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We too do not like to sleep with heat. We turn it down to 48F at night! In the day it is at 66F until we get the solar gain. Then we turn it down. We live in cold climates where we can ski so like the cold rather than heat. We put on heavy sweaters!
A good programmable thermostst has a look ahead feature meaning it wull asdjust rather then just go to the new temp at the programmed time.
Like set to warm up say 10* at 6pm. The thermostst will start raising the temp at 4pm rather then wait until 6pm and slam the heat on.
Ours did too, but it was a dummy preset time, the nest learns how long your house takes to heat and knows the weather and temperature outside. It knows if it will only take 10 minutes to get to your target temp or if it should turn on 40 minutes early.
We have four zones, so there is no reason to heat some parts of the house when we do not use them. For example one zone is the kitchen, mudroom and dining room. No point in heating them after 8 p.m. Another zone is the common roomd (two parlors and the library). No point in heating those at night either. The other two zones include bedrooms, bathrooms and the gameroom. No point in heating those during the day after everyone is up and before they go to bed. I do not think our boiler runs on partial output at times, as far as I know, it runs full blast until the house is at the desired temperature. Thus, there is no slamming the furnace on to raise the temperature. It is on excatly the same level (as far as I know) whether it runs on and off through the night or it heats the house back up after allowing the temperature to drop some.
We use regular programmable thermostats, but it is a PIA to get them all programmed, then the power goes out and you get to start all over. Sonce Nest Auto woudl cost $1000 for the four thermostats, it is not worth it, but it would be nice to have programmable thermostats with a battery back up for the memory (ours do not).
My house is 'zoned' but I have to manually shut the vents to rooms I don't use. The zone part works only in that the thermostat will kick on the furnace when it sees a room temp that's lower than the setpoint.
So I'd close the vents and leave to rooms cold where I don't use. The thermostat will be set to 58 or so. When the heat comes on, a little leaks thru so the room won't really get down much colder.
When I use the rooms again (like the living room in the evening), I'd manually open the vents and turn up the thermostat to 65.
SInce we have hot water radiators, we do nto have vents, but we have valves on each pipe. thus, if any room within a zone is normally too hot we can partially close the valve and restrict the flow to that room, or just turn it off entirely.
I'm running a stove right now - mostly at night. When it gets colder, I'll set the thermostat to 66 and still have a fire going. That way, if the fire goes out and the stove cools off before I can get some lumber in there, I have a safety net to help keep the pipes warm.
I keep mine between 74-76 . I know that's hot, but I like it hot!
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What do I keep my thermostat to?
