The Thermostat Wars

Posted on October 28, 2011 Updated on October 28, 2011

Thermostat The area of the country I live in recently had its first frost of the season. Awakening to find a thick layer of frost on my cars windshield was a stark reminder that winter will soon arrive.

The first frost, falling leaves, and brisk temperatures also remind me its time to begin another season of the Thermostat Wars.

Many of you know about that perpetual battle to which I refer. My wife likes it warm and toasty (I have thin blood, she says) and I break into a sweat at any temperature above 70 degrees. In other households, it may be the exact opposite, with a husband preferring a balmy clime and a wife liking a bit of a nip in the homes air.

And so as the first frost arrives, so too does the first installment of the Thermostat Wars.

I am meticulous about checking the thermostatto the point of obsessiveness. When I go downstairs in the morning upon awakening, its one of the first things I check. When I come home at lunch or at the end of the day, its often the first thing I look at when I walk into the homeeven before greeting anyone!

This morning, after I got up and went downstairs, I stopped by the thermostat to check its reading, remembering that I had set it at 62 for the overnight hours. I was stunned to see that it registered 72. I had been foiled! Someone had altered it during the night.

My first thought was, Who did this?! The second thought I had was, Dont they realize how much money were wasting, blasting the furnace at 72 degrees during the overnight hours?

And its true.

A general rule of thumb is that for every degree Fahrenheit you set the thermostat back over an eight-hour period translates to a one percent savings in heating costs. In fact, one Canadian study showed that two identical test homes with an 11 degree setback overnight and during work hours generated a 13 percent savings in natural gas and a two percent savings in electricity over the entire heating season.¹

Savings will be critical for many Americans this season. The stat-gathering arm of the Energy Department, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (www.eia.gov), predicts costs for natural gas (up 3%) and propane (up 7%) will be higher this season from last winter. If you use heating oil, EIA predicts an 8 percent increase over last winters prices. In fact, EIA says that average household expenditures for heating oil will be higher than any previous winter on record.²

I suspect therell be many more Thermostat Wars breaking out this winter across America.

What about your household? Are you engaged in Thermostat Wars of your own? Or have you called a truce?

¹http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/obj/irc/doc/pubs/rr/rr191/rr191.pdf

²http://www.eia.gov/steo/

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The Thermostat Wars