Comment by userbinator
1 day ago
You shouldn't need to change the temperature regardless of those things. My house remains at 68-72F basically all the time. Thermal cycling accelerates aging of materials.
1 day ago
You shouldn't need to change the temperature regardless of those things. My house remains at 68-72F basically all the time. Thermal cycling accelerates aging of materials.
Sounds expensive at the equivalent rate of 38 cents a kilowatt hour that I pay during the day.
Power is cheaper than things failing earlier than they could have due to thermal cycling.
Do you have any citation for thermal cycling through the range of an AC inside a house affecting the failure rate of any household goods? Based on my experience this does not seem likely to be the case: thermal effects tend to be exponential or high powers of temperature, and most thermal cycling that people worry about is on the order of 100C or more. 10/20C of variation seems unlikely to be relevant.
(There is a case where if your house is well insulated enough, then it can be worth avoiding cycling your AC during the day, because it is both less efficient and will wear more while pulling the temperature down and this can be worse than just leaving it running in a sufficiently insulated house. It still is probably worth turning it off if you're away for a week, though)
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Isn't the thermal cycling greater outdoor than indoor because of the differences in the outdoor temperature between day and night? So most ordinary materials indoors should be fine with a delta of even 10 Kelvins/10 Celsius/18 F.
All of the material thermal failures I can think of come from localized and more extreme sources: electronics, lightbulbs, washing/drying clothes, washing dishes in a dishwasher. Water below freezing point too, but that's because the temperature fell below a threshold. None of these are from heating or cooling rooms directly with HVAC.
Yes, it's MUCH worse outdoors, but indoor temperature (and humidity) swings are not good either. I guess most people here just haven't paid enough attention to it as it's a very long-term effect, but definitely noticeable.
Everyone I know offline keeps their house at a constant temperature year-round, yet apparently it's controversial enough to be a downvoted opinion here? WTF?
How about sleep? Ideal temperature is 18C.
That is 64F. Not everyone considers that an ideal temperature.
As in scientifically proven to be biologically ideal, proven to have the best sleep outcomes. You can have different preferences of course, doesn’t change what’s ideal.