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It may be mom and dad that taught her that. My daughter and her husband freeze us when they come for a visit. We keep our air at 76 in the summer. They get a fan and turn it on for extra coolness. Our ceiling fans stay busy too. I am usually ready for them to go home but luckily they don't have time to stay long.
Their daughter is in college now. I am wondering how she is adjusting to her roommate after being used to 65 most of her life? Maybe everyone in Northern Virginia likes it cold.
72 degrees is considered room temperature, so 65 degrees would be chilly for most folks. Roommates need to talk about issues like this and come to some sort of mutually beneficial arrangement.
It's not normal to me, but apparently it's not unheard of.
I grew up with aiming for around 68 in winter and 78 in summer. Nowadays 78 in summer feels a bit warm to me. I usually set mine to 77 or 76 and use fans in addition. In the winter I let it go down to 65 at night, very comfy under the covers. In the summer I use just a sheet for cover and have been tending to make sure it's set at 76 or maybe 75 sometimes. And I use a ceiling fan. That's cool enough for me to sleep in summer. In winter the baseline is different. If I turn my house higher than 68 in winter I'll feel hot! But then I'm usually wearing heavier clothes in winter.
Something to try is an attempt to even out the temp with the central A/C. The thermostat only measures the temp at that one spot. If there's a register right near it, it cools down that spot quickly and shuts off, leaving the rest of the house/apartment typically some degree warmer, a LOT warmer on the south facing side. So you might experiment with that a bit. To start, try completely closing the register closest to the thermostat. Then, for your sake, you may want to partly or mostly close the one in your bedroom. If they don't actually have such an open and close adjustment (most do) then you can buy a magnetic cover if they are metal or tape a piece of cardboard over it. Yes this doesn't block all the airflow but it will create a little bit of balance.
If your roommate's bedroom is facing south or partly so and gets a lot of sun, you might consider swapping bedrooms. This would be a tougher change though if she already has the more desirable bedroom (assuming one is more desirable than the other), plus it takes more work moving all your stuff around. So you might not want to go here.
It's tough to talk about such things, but I think you have a reasonable concern about the cost. I would say look I'm a little concerned about what our electric bill is going to be with the A/C cranked like this, and also I'm cold a lot of the time, so would you consider together trying a few things that might allow us to leave the temp set a little higher? If trying to balance the temp doesn't work, well, it doesn't work, and you wear a lot of sweaters, but it's worth trying. She may have no incentive to bother with such details, but you do. And yes, if you can't reach a balance you may want to attempt to negotiate a split of electric bill something other than 50/50.
When we get the bill Im going to say something. And I wanted to know what a reasonable temperature would be to suggest.
Well I think you've gotten enough feedback, now it's your turn to confront her and let us know how it goes.
What's the worst that could happen - she gets mad, so what, let her. She needs to be considerate of others. You are helping her get along in this world.
When we get the bill Im going to say something. And I wanted to know what a reasonable temperature would be to suggest.
The bill is one thing (and it sucks that you have to pay an exuberant amount the first month just to drive the point), but the comfort issue is another. Why does she get to be the one who is comfy and you don't?? I think confronting people is a skill that most people don't have naturally... well, guess what, it's never easy but if you don't do it, you'll just brew and get stepped on when other things come along. Tackle it head on and make this your first lesson.
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