Do You Fight Over the Thermostat? You’re Wasting Money

It's a fight that almost every household with more than one person has. What do you set the thermostat at?

One person wants to save money so keeps it low. When another person comes home they think it's too cold so they crank it up.

It's a never ending battle that no one ever wins, but in addition to that, you're wasting money.

According to MSP Plumbing Heating and Air, adjusting that thermostat constantly isn't doing you any favors. It causes your furnace to stop and start which makes it run inefficiently. They use a perfect example to explain why:

"Let’s say you have your thermostat set at 68°F in the winter. Your furnace heats your home until that point then shuts off. But you realize you’re still a little chilly, so you raise the thermostat a couple degrees. The furnace must now immediately turn back on. Your furnace...should be running for longer, steadier times to save money. (Think of it like your car’s MPG. Do you get better mileage on streets with lots of stoplights or on the highway?)"

It's also recommended by MSP, to set your thermostat 10 to 15 degrees lower when you will be gone for 8 hours or more which could save you 5 to 15% more on your heating costs.

For Christmas I got a Google Nest Thermostat to help with our heating bill. It knows when we are not home and will lower the thermostat so that the furnace doesn't heat an empty house.

I can also control it on my smartphone so when I'm leaving wherever I am to head back home, I can set the thermostat back to where it was and have the house be well on its way to that temperature when I get there.

So if you're fighting over the temperature in the house and are constantly changing it, stop if you want to save money. Come to a compromise somewhere in the middle and that heating bill might be just a bit easier on the pocketbook.