Household Temperature
 

It seems like people fight about this all the time. What do you think? What is a sane temperature to keep a house at? What is your house set at?

My apologies if this has already been discussed, or seems excessively boring or droll. I just truly would like to know if 70 degrees is really a deal-breaker like I am told it is.

Depends on what you're doing. 70 is way too hot for housework, 68 is way too cold for paperwork.

oh sure. you lurk for like 2 years, and now you need our opinion. ch'yeah

i keep my room at 16 degrees (celcius, of course).

I keep the ole homestead about 77 degrees.

Yes, I'm going to hell for it.

Yes, I'm stealing my grandchildren's future.

Yes, I saw Day After Tomorrow.

No, I haven't seen Inconvenient Trooth.

But I do ride the last mile of my daily commute on a bike. That's gotta count for something.

If you want a cold house, it helps to be fat.

When I walked in the house today it was at about 45 degrees celcius. Now it's down to about 35, soon to get to around 23. That should about do it for us. We don't leave the aircon on when we're not home.

juju just wanted to be double sure dave was really gone. :D

My "things I'm going to hell for" list just got a little longer, I think. :3eye:

I live in a dorm so I don't know the temperature. Basically it is either too hot or too cold, no perfect temperature.

Heh, that reminds me of my dorm room experience. My suitemate (shared a bathroom, that was it) never used his place so I could go in if I needed. Back at the time I was always cold and thought there must be a way to bump the heat up a few degrees. Since the heating controls were in his room I went over popped the plastic cover off. Then I deftly pulled the mercury gauge out and reveled in triumph as the heat came on. Yay! Huzzah for outsmarting the heating controls! :D I temporarily ceased celebration so I could put the plastic cover back on and set the mercury gauge on the desk. Only to see the aforementioned mercury gauge roll off the table and break in two upon hitting the floor :worried: From that point on the heat had two modes (controllable by a switch): always on or always off. 90° or 60°. What a choice. You better believe I was glad when summer came.

I have no idea of the temperature at home as I don't have a thermometer there. When I get too cold I put on the gas fire in the living room. I can usually see my breath in the lower (unheated) part of the flat during the winter. I have no aircon, so the temperature is what it is in the summer, although high ceilings & draughty windows keep it cool even then.

Right here right now at my desk it is 23.5 degrees C (74). I'm not happy about this and it will rise as the sun starts to hit the windows - I start to complain about unreasonable working conditions when it goes above 25 (77).

Apparently recommended office working temperature is 18-20 (64-68). I would be happy at 15-18 (59-64).

Am interested to see how this changes as I lose weight, but I grew up in an unheated house, so I'm a pretty game old bird when it comes to ice on the inside of the windows.

68 F is our target here. I can take it colder but prefer not to go much hotter.

65 during the day and 60 at night (in winter)

78 or so in the summer.

Our pediatrician recommended a lower temperature to keep the airborn germs in check, so we keep it fairly low. We wear sweatshirts in our house most of the time. I work in a big old house that has poor temperature distribution and with women who are always cold. It gets to a bout 80 every afternoon. Yes, I complain, but it doesn't do much good.:mad:

We're far enough North that ac is unnecessary in the summer. We get a couple nasty weeks in the summer and thats it.

63-4* at night or when we are at work, 65-66* in the day when we are home. We have carpet everywhere but our kitchen and workout area. I wear slippers and sweatshirts pretty much all winter to be comfortable. My husband wears sweatpants and a T-shirt. He is usually warm when I am cold. In the summer, I think we keep the AC around 70, but I don't really recall. I know that hubby always complains it's too hot...

*lower # if he touched the theomstat last, higher # if I have :)

I've been up there - it's not the heat, it's the humidity! When I've been there, other than dead winter and summer, you get the weather where you see your breath in the morning, sweat in the afternoon, then keep warm around a campfire at night - just the kind of weather that I love.

In the winter, absolutely nothing below 70F. In the summer, as high as 80F as long as the ceiling fans are running.

Yes, living in Florida for six years changes your temperature tolerance.

Low 70s.

I voted for 69 since that's where we have it now.. but usually 80 during the summer.

We're at 68 most days - if I'm cold, I grab a blankie, if I'm warm, I take stuff off. (and then strangely, find myself under a blankie)

For economy reasons or not liking to leave machines running when you're out or....?

We tried both turning the AC off in the day and keeping it on and didn't notice any difference in the electricity consumprion, so we opted for keeping the house cool/dry as it's so much nicer to walk into. We use the AC more for the humidity than the heat. A dry heat is bearable. When I say cool, I mean about 77F/25C.

My previous answer was for winter.

I would LIKE to keep my house at 65 degrees. Unfortunately, having an elderly mother in the household requires that the temperatures remain sauna-like at all times, probably around 75.

I do not expect to be able to use the flannel sheets this year. I'm roasting as it is, on the cotton.

We should consider the rest of the world, not just Ameri-centric English units of measurement. Celsius in parenthesis at least, I mean it's what the rest of the world uses!

Living in a student room as well, I keep the heater somewhere in between 2 and 3. No idea how many degrees Celsius that is, though, let alone Fahrenheit.

But I always set the heater so that it's comfortable. I usually aim for 20°-21°, but if it feels too hot or cold then I adjust the heating accordingly (if I don't feel like putting on a sweater or something).

here we go

My sweetie and I discuss this all the time. She can be freezing at 75 while I am melting. Really! She is a desert rat and needs her heat. I am a weenie who likes it between 68 and 70 only. Less and I am cold, more and I am hot. And I use dogs as bedwarmers. ;)

Summer in Texas is gonna be...interesting.

I think her cold-bloodedness may be related to having a large area of skin to dissipate heat but it's barely even a theory...women are tough to figure out! Especially THIS one. Talk about blowing hot and cold....

Brian

See, that's how it starts. Oh well I guess, it really can't hurt in parenthesis.... writing the parenthesis is such a pain I'll just leave them out..... Oh, that's too confusing.... hell, I'll just leave the Fahrenheit off.
That's the slippery slope that predicates the total destruction of truth justice & the American way.

No, wait that was Bush.... never mind.

But I use Fahrenheit. I think in Fahrenheit. I write in Fahrenheit. Why should I stop and find a conversion table to translate Fahrenheit into Centigrade (Celsius) every time I write a temperature? Do I have to post the Kelvin numbers too? And what about all the other units of measurement?.... distance?... weight?... volume?

And every time I write bathroom I have to add loo?.. and water closet?.. and toilet? How about french and Spanish subtitles? Oh, Portuguese and Chinese too?
I guess I'll have to add American when I talk about football, yes?:rolleyes:

Monster...mainly for energy conservation since we're not home during the hottest part of the day usually, so if we turn it on when we get home in the late arvo or early evening, we only need to run it for a few hours to cool the house, then the evening breeze usually takes care of the rest. :)

71-72F in my house. But I have an excuse. There are few functioning veins in my legs :(

Arvo, huh? I'm assuming that means "afternoon." Never heard that one before. You Aussies, and your funny words!

ooh, an evening breeze, nice :)

If left up to my own devices I will have it at 80F in the winter and 75-78 in the summer. My SO likes it cold so we usually settly on 75 all year long. 72 is freezing for me. I have lots of blankets though so I am always under one. Our thermostat is broken right now so sometimes it is boiling lava hot inside and sometimes it is super cold... I think I have found a somewhat happy medium but I don't know what temperature that is really... the temperatures I am giving are from before the thermostat broke. :D

glatt...yep, arvo is afternoon. ;) A variation would be to say to your mate, "Are you coming over this arvy?"

I just bought 2 house thermometers day before yesterday. The weather has been uncharacteristically cold and we can't keep a consistent temperature in here it seems. We too have been asking ourselves" Is it cold or is it cold?"

My findings. Night time temperature is 60 degrees. I turn up the heat in the morning and it warms to 70 degrees. I would prefer a temp of 72 but the baseboards don't stop until about 75 which starts to feel like summer temperatures and I get too hot.Sometimes it even creeps to 78 degrees then the heat bill gets too hot to handle. The patio door area stays 60 degrees regardless of the warmth at the interior of the room. The huge picture window here as well feels the chill so this is where our drafts are comming from obviously~! Now my need to know has been answered and I can just put on my warm slippers.

Did any of our answers help juju?

72 degrees. Winter and summer. The only time I let that vary is during spring or fall when the weather is naturally mild and we open the doors and windows. I've found that 72 is quite comfortable for a Florida girl...not too cold and not too hot. It is the same temperature they keep my office and the kid's school so we never have to deal with drastic changes from one to another.

Anyone in the family who feels this is too warm is encouraged to wear less (shorts/tank tops) and anyone who feels it is too cold can put layers on.

Stormie

I can't vote! (pout). I try to be conservative in my heat and a/c use, but am not sure what temp. It gets HOT here in the summer, and I use fans a lot.

I HATE a hot house at night in the winter, so I usually turn it way down--under 60.

We have several windows that let in summer light/heat in the morning and afternoon and two other rooms (office and a bedroom) whose windows let in heat and chill. I solved this by sewing insulated curtains. Double duty for the bedroom as it darkens it in the summer for early sleeping.

I dropped the thermostat cover and knocked the spring out of whack, so now the temperature reads 75 degrees and up. But really, I think it's about 65-67. When the kitty crawls under the comforter on the bed, I know it's dropped below...well, it's too damn cold, anyway.

piggy backing this thread with a question of my own
 

I am wondering if can save electricity by buying a space heater??
Maybe it dosn't make sense? Maybe it does?

Opinions please? I am about ready to set out on an experiment to bring my heating costs down.

Assuming you also turned your central heating way down, your space heater might save you money. Another option is to get a humidifier. Humid air feels slightly warmer than dry air. Helps your skin and nasal passages too. But you would again need to turn down the thermostat to see a savings. And you don't want to overdo it to the point that you get condensation on your walls or all over your windows dripping down to the sill.

People should be able to work it out from context, although it is helpful to post the units. 70 C is the temperature of the inside of my car on the hottest day of summer after the car has been parked in the sun all day (I still have the partially melted thermometer), so it's not possible for people to keep their houses at that temperature! So Fahrenheit must be the units. Yesterday evening, that same thermometer reported that inside my home, the temperature was a nice 24 degrees after a pleasant summer's day. For 24 degrees to be pleasant, the units must be Celsius.

I agree, Bush seems to be doing more to Americans than a working knowledge of the metric system ever will.

Don't panic, nobody's asking you to change. If you ever need to convert F to C, just remember the formula: C = 5/9 (F-32), and the reverse is: F = 32 + 9/5 C. But you don't really need to remember that. Temperate twenties, thermal thirties and flaming forties should be good enough. I don't know where the inside car temperature of 70 C fits on that scale, except to say that 60 C will kill bacteria in hot food, some meats are cooked when the inside temperature reaches 70 C, and had I left eggs inside my car that day they would probably have been cooked. (That gives me an idea for a new and unusual recipe for coddled eggs, along the line of The Manifold Destiny.)

Just post the units to which you are accustomed. As long as you don't mind my posting in Celsius, kilometres and litres when the occasion arises. The only difficulty I have with US measurements is where the conversions are different to British measures, otherwise I can manage them well enough. I know that a mile has 63,360 inches and that the path from inches to miles is an interesting journey with numbers like 12, 3, 5+1/2, 4, 10 and 8 (multiply those numbers together and you get 63,360).

That is what comes of growing up during the time of Metric conversion. My late father loathed Metric, but I learned Metric in school, so it was natural to become fluent in both systems. He was even suspicious of decimal currency when it was first introduced.

If you can`t walk around naked (Or a least in under ware) for brief periods during the winter in your house...then it sucks!

Did you know that Americans call imperial measures "English measures"? :lol:

I learned both at school too, the result is that I mix and match -they work quite well together: "It's 7 inches 2 cm long" it so much easier to visualise than twenty-something cm or 7 and several 16ths of an inch. :D

The US measurement system is a confusing matter and still holds itself apart from the metric system employed by most other countries. There are a few exceptions. Medical and scientific fields use the metric system, and many items for trade are now measured in the International System of Units (SI), also called the metric system.

The US measurement system is based on the English system, though England has now long since converted to SI. However, the change to SI was not an easy passage in the mid 19th century. At first some of the British resisted the change to the SI measurement system with great force.

Legally, according to laws passed in 1988, SI became the standard measurement system for trade and commerce in the US. SI is also taught in schools at a relatively young age, but it is difficult to make the conversions.

If one initially learns the metric system, it is far easier. Everything is constructed on a base ten approach, so conversion from centimeters to meters is a simple matter. Conversely, the US measurement system is often problematic. It is not consistent in its measurements so conversion is quite challenging.

For example, twelve inches equal a foot, but eight ounces equal a cup. Sixteen ounces equal a pound, but three feet equal a yard. Children must memorize quite a bit to perform appropriate conversions.

Since children usually first learn to measure by inches, the metric system cannot be properly taught until multiplication skills are mastered. An inch converts to 2.54 centimeters, thus anything above ten inches involves two-digit multiplication. This is a skill not mastered by most students until the later part of third or even fourth grade.

If, conversely, the metric measurement system were adopted immediately, children would probably learn it just as quickly as they learn the US system. However, since real-life examples are often included in teaching, this would be difficult to do. If one buys a TV, he or she buys a 20-inch screen, not a .508-meter screen. If one purchases milk, the choice is a quart, a pint or a gallon, not a measurement in liters.

In general, consumer products still adhere to the US measurement system, as well as American cookbooks, so these figures must be known. Essentially, this means US children must learn two measurement systems, and unless they plan to export items, or become doctors or scientists, they may never fully master SI.

Unless the US government insists on the conversion in products, and teaching in the metric system, it is likely we will retain the US measurement system. However, with increasing globalization it makes sense to consider that much of the world, and especially the scientific world, relies on the metric system. Our ability to learn it makes us have that much more in common with our fellow countries



BLAME IT ON THE ENGLISH!

Ever thought about paraphrasing and linking? :rolleyes:

you forgot to cite the original there, too.

The article is shite also. Conversion to Metric is easy. If the Brits can do it, surely the Americans can? Or have we finally found the thing y'all aren't better at? ;)

Thanks. It's something to think about.


really now. Never saw that before. :blush:

What are you, nuts? What good is being the Superpower, if we can't force the world to do it our way? :lol2:

That the Brits have already done it is exactly why we won't do it. If we can't be first then we won't go.

Not that we would necessarily mind falling in line behind that Brits, mind you, but the French have also already done it and we'll be damned to hell before we'll line up behind the frogs. :cool:

I was also brought up during the metric conversion, but unlike the others it didn't leave me bilingual, just confused.

I have dyscalculia and estimating weights/ heights/ distances is tricky for me anyway, unless it's by direct experience. So I know how far 60 miles is, because I've travelled that far, I can feel it. Recently tv programmes have started presenting distances/ speeds in kilometres and it drives me crazy because by the time I work it out, I'm way behind in whatever I'm watching. I understand that they're trying to move us totally to metric, but while cars and signposts are still in miles it's not really going to work.

Same with weight - I was watching a programme on elephants seals last night. Yes I could see the males were big - bigger than the females, but on a rocky shore there isn't much to put them in perspective. No use me trying to remember how many kg they said they were, it was in the hundreds and that's all my mind retained.

I can't think in kg, km or cm (for height) until it becomes the standard and I have things to compare it to :mad:

(Degrees celcius is natural for me because I never learned to judge temperature by farenheit - ironically i have to translate it in most conversation)

:lol:

I keep my place at 78deg but I turn off the air and keep the windows open during the day when I'm not at home. Having been born and raised in South Florida I truly detest the cold, it's 69deg outside right now and I'm shivering.

"Under ware"? Is that some European spelling of underwear, or is it just plain stupid?

I would never keep my house at 68 F, just because it'd too damn politically correct. :tinfoil:

Around 50 years ago someone came up with concrete, cinder blocks as a great building material. My split level is blks. 1st floor high in back and just under windows in front.
This AM was 29 outside, 68 head high in kitchen and close to east wall 55. Wind had been from east. Think now days they fill with vemiculite? or something when it's built. I use wood heat, so temp depends on when I last added wood.
37

Duh?...we were an English colony that carried on with English customs...at that time!

Wow..."The Spelling Nazi" strikes again!

So do I...I guess?...if I move to England can I get money from the socialist govt. for that horrid disability .


Haaaaa...haaaaaa...

No, but they might have a bridge you can live under, just watch out for Billy Goat Gruff. :neutral:

Wow...quit...your hurting my feelings!