Hi there,
I finally sucked it up and had to turn on the heat. After having the furnace/ac off for over a month and loving the low bill! :) Since it is getting down to 64 at night upstairs I did it just mainly at night for my kids.
Anyway, is it okay to close off vents in rooms downstairs that aren't needed to heat all night? I know it is good to do for the a/c but not sure about the heat?
Also what do you set your thermostat on? I typically make sure it is 66 to 68 to sleep in upstairs. 68 is the ideal sleeping temp, per everything I have read and our own experience. In order to keep it warm enough upstairs I have to set it at 69 down. I turn it down when we all get up to 65 or 67 depending how cold it is.
We use a woodstove, but we have the heater set on 64 in case the fire goes out in the night, and it gets cold in here. We have the vents open only in the bedrooms for the heater.
I had to turn it on recently, too, but it's been freezing at night here, all of a sudden.
I don't see why it would be a problem to close the vents downstairs.
What I don't understand is why you turn it DOWN when you wake up? Our thermostat is set to 70 during the day and 65 at night. We used to set it at 68 during the day when we were poor, but our noses were always cold.
Also, different houses feel different at the same thermostat setting. So 68 in our old apartment may have been colder than a 68 setting in this house. I don't know.
Yes, you can close any vents in rooms that you do not care to heat. Be sure that you keep enough heat in the rooms with water pipes so they do not freeze. If your water pipes freeze and break the bill to repair them can make your highest heating bill look like pennies. I know this because my husband and I own a Construction business and live in Wyoming. We do mostly insurance repairs. In the winter a majority of our work comes from water damages (broken pipes) and fires. Stay warm.
Well, I have read that it is okay to close vents in rooms that are not used, like bedrooms and the like, but I would hesitate to do that in a room with a lot of plumbing like your kitchen or bath. You wouldn't want it to get too cold in there otherwise your pipes could freeze and what a mess that could make! Plus, plumbers are really expensive! When we were living in Montana and Alaska we were always having to keep the cupboard doors open under the sinks to keep our pipes from freezing in the winter. Of course, the temps in the winter those places could get well below zero on a regular basis. Thankfully, we haven't experienced such extreme temps here in CO since we have been here! I wouldn't see that it would be a problem maybe in your living room or dining room though...as far as what we set our temp at in the winter, I usually set it to 68 at night. During the day when I was working it was set pretty low - like 62, because no one was home. Now that I am staying home it is usually around 65 or so, unless it is really cold outside. If it is cold I usually have it set around 68-70ish. I have our windows lined in that plastic stuff they sell at Wal-Mart to keep out the drafts (we have really lousy windows - trying to save up to get new ones) and we generally wear a lot of sweaters and sweatshirts in the house in the winter! Maybe we will all get lucky and the winter will be a mild one.
