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prolly should be in "around the house," but oh well. moderators, feel free to move this thread/post...

it's finally starting to cool off(some what) here. so, my question is:

is it better(more economical) to let the air run all day @ 82*F or turn it on only @ night(for better sleep), when it may cycle only 2 or 3 times?

it has been suggested that it is best to set to 78* or higher and leave it alone. i understand this to be true if it was turned on in a 95* house. obviously it would work hard to cool the home, but this is not the case.

thoughts?

It really depends.

Lets take my apartment for example. If I leave the a/c off all day the apartment gets to around 86-89 on the hottest of summer days. This is normally okay except for the refrigerator which ends up running a lot more for some reason. If I leave the a/c on I set it to ~76 degrees and it keeps the refrigerator from running so much (how 10 degrees makes that much of a difference I don't know).

At night I normally run about 68 degrees and constant fan.

In the winter I don't run the heater very often. I left for a trip and came back a week later and it was 17 degrees outside and a nice 68 degrees in the apartment with no heater at all. Funny thing is, if I try to keep the apartment any warmer than 70 in the winter the stupid thing runs all the time.

If your house gets up to 95 degrees if left without ac I'd leave it on. Around here nobody cares, they just leave the evaporative coolers running all the time because it's just the cost of a water pump and a blower fan.

well, the thing is, i can take temps above 82 during the day. certainly during fall w/ less humidity, a slight breeze, and fans help.

but at night not only is the "cooler is better for sleep", but also noise factor. you might not believe this, but we've got every noise under creation...

loud neighbors(music and cars)
cattle near by
frogs and crickets(a large pond is near by)
even sandhill cranes(they sound like what one would imagine a dinosaur to be)

From a heat transfer perspective, the closer the inside & outside temperatures are, the less cooling the A/C system will have to perform. Therefore if it is 95 degrees outside, and 90 degrees inside, there will be less "cooling loss" than if you try to maintain 78 degrees inside.

It will feel like the A/C has to crank away for a while to cool the house down when you switch it on, but at the end of the day you will use less energy if you switch the A/C off during the day.

-BC

I know what you're talking about Bowtie... My house is on a corner, and it seems almost nightly there's someone trying to test their 0-60 time from that stop sign. Add the loud car stereos and the cars in dire need a a visit to a muffler shop and it does make it hard to sleep with the windows open.

-Jay

thank you, i was hoping as much.

generally, the temp when the air is turned on is in the mid 80s. any warmer, i just let it run all day.

in my estimation, for my application, the air running all day costs ~$2 to 3/day. so it's pretty significant!

I live in a mobile home with no shade around it and in the fall of the year it is still more economical to have the windows open during the day and run the a/c at night if needed than to try to keep the house cool with a/c all of the time. I'm lucky though I live far enough from the highway that passing traffic doesn't bother us if we have the windows open at night. The biggest problem is the idiot neighbor I have sometimes deciding to start up and rev the engine on a stock car at 1 or 2 am. I've had the sherriff's department visit him a few times and that has put a stop to that.

you are sooooo fortunate! we've called the sherriff's dept countless times for bass(music) and revving/racing. NOTHING ever gets accomplished this way!

i put teachers and cops in the same classification as doctors and lawyers...

there are good ones, but so many are in it JUST for the money. obviously teachers and cops are after easy money, not big money.

The way I put a stop to it was by calling the sheriff's department every time he would start the engine day or night. There was one time I probably had them out here about 30-40 times within a month. One of the deputies told me that his supervisor told him to tell me that if they came out and the car wasn't running they were going to arrest me for making a false report. I told him that I couldn't help that it sometimes took them 1-1/2 hours to get here and I couldn't control how long he left the car running. Then I called the captain and told him what I was told. He told me not worry about it and to call anytime there was a problem and that he would have a talk with that supervisor.

Edit: At first the deputies tried to tell me that there was no noise ordinance prohibiting him from running the car, so I went to the courthouse and got a copy of the noise ordinance for the county I live in and the next time they told me that I showed them exactly what it said. It stated that any noise that was detrimental to public health or was a neusense was illegal. Maybe you should get a copy of the noise ordinance for the city/county you live in read it and see what it says. If you are in the right be persistent and call EVERYTIME the noise begins.

Video evidence could possibly help, if you can get a dependable timestamp on it (pan over to your tv with the time displayed by the weather channel or the news).