What Do You Set Your Air Conditioner To?

For those of you with air conditioners.....

According to the US Department of Energy, the proper settings are -

• 78 degrees when someone is home
• 85 degrees when someone is at work or away
• 82 degrees when someone is asleep

This sums it up for me -



Maybe that would work if it wasn't humid at all, but with humidity, there is no way. By 78 degrees I'm putting the air conditioner on.

We only have room air conditioners. I have a large unit in the dining room and a small one in the living room. If we are in the living room we shut the one in there off as it is too loud and blows on us. We start them out at 60 degrees when we first turn them on and usually by the end of the day I have it on 65 to 68 degrees. I think the one in our bedroom is on 68 degrees. My husband has one in the room he uses as an office and he has it set to 70. I had put it on before doing some cleaning and changing sheets in there and it was still muggy and warm. If it's a cooler day, but humid I will normally raise the temps on the air conditioners a bit.

I have central air and have my thermostat set to 74 which feels pretty good to me. My furnace has a dehumidifier that I can set to run continuously and that makes a huge difference in feeling comfortable.

I have central air. On a non-humid day, which is rare here in Ohio, I set it at 70. When it's close to 90 as it was yesterday, I set it at 66. My bedroom has a southern exposure so it's the hottest room in the house. I don't sleep well at night and usually have an afternoon snooze. Yesterday my bedroom felt so nice and cool.



I'm with you on that, dawg.

Arrest me! We keep the unit (no central air) in our bedroom on 60 at night. Try not to use it during the day, but if it is bad then I turn it on and set it for 65. Not going to let the cats suffer. I have a window unit in Sterlings room where he sleeps at night, that is set at 68. The one in our family room is set for 68. I find the older I get the less I can handle the heat and humidity.

The lowest it can go as I'm susceptible to heat strokes in temps above 70, inside or out.

Yeah, no. If it were less humid, maybe. I set it at 76 when I'm not home (any higher than that and things get moldy), and 72 when I'm there, down to 70 during sleeping hours. If it's very humid I'll bump it down to 68 for the night, because I can't sleep if I'm sweaty. Last month's electric bill was $175 but I don't care. It's worth it!

If I had a full-house dehumidifier, I could set it higher. But those use just as much electricity as the AC so I don't think that would help anything.

I want to go to the DOE offices and see what their AC is set at .

I have window units. At night I set it at 60 because I need it cold to sleep. During the day it’s generally set 64-66.

This is right now.

Whoever wrote that must not live near me. I keep it at 74 during the summer.

Ha, we don't need them here usually. It has been humid recently though but a fan is enough. When we go to Spain I wouldn't be able to survive at night without one in the hotel bedroom.

That's a ridiculous guideline. So many factors depend on what temp you set the AC on. One summer when it was outrageously hot, I eased up the central air to 78 F, but that was because it was running continuously and keeping the humidity down. I'm also sensitive now to heat, so I keep the AC set at 75 during the day and 74 at night. I used to set it a degree higher, but I can't take that anymore. At 76, it doesn't run enough to reduce the humidity.

Ooooh...this is a complicated answer.

We have central air with the thermostat located in our dining room which is in the front of our house. The sun rises in the rear of our house so those rooms are warmed, but the thermostat doesn't sense the increased heat. As the day goes on, the sun moves to the front of our house and hits the dining room window raising the temperature that the thermostat senses.

Our thermostat is programmable and I have divided the day into 3 segments to try to follow the heat pattern from the sun.

From 7 am until 3 pm, the thermostat is set to 77°. We run a ceiling fan in our bedroom (at the back of the house) to keep it cool.

By 3 pm, the sun is hitting the front of the house, and the thermostat jumps up to 79°. If set any lower than that, our bedroom becomes a walk-in refrigerator. If company is coming for dinner, I manually lower the thermostat to keep the dining room cooler.

At 11 pm the thermostat drops to 76°. With no sun beating down on the house, we have a pretty uniform temperature throughout the house for the night.

The temperature changes don't sound like much, but we can feel them.

I have a completely different schedule for when we switch over to heat....but that discussion is for winter.

We are retired; so I don't bother having different programs for different days of the week.

We keep it at 78 during the day and 76 t night. When company is coming, 76 during the day. We don't like it much lower than that because the house we are working on has no furnace/AC yet and we spend most of the day out in the heat. It's too hard on us have a drastic change. You DO get used to the 90's, it was much worse on us earlier in the year. I HATE sweat dripping in my eyes, but there isn't much I can do about it!

I only have an evap cooler. It has two settings, high and low.
I wish I could set the temp. It would be set to around 70° 24/7. Once it gets to 100°, humidity or not, it's just too hot.
My son's GF just got back from the valley and she said it was 115° there. I forgot just how hot it gets in Hell.

I keep my window unit set at 75 day and night when it is really hot, the unit has an energy saving feature that turns the compressor on and off once the room hits 75. It has been a hot summer in Connecticut.

I never understood people who say "It's a dry heat, so it feels cooler", so is an oven!

di and bob said:

I never understood people who say "It's a dry heat, so it feels cooler", so is an oven!

Click to expand...

Agree totally. I spent my summers growing up in Oklahoma, so I know humidity. I do agree 80° temps with humidity is hot. However, if you touch your car door or go outside for more than 15 minutes or drive with your window down or walk barefoot, you won't get 3rd degree burns.
Even in the mountains. I left my car in the sun for an hour two days ago and when I opened my door...I had to put aloe vera on my fingers because I burned them.

It's so hot here right now that the central air won't pull it down until after dark. So it is on 74 right now. We try to keep it on 70 in the summer and 69 or 70 in the winter. I would keep it lower than that but DH and I have reached an agreement. I would be ashamed to tell you what our power bill is, so I won't. But it is higher than our house payment, if that gives you any idea.

di and bob said:

I never understood people who say "It's a dry heat, so it feels cooler", so is an oven!

Click to expand...

Yeah, but 80 and humid feels a lot hotter than 80 and dry. My family went to visit San Diego during a heat wave and we were like "wow, feels really nice here!" And all the locals thought we were weird because they aren't used to 90 degrees. The dryness really made a difference.

But, of course, 115 degrees feels hot no matter what!

We had to install a new furnace and a/c last year but it was well worth it. The newer energy efficient model worked wonders for us this summer. We have a two-story house and the upstairs would always feel 10-15 degrees hotter than the downstairs with the old outdated a/c. Now we sleep with no problem whatsoever. We keep it at 74 and turn it off on cooler summer days because I enjoy fresh air. I probably could keep it at 76 but we've gotten used to it at 74.

Depending on the location, anywhere from 70 (high traffic) to about 80 (low traffic) or just below. We shut vents off in rooms we don't need to use, which is very helpful in cost.