As the hot summer weather rears its ugly head again, your home’s central air conditioning unit will be working all day long to keep your family feeling comfortable. When it comes to your power bill, you’ll likely want to keep it as low as possible while still enjoying all the comforts that indoor air conditioning has to offer. Fortunately, there is a happy medium that every homeowner can find with their air conditioning system.
Is There Really an Ideal AC Temperature?
The ideal thermostat temperature is going to be different for every home. Each person has his or her own preference, which is why finding the ideal temperature may take a little effort and experimentation. Most experts recommend setting your thermostat at 78 degrees to start with.
Test this temperature out for a while and see if it’s comfortable for your family. If you still feel that it’s too hot, you should lower the thermostat by a degree. Give 77 degrees a try and see if that’s comfortable. If not, keep strategically lowering your thermostat until you reach a comfortable level.
It’s important to realize that your thermostat setting should be above 70 degrees. Most central air conditioning systems aren’t manufactured to run efficiently at temperatures below that level. Setting the thermostat lower than that could possibly even cause the evaporator coils to freeze up.
Using a Programmable Thermostat
One extremely desirable feature for any home air conditioning system is a programmable thermostat. This can allow you to set a particular temperature at any time throughout the day. The system will automatically switch temperature settings at intervals that you’ve selected.
The key to a programmable thermostat is that you can set your indoor temperature to rise and fall depending on whether you’re home or not. When you are home, you can have it set at a cool 78 degrees so that your family stays comfortable. However, when your family is out of the house due to work and school, you can have your thermostat automatically increase to 88 degrees.
By increasing the thermostat temperature setting when you’re not home, your air conditioning system will run less often and consume less energy. This will save you loads of money on your electricity bill. It’s inadvisable to set the temperature higher than 88 degrees, however, because your system may have trouble returning to your desired temperature in time to be cool when you get back home.
The Warm Home Conundrum
In their attempt to save money, some homeowners will turn their air conditioning system entirely off when they leave their homes. While this can be great for your wallet, it can be annoying when you return to a warm and stuffy house. Fortunately, a programmable thermostat can be the perfect solution.
You can use your programmable thermostat to increase the temperature when you’re not there. Then, you can program the thermostat to return to your comfortable 78 degrees about an hour before you expect to arrive back home from work. This will ensure that you feel nice and cool when you enter your home.
Other Energy-Saving Tips
Apart from optimizing your home air conditioning system to save money on your power bill while still remaining comfortable, there are some other energy-saving tips that you can employ. One of the most popular is using indoor ceiling fans.
The body can actually feel several degrees cooler than the ambient temperature when there is a breeze blowing on it. By installing ceiling fans, you can help to make your home environment more comfortable without having to turn the thermostat down. Just be sure to have your fan blades rotating in a counterclockwise direction so that the air is forced down onto you instead of up towards the ceiling.
Another great tip is to install dehumidifiers in your home. When your home is overly humid, it can make your body feel as though the temperature is as much as 10 degrees warmer than it actually is. This is because the sweat your body produces to cool you down can’t fully evaporate into the air since there is so much moisture already present in it. By installing dehumidifiers in the busiest rooms of your home, you can remove some of that excess humidity and allow your residence to feel much cooler.
Top-Quality AC Services
If you’re seeking top-quality air conditioning services in Champaign, IL, look no further than Bash Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc.. We not only provide maintenance, repairs and installation of cooling and heating equipment, but we also offer HVAC sheet metal fabrication. Call us today to discuss any of your home comfort needs.
