Is There An Ideal Winter Thermostat Setting?

There are no fixed rules that govern winter temperature settings for your thermostat. There are, however, some basic guidelines that you can use to arrive at the temperature settings best suited to your preferences, lifestyle and heating system. At Petrocelli Services, we recommend that you take the following criteria into consideration to determine your ideal winter thermostat temperature setting:

Your everyday routine:

Do you have fixed work hours? If so, you can program your thermostat to maintain your preferred room temperatures during the hours you spend at home. Some high-end programmable thermostats will even allow you to pre-set your temperature requirements separately for every day of the week.

Your utilities budget:

Maintaining that cozy indoor temperature range of 70-74 degrees while the outdoors freeze over, can run up a hefty energy bill. The effectiveness of your home’s insulation also plays a major role here. If you’re big on saving money, consider examining your home for potential heat loss points (doors and windows, primarily), or setting your thermostat to 68 degrees instead of 74.

The efficiency of your heating system:

Certain heating systems have high efficiency ratings, to the tune of 90% or more. These can be set to higher temperatures without consuming too much energy.

The type of heating system you own:

Some types of heating systems (such as radiant heating systems) take longer than others to warm up. With such systems, it makes sense to just set one temperature for the entirety of winter. If yours is a forced air furnace, on the other hand, you can manually adjust the thermostat temperature depending on whether your house is occupied or unoccupied, and its occupants awake or asleep.

If you need help figuring out the winter thermostat setting best suited to your requirements, or need any assistance with heating system repair, don’t hesitate to give us a call and we’ll be more than happy to advise.