Thursday, August 22, 2019

A/C thermostat settings

Glazer is correct. A little more info on the settings. The 1-10 setting on your thermostat only affects how cold the room has to get for the A/C to cycle off. At a guess, 1 is around 80 °F and 10 is around 60 °F. Turning the dial to a higher number does not make it cool any better, it just keeps it running longer.

The high/low settings do affect how much cooling it does. The high fan setting will use more electricity and not just from the fan itself. The amount of air flowing through the unit over the evaporator (cooling) coil affects how much work the compressor has to do to cool that air. The temperature of the air is another factor. Hotter air = more work and thus more electricity.

A final note about A/Cs in general, not just window units. The temperature of the air outside has a large affect on the energy the A/C uses. I could write a long boring post about the freon cycle with temperature-enthalpy diagrams, but in simple terms, heat flows downhill, from warmer towards cooler. In order to make the rather diffuse heat in your home flow out into the warmer outdoors, that heat has to be concentrated so that it is warmer than the air outside. The warmer it is outside, the more work has to be done to concentrate your home's heat so that it can be rejected outdoors. The upshot of all of this is that the cooler it is outdoors, the less energy your A/C will use to cool your house. So it is much more efficient to cool your house at night. If you have good insulation, you can "cold soak" your house overnight - getting the air and everything inside nice and cool while it's cheaper to do so, then turning up the setting in the morning and letting the temperature coast back up for a while.

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