all add heat to the home. And you have insulation in the walls designed to keep heat in. Unless you have very good ventilation and air movement, your interior will get warmer than 75 pretty easily.
Yup. Last weekend it was roughly 20 C (68 F) all weekend. The we had our windows open and the house was about 76 F in the afternoon.
What? Do you live in a greenhouse?
Insulation. The house is designed to hold heat. It does it well.
We keep our blinds closed during the day but the house still picks up heat for all of the reasons that slowguy listed.
Insulation. The house is designed to hold heat. It does it well.
We keep our blinds closed during the day but the house still picks up heat for all of the reasons that slowguy listed.
Um, no. Your house is not designed to “hold heat.” It is designed to keep the outside from impacting the stability of the inside. Meaning, it keep the cold out, it keeps the hot out, and it keeps the damp out.
It is 86 deg with the sun beating down outside. All my windows are open with fans blowing and it is 76 degrees in my house.
It’s more about humidity than temperature for me. I’m pretty quick to run the AC.
This. The humidity kills me and I absolutely refuse to feel sticky in my own home.
1923 craftsman with shit for insulation. The humidity of N. Texas combined with the heat of Texas means we don’t open windows save 2 weeks in April. This year it rained those 2 weeks. So our windows were not opened. in fact, there is so little window open weather that most of our windows are painted shut.
Absolutely what Duffy said.
We live in the midwest US, haven’t run AC in the 6 years we’ve lived in our current house.
Summer temps will get up into the high 90’s, but humidity is not too bad. Here’s what we do:
House is old farmhouse, built in late 1800’s. I’ve been improving insulation and window quality gradually.
1st floor rooms have 9’ ceilings. We run ceiling fans constantly, and will use spot-fans occasionally.
House has good deciduous shade trees to the south and west.We keep windows open at night, making sure we have good cross-flow through the house if there is a breeze. In the morning, once outside temp = inside temp, we close them and pull shades down on sun-facing windowsI leave plastic window film on some of the bigger and older south-facing windows to cut down on hot air infiltration from hot south winds.
If a kid complains about the heat, I tell them to think about mid-February mornings when it was -10 F with -40F windchills - embrace the warmth!The highest it’s gotten inside is 85F; that was during a string of 100+F days when night temps only went into low 70’s. That’s totally liveable. I figure people lived in our house for about 70 years before AC was available. We can do it too. People today are such pussies. HTFU.
Now, when we lived in the city, our house had zero shade trees, wasn’t designed well at all for passive heating/cooling, and the houses were packed together so tightly there was little chance for good breezes. Part of the reason we moved.
I don’t want to HTFU. Similar to JSA’s earlier post I refuse to be uncomfortable in my own home. We have the technology to make that happen so I’m going to use it. A/C went on last week. Open windows exacerbate my allergies, so once we get a string of days in the 80’s it a/c time.
Depends on the humidity out not really the temperature, up to a certain point. Was 82* today with low humidity. House got into the low 70’s. Other day it was 80* and rather humid, house got up to 78*. Also depends on if you get good cross ventilation through your bedroom. Our master bedroom is typically 3-4* warmer than the kids rooms. South facing and doesn’t get a good breeze.
Once the humidity hits around here, I’ll keep the a/c if it’s going to be over 80*. If it’s off during the day and our bedroom gets up to 78-80*, it takes about 4 hours for the a/c to get it down to 74*. Typically I’ll set the a/c for 76* when I head to work so when I get home it doesn’t have to run as long to get down to 74*. It’s actually cheaper to run it this way than to leave it off all day and let it fight the heat at the end of the day to get it cool because while it’s trying to get the heat down, it’s also trying to pull all the humidity out of the air.
The highest it’s gotten inside is 85F; that was during a string of 100+F days when night temps only went into low 70’s. That’s totally liveable. I figure people lived in our house for about 70 years before AC was available. We can do it too. People today are such pussies. HTFU.
I don’t get it, is it about the few dollars you save or is there something else that drives this behavior? I used to work with a guy that would go as deep into the fall as possible without starting his furnace. He would give us regular updates of how cold his house had gotten. There has to be some motivation other than the couple of bucks it would cost to start the furnace and take the chill off.
I’ll go ahead and be a pussy and use my indoor plumbing and electric light bulbs.
The highest it’s gotten inside is 85F; that was during a string of 100+F days when night temps only went into low 70’s. That’s totally liveable. I figure people lived in our house for about 70 years before AC was available. We can do it too. People today are such pussies. HTFU.
I don’t get it, is it about the few dollars you save or is there something else that drives this behavior? I used to work with a guy that would go as deep into the fall as possible without starting his furnace. He would give us regular updates of how cold his house had gotten. There has to be some motivation other than the couple of bucks it would cost to start the furnace and take the chill off.
I’ll go ahead and be a pussy and use my indoor plumbing and electric light bulbs.
Yeah, but do you flush everytime? if it’s yellow, let it mellow, if its brown flush it down. - Dustin Hoffman
I’m with Thom and the others. My house is my castle, I will be comfortable when I’m inside it. The day that I can’t afford to pay for the electricity to stay comfortable, I will be moving. That being said - I live in Florida. Winters are great, but summers are brutal. We’ve been running the AC for a couple of months.
On the subject of being comfortable in my house. I see the ads on television for the shows where people have cats or dogs that act up and cause a ruckus. I like animals, but REFUSE to let one disturb my sanctuary. That’s one reason I’m reluctant to get a dog, because I won’t tolerate an animal that makes me uncomfortable or unhappy in my house. I realize that a properly trained animal won’t do that, but I also don’t like dog hair floating around - especially in the kitchen.
I keep my house at 75 degrees, and overnight it got down to 65. I keep a window in our master bedroom cracked (as much as I can sneak past my wife) for the cooler temp in our room, which is the hottest in the house.
Cracking a window doesn’t do shit. Get a really good window fan (or better yet, a whole house fan) to move some serious volume.