So just what is the ideal home temperature to establish during the summer months? Should it be 68 or 72 degrees? While everyone seems to have an opinion on this, and of course everyone has their own comfort zone, the ideal home temperature advocated by heating and air conditioning professionals most often is actually somewhere around 74 degrees.
The first reason for this is related to comfort – you don’t really need to cool the house down all that much to feel comfortable in summer, but by removing humidity from the air you’ll be doing much more toward achieving indoor comfort. An even better reason is that when you keep your cooling system running constantly, you are contributing greatly toward shortening its life expectancy, and your own repair or replacement bills.
Strategies for Maintaining a Steady Indoor Temperature
At night when everyone is asleep anyway, you can use a night-time set-back thermostat which will allow an increase in temperature of a few degrees to lessen the burden on the cooling system. This is just one example of the programmable set points on newer thermostats, and you could even set these at more moderate temperatures during 8-hour or 12-hour intervals throughout the day.
If you have a large house, or if it is difficult to maintain a consistent temperature throughout the whole house with a single thermostat, consider installing multiple programmable thermostats for better control.
Don’t make drastic changes in temperature settings as a knee-jerk reaction to outside warmth or humidity conditions. These sudden loads placed on your cooling system are a serious drag on resources, and do not accomplish the intended quick cooling anyway. It’s much better to let the thermostat sense the temperature, and work toward the programmed temperature.
Contact Us
Our family at Paschal Heat, Air & Geothermal has been serving the northwestern Arkansas area for more than 45 years now, and we’d love to have the opportunity to talk with you about any home comfort issues you may have. If you’re in the area, stop in and see us, and if not please contact us through our website.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Springdale, Arkansas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about home temperature and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
479.900.0784
