I have a heat pump and wish I had put in something else. It's set right now at 72 and is cold in the livingroom and back bedrooms. When it gets in the 30s the heatpump just doesn't work well. I came home from work the other day, it was in the 20s all day and the kids had the heat up to 74!!! I almost bought a space heater the other day it was so bad.

Oh, does your heat pump work when it's in the 20's outside? We have a HP as auxilliary heat at the country place and have been warned NOT to expect it to do the job alone, if the temps get down in the 20's; that it actually won't even go on if the temps dip too low. We're planning on not using it at all for heat--we'll just use it in the summer for air conditioning. I know, last week, when it was in the 20's here, the heat pump wouldn't go on at all--with the house being new to us, I'm trying everything, just to see if it works--LOL. Heat pump's fine--but it has a sensor that prevents it from working at low temps.

Azzalea, yes it works but the outer rooms don't get warm, even in the 30s. Bad decision on my part to buy another to replace the old one.

My furnace is the one almost everyone here has: gas. I like to run it at about 72 during the day, and 65 - 68 at night. *Someone* who shall remain nameless (either my husband or me LOL) forgot to turn it down last night and I was sweltering all night. I'd have turned it down, but that would have meant getting out of bed, stumbling to the lights, going upstairs and then back down again. Too much work. hehehee

I like the forced air heat over the dry baseboard heat that I used to have when I was living in an apartment. Calgary is so dry to begin with, having the forced air is better here.

I have a heat pump, cooler days I set it on 72 at night 70,
if the temp outside goes real low I have to click the thermostat onto E heat, if the house feels cold I just put one of my flannel nightgowns on.
Forgot something the guy that installed the new system told me to leave the fan running 24/7 at all times.

We have a heat pump, leave it set on 68 all day and night in the cooler months and at 80 in the summer. Our fan only comes on when the unit is doing something, or when I tell it to run to move the wood stove heat around.

Our heat pump will keep the house comfortable down into the 20's, any colder than that and the emergency part of the heater comes on and it'll blow out really hot air, but typically it'll blow 68º air. And THAT is why I love our wood stove, 68º air is not going to warm me up at all. It'll keep me from freezing, but I won't be warm.

We have an oil furnace so we are being very frugal with the heat this year! Luckily it is a hot water system, I detest forced air systems, we have one at the office and we are either hot or cold. And different parts of the office are hot while other rooms are cold. YUCK.

We put a pellet stove into our fireplace in the family room this year and love it. We have 4 heat zones in the house, we really only every turned up 2 of them, now with the pellet stove it's only 1, the bedroom level. The rest of them are set low, 60 or so, we don't spend much time in those rooms so we don't need heat in them.

I absolutely hate forced air heating even though I grew up with it. I disconnected mine years ago. We use portable oil filled radiators to just heat the rooms we're using. Saving up for hydronic radiant heat. Wherever we replace the flooring we are setting up for the system.

I know the new furnaces are supposed to bemore economical to run but I refuse to get one. My PG&E bill is 2/3 less than it was when I ran the forced air.

We have forced hot air, with a furnace that's two years old. We keep the heat at 66 during the day and 62 at night. I don't like how dry it is, but I'm warm enough. We're definitely of the "wear a sweater - or two" school!

We have a heat pump also. I keep it around 68-70 during the day when I am home alone. If hubby is here he is likely to bump it up to around 72-74...too hot for "hormonal" me! LOL I haven't noticed a problem with it keeping our house nice and warm. But I don't have the winters lots of you do have!
If it dips down into the 20's I also turn it to the "E" cycle.

I have central heat/air. In the summer I keep it on 78 day and night. It keeps the house nice and cool.

Deb

I wonder if you have looked into the insulation you have and use of weather stripping around doors. Storm windows, etc.

I have gas heat, just installed in Sept. We have a hot water system, thin pipes (tubes) that run to each room. It's been working well. I keep the thermostat at 70 all the time,I am warm enough.

Sheila, are you speaking to me?

Our 'hot air' house is well enough insulated to keep the heat in (it's better insulated than the 'radiator' house).

We have freestaning thermometers--aside from the ones on the thermostats in both houses. With the dry, drafty air, 66-68 feels much colder than 58-60 does in the house heated by radiators.

I can see from the responses that people with forced hot air are definitely setting their thermostats higher, and complaining about the uneven heat, and chill. Interesting.

As for me? I can't wait to get back to the country house and it's cozy heat tomorrow morning. I think DH and I will be spending a lot of time apart this winter--LOL--he'll be at the 'old' house, since his work is only a mile away while I hang out at the new house. LOVE those radiators.

I think that the reason the radiators seem warmer is that they heat up and they hold the heat whereas the forced air only 'runs' when it is triggered to run by a thermostat.

We has radiators at the old house in Nj. We have central air/heat here and it is a lot chillier. I keep it at 68 in winter- well so far any way- and prob about the same in the summer, maybe lower. I like it cool in summer. This is our 4th winter in the south and I am colder here than at home in NJ !

I grew up in a large, old, sturdy house built about 1900 in central Illinois. My dad put water in trays that sat on top of the radiators, all of which were in special casements. The moisture really helped cut down on the shocks from static electricity especially when we walked across the wool rug.

Hi azzalea,

If you need some hot air ...

... just come here ...

... any time!!

We have forced air. I am sitting here under a blanket, wearing 3 layers of clothes. We keep the thermostat on about 62 when we are home. when I am at school and at night (thus most of the weekday hours) I have it set on 56 or so. I figure the cats just cuddle up together and nap all day, no sense in keeping the whole house warmer.

Last summer, the A/C was turned on only when Eric was home because I was perfectly happy with the regular temperature of the air.

I have natural gas forced air which is very common around here. Normally I keep the thermostat at about 62° which is fine for me, especially for sleeping. I have the bedrooms shut off so the thermostat controls essentially the bathroom and hallway (upper level) and living room/entry (main level). I have a quilt up over the entry to the kitchen since I can't close off the basement door since that's where the litter boxes are. I'm going to put a quilt up over the basement door too. Thought about a pet door in the basement door but haven't gotten to it. (It's on my todo list!). Naturally, the closed off areas are cooler, although the kitchen faces west so it gets a lot of daytime sun.

When I have guests I turn the heat up to 68°-70°. Right now I'm celebrating Thanksgiving by turning up the heat a bit and sit in a t-shirt. Normally I wear a sweatshirt and have a blanket handy if I get a chill.

I have noticed the cats are sparking and I'm more stuffed up so I need to get some water out and add humidity. That will make it a lot more comfortable. And now I'm going to start hearing from the people paranoid about mold but that's the way it goes! :)

I have forced hot air and a gas furnace. Works for me. I have the temp set at 68 F day and night. I've been thinging about installing a programmable thermostat whereby I can set different day and night temperatures. when I lower the night temperature, I don't lower it much because of the long recovery time to reheat the next day. It really works the furnace to bring the house up 5 deg F when the outside temp is 0 F.

I find that wind velocity makes a difference on heat use. I have a 2 story colonial and it sticks up into the wind. Before this house, I had a small single story ranch with a basement having tghe same square footage as the house proper. That house had a hip roof, sloping sides on all 4 side. It shed the wind from any direction. That house was far more efficient than the one I now have.

So far as comfort goes, a forced hot air system is good if the system is properly engineered and balanced. Cold spots may develop for a poorly executed system. The location of the output and return registers are critical. Force hot air systems are a little tricky to get right when there is only one system; A system having several zones is easier to manage.

All hot air systems suffer from dry air in winter. Addition of humidity is needed to increase comfort. However, at my location, adding enough humidity is a problem. On the average, we get down to 0 deg F sometime each winter, and at that temperature, a lot of moisture must be added. The problem is before enough moisture can be added, it begins to condense on cold, outside facing the windows and window frames. Frost and ice appears on metal door knobs. This condensation will harm the structure, so the humidity must be cut back to a practical level, and that level is often less than the comfort zone - you can't win!

If you lower the temp at night, the RH (relative humidity) goes up without any addition of moisture. Insane? Nope. That's the way it works. RH is just that: humidity relative to 100% saturation (in simple terms). This changes with temperaure. Raise tmep and it increase the amount of moisture it can hold.

I mentioned that RH was the amount of humidity relative to saturation. However, it is not, strictly speaking, an exact percent of the mass of water vapor at saturation. Believe it or not, Engineers define relative humidity in terms of partial pressue, not mass. [I see that you don't believe me. Go look it up. Try a text on thermodynamics or heating and air conditioning.] A 50% partial vapor pressue varies a bit from 50% mass.

The traditional way to measure humidity was to take tmeperature measurement: one dry bulb and the second, wet bulb, and then do a look-up on a chart. It can be computed, but a look-up is quick and free of math maistakes.

I have ONLY a small Nat gas fireplace that heats the whole house..but to keep the bedrooms toasty, the doors have to be open..and we sleep with them closed at night..so the rooms can get chilly..the only that seems to suffer is the oldest cuz he's the only single room occupant..
During the day the fireplace therm is set for 70F and I drop it down to 65 on the way to bed. Sometimes we pop it up to 75 in the evenings or morning if I don't have the oven going or we aren't "moving" much..

we have wall heaters, but never use them.
We use small space heaters. One in the bedroom and one in the living room. We turn them on only if we are chilly. Sometimes, we don't turn them on all day, only in the evening.

We set the thermostats to 55-60 at night, I put it down to 60 when I leave the house, and we keep at at 64 or so when we are at home. We have hydro-air, oil. That means we have a boiler that converts the heated water to air which is then delivered to the house via ducts, like with hot air. The advantage over hot air is that it is more efficient and less dusty (we also don't need a hot water heater, just a super-stor).

IMO there are two primary advantages of ducted heated over baseboard heat. First, you can have central AC without the expense of running all the ducts since you have them. Second, you don't have the baseboards. I hate baseboards.

I don't have many problems with lack of hunidity. I think with people coming in and out, outdoor doors open and close and let in enough moisture.

I have a heat pump at home. Not crazy about it at all, but I like not having to pay for either gas or oil.

Mom has oil-fired hot water (radiators).

I've done a LOT of work around the house to cut down on drafts, and just today installed a digital set-back thermostat to cut the temperature back and night and hopefully save some fuel.

I'm comfortable in temperatures in the 68 to 70 range, but Mom, being older and thin as a rail and on blood thinners, gets chilled pretty easily, so the temperature is set to 73 during the day.

I have some more I want to do tomorrow to help tighten the house up.

I've built and installed inside storm windows on a bunch of the draftiest windows (house was built in 1903, original windows throughout).

I've put new weather stripping on the doors.

I've fine tuned the heating system so that it delivers more even heat instead of freezing some rooms and baking others.

We've pretty much shut down the front of the house (house has three zones, the front rooms really aren't used unless company comes).

We hung Victorian style-curtains between the living room (second zone) and the front of the house. That alone made the living room a LOT more livable, as it significantly cut down on drafts.

I'm trying to figure out where I could put a small pellet stove in the main section of the house, but it's difficult. Mom has a lot of heavy Victorian furniture and this is a Victorian floor plan.

We have natural gas forced air heat (using the same ducts as the central air conditioner). We have a digital set-back thermostat, with an incredible programming capacity. You can program each day of the week separately for both heating and cooling, and each day can be different than the others.

For the heating cycle, I have it set to come on (Monday through Friday) at 7:30 a.m. and raise the temp to 72º. I get up at 7:00 a.m., and tend to run warm in the mornings, so I don't need the extra heat, but hubs is freezing in the mornings, so the heat is for him. I can be almost done getting ready by the time the house starts warming up and then it's time for hubs to get up.

At 9:00 a.m., the thermostat goes down to 62º, where it stays until 5:30 p.m., when it goes back up to 74º. It stays there until 11:30 p.m., when it's back down to 60º.

Saturdays and Sundays the heat comes on at 8:00, and it's set for 72º where it stays all day and evening, then goes down to 60º at 11:30 p.m.

We have a wood burning (with gas lighter) fireplace in the family room, and another (wood burning with gas lighter) fireplace in the master bedroom. There's a ceiling fan in the family room, and one in the master bedroom. When we have a fire, it's more for ambiance than heat... And the ceiling fans on the lowest speed, with the air circulating up (don't know if it's clockwise or counterclockwise - we just move the little toggle switch to the up-arrow position), causes the hotter air near the ceiling to waft down and warm the room.

We have a heat pump and we leave it set at about 72º in cold months, and 80º in summer. We have seen no problems with it when the temps dips down into the teens at all. We heat approximately 2500 square feet and our heating and cooling bill averaged $175.00 per month last year. Our home is all electric, from top to bottom.. I do leave water simmering in a crock pot with some herbs or spices in it. It makes the house smell nice and adds a touch of moisture to the air. We do have a Rumford Fireplace and a wood stove downstairs as well.. and may use them this year. (Power Co announced a 20% rate increase !!) We just had a chimney sweep come and inspect our flues and clean our chimneys. We hadn't used either one for a couple of years because our old chimney sweep moved away after his wife passed on. But we have found a new one and this one was born and raised nearby so hopefully he won't be leaving any time soon.

We are happy with our heat pump, but love wood heat, especially now that we can get our chimneys cleaned and inspected every year like we are supposed to.

Natural gas here. Forced air furnace with humidifier. Just had it all checked out for the winter, and everything is working fine. I keep it set at 70° in the day time, and 66° at night. If I get chilly (usually around 4:00 in the afternoon) I kick it up a couple degrees. In the summer, I set the temp. to 78°, and the humidifier won't kick on if there's enough humidity in the air. And there is always lots of humidity here in the summer. To much really, so it always feels hotter than it is. I think adding humidity in the winter makes the air feel warmer. And the added humidity is good for your wood furniture. It doesn't dry out as easy.
Leslie
Leslie

I also have hot air with an old (35 years old) oil burner which is common in New England. I know it tends to be very uneven but I like how it recovers really fast when you turn the heat up. I turn it down to 60 over night and turn it up to about 65 in the morning. I spend most of my day in my computer/sewing room which is heated by a pellet stove. When I go upstairs for the evening I turn the thermostat up to 70 or 72 if I have to to stay comfortable. I figure I've been conserving oil all day and night and should be comfortable in the evening.