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We have a 5 bedroom house with a finished basement. All is heated by central air. We do feel comfortable at 72 degrees when we are up and don't care at night.
Bedtime is at 10:30 PM and wake up time at 6 AM.
What is the best setting without wasting too much energy?
The answer is simple. The lower the setting, the more economical it is. If you feel you must heat to 72 degrees Fahrenheit during the day, then you will pay for whatever gas or electricity it takes to do that.
We live in a two bedroom condo in southern New Hampshire and have not used the baseboard heating for a couple of decades. During the winter we count on solar heat collected through 12 ft of glass doors facing south east and a couple of small heaters in the bathrooms. We also have a small space heater in the living room. Only on very cold nights do we leave any heat on in the house. We prefer to have the bedrooms quite cool at night.
Indeed some mornings the main area is down to the low 50's but that is tolerable as making breakfast and the space heater plus the sun quickly raise the place to a comfortable if cool temperature. In the meantime we suffer with sheepskin slippers and polar fleece sweats and blankets. Over all we find this quite comfortable and a lot less expensive than trying to maintain a steady 70+ deg in the whole house. After all it is WINTER.
DH loves to cuddle... so its 55-60 at night.... never gets below freezing in our room.
(Nice blankets also helps)
We never go past 65-70 in the day time as well...
Guess we are just polar bears.
I prefer comfort over economical. I live in a 4,000 square foot house (2,000 feet is a basement so does not factor in here). During the day I keep my house heated at 71 or 72 and at night I let it drop to 68. I actually keep it the same in the summer and winter the difference is in the summer I use central air and in the winter I use central heat.
The funny time of year is the fall and spring as in Colorado we have have huge swing in temperatures from the 80's and 90's during the day to the 20's and 30's at night. So in the day time my central air kicks on to keep my house at 71 then at night the central heat kicks on to maintain 68.
Being both frugal and green, we buy clothing for winter that lets us keep the daytime temp at 68 degrees and the nighttime temp at 60 degrees. Living in a colder climate, this really does make a difference. We always use a small electric heater to heat the bathroom at bath time. I'm most comfortable when being thrifty with resources.
Normally, we'd set the thermostat to 68-70 only in the evenings and on weekends when we were home, and 60-62 at other times. After several months of recordkeeping, we found it was more economical to lower the temp slightly during "off hours" rather than lower it a whole bunch and then try to warm it back up to comfortable... it took more juice to heat up a cold house than to keep it slightly warm.
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