# Turn AC off whn gone.



## house92 (Aug 9, 2015)

I've read several articles that claim turning the ac completely off when at work will save energy rather than leaving it on or merely turning it up.  Has anyone here done this and noticed a savings on the bill?  It has to rum over an hour when turned back on, which seems like a lot, but maybe less than if it ran all day.  Any thoughts?


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## Speedbump (Aug 10, 2015)

I just ripped out three programmable thermostats that had lost their minds somewhere along the way.  I installed two Nest Learning Thermostats at home and one at work.  I can control them from my phone.  I will be getting an electric bill soon and do expect to see a decent savings.  They supposedly learn on their own, but I have been helping them along.  We know when we are going to be at work and at home, so I run them up to 88 when not home or work and use the phone to turn them on half hour or so before I will arrive.

All that and never had a problem installing any of them.  It's a pretty easy install.


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## slownsteady (Aug 11, 2015)

I don't have a problem with technology, but I'm not sure if the Nest t-stats and their kind have proven themselves yet. If you keep regular hours, why couldn't you just set up a timer for an hour before your usual time?


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## Speedbump (Aug 12, 2015)

I suppose I could if I only had one.  I have two at home, one for downstairs and one for upstairs where we sleep, so we have two almost opposite schedules.  Then one for work.  I took out three programmable thermostats that were all haywire.  The Nest's are working real well so far.


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## Sparky617 (Aug 12, 2015)

I have some 15 year old programmables that do a decent job.  I work from home so I don't get to really cut back on the heat or AC during the day anyway.  They have a feature that allows me to set a higher temperature for a number of days if we're heading out on vacation and have the AC or heat kick back in before we get back.  I'll let the temperatures go higher in the summer while we're away but I don't cut if off completely.  It takes too long to wring the humidity out of the air if I shut the system down for several days.  Here in NC our summer humidity can run 80% plus for weeks on end.   So I'll let the inside air go to about 85F while we're away and bring it back to around 78F when we come home.  We use ceiling fans all the time and working from home I rarely wear long pants in the summer.

MY HVAC guy really likes NEST, I think I'll give them a few years to drop in price before I make the leap.  They are pretty pricy today and I suspect the price will drop over time as they gain market share.


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## Speedbump (Aug 12, 2015)

> Here in NC our summer humidity can run 80% plus for weeks on end. So I'll let the inside air go to about 85F while we're away and bring it back to around 78F when we come home. We use ceiling fans all the time and working from home I rarely wear long pants in the summer.


Sounds just like Florida.  I wore long pants once this summer, it was to give a gun class out back when we were having a lot of rain and the mosquitoes were as big as Pheasants.



> MY HVAC guy really likes NEST, I think I'll give them a few years to drop in price before I make the leap.  They are pretty pricy today and I suspect the price will drop over time as they gain market share.


They have already dropped $50.00 at the nest site.  I bought all three for $200.00 off ebay.  Everybody else was around $250.00 except this one guy and they were all new in the box.


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