Does turning down the heat save money?

 I have a couple of friends who insist that "they've heard" that turning
the heat down in your house for the night really doesn't save money,
allegedly because "it takes a lot of energy to be turning the furnace up
and down like that."

I think this is a bunch of bunk.  Can any heating engineers give us the
definitive word on this?

 
Of course it's a bunch of bunk.

 
I'm to believe that you won't save money messing with the thermostat if you
have a heat pump.


Oops. I'm just some guy who posts on usenet <g>...

-Mike

 
    Turning down the heat saves money for several reasons

    a) The temperature difference between the interior and exterior is
smaller.  The bigger the difference in temperature the faster heat radiates
to the outside, and the faster cold air convects in through the cracks.

    b) Your furnace doesn't actually reach peak efficency until it's been
running for about 10 minutes.  By having one big long run in the morning you
run the furnace at it's peak efficency longer.  This doesn't apply to
electric heat.


    I'm not a heating engineer but this is how it was explained to me.

-- Steve

 Thanks.

My house uses a gas-powered forced hot water heating system.  We turn
the heat down to about 60 at night, up to 68 only for about an hour and
a half in the morning, back to 60 when we leave the house for work, then
back up to 68 for the evening.

I think what my friends are saying is that doing this doesn't really
save money because the extra energy involved in the furnace turning
itself up and down a couple of times a day like that balances out the
actual savings on gas.

Is that possible?

cweTwoThousandAndThree@sympatico.ca says...