Do you ride your thermostat like a horse jockey.....?

[thebenchmaker]

I ride my two zone "Oil Furnace" thermostats like a horse jockey. Adjusting twice a day........

I drop it to 50 at night or when no one is present in zone and bring it to 60-66 when needed for habitating......comes up pretty quick.

Now I know that it takes X amount of btu to raise the temp in the morn, but my house is pretty tight and if the furnace does not kick on in zone one for 8-12 hours at night and then on to raise from 58-59 to 66 that seems just ducky with me.......

My friend next door is a set it at 64-66 and let her rip, probably not touching it "til spring, says he does okay on fuel and does not worry about the ups and downs.......

So.......what do you do and why?

 

[rphurley]

I got a new furnace last year so I spent a lot of time surfing HVAC websites as well as DOE website. The overwhelming majority said you should adjust your heat when you are not in the zone. I have a programmable thermostat that drops the temps at night and during the day. It seems to be a mute point now that I have my insert, but If I get held up at work and the fire goes out I know that the house will be warm when I get home because the thermostat will kick the heat on if it gets too cold.

 

[kast]

I have two zones with Honeywell digital thermostats, and one wireless digital thermostat for the stove. Zone1 (downstairs) is set to 50 and has a Thermgaurd attached to cycle hot water threw those pipes since that zone doesn’t run often, Zone2 (upstairs bedrooms) on the other hand is set to 50 (never gets that low with the stove) during the day, and then goes to 63 at night.

My stove keeps the first floor toasty and the second floor at around 60-63 during the day. So at night when we sleep the oil is used to keep it at 63; so what I do is set the thermostat for the stove to go off at 11:00PM and on at 5:00AM. There is no point in burning the pellets to warm the first floor when we are sleeping on the 2nd

What I do to compensate for the lack of heat for 6 hours on the first floor is have the Zone1 thermostat kick on at 4:30-5:30am at 68 to bring the bathroom, kitchen etc… up a few degrees while the stove gets going.

My wife works different hours during the week so I adjust the thermostat on the stove often to shut down a few hours during the day and then come on a few hours before the wife and kids get home. I use the ThermGuard (http://www.bearmountaindesign.com) on zone1 when it gets real cold I’ll turn it on to keep the basement pipes from freezing while the furnace isn’t calling for heat. Thermguard will cycle hot water every 3 hours for 2 minutes at a time (or however you want it programmed) Zone 2 runs more frequently (at night) so I don’t worry about cycling any water on that side.

 

[abrucerd]

My thermostat is on it's second year of collecting dust.

I throw it all the way down to 45 the majority of the time, and let the stove run 24/7. At night, I put the stove on low (it doesn't heat my upstairs bedroom) just so it doesn't get too cold. I have a pretty open layout (with ceiling fans) so it does a nice job.

I only turn the oil on for about 20 minutes on the occasional weekend morning when it's REALLY cold, just to take the chill out of the rooms that are far from the stove. Once they warm up a bit, the thermostat goes back to 45 and the stove stays on high for the day.

 

[kast]

I have two tons of LG’s (softwood, many fines) that burn nice and hot on settings 3-5 but on low burn like crap! I was leaving it on low some nights but I found it would smother sometimes, and or I would wake to my glass black as pitch. I bought 10 bags of Firesides (no fines, hardwood) those burns on all settings very nice. Think I will need to look into hardwoods for next season.

 

[Doocrew]

I have all three of my zones set at 55 degrees. Stove is on the first floor, so if I want heat in the basement family room I will have to turn up the stat. Does not happen too often as the temp stays around 60 down there. I burn about a bag of LG's a day, which keeps my open living room and kitchen at about 72 degrees and the bedrooms around 65-68 with a fan in the hallway drawing cold air towards the stove.

 

[el gordo]

i have to 2 first floor zones set at 53. The third zone is for the second floor bedroom which we use to heat that room on the cold days. Other then that, we heat the whole house minus the one upstairs bedroom with the stove in the basement

 

[timalabim]

I put the tstat for the stove right near the furnace tstat and have them running the same program of warm/cool cycles. I set the stove tstat 2 degrees higher than the furnace tstat to compensate for the single source vs distributed radiators. I start the warm cycles on the stove 15 min earlier than the furnace. I figure if the stove can’t keep up, or I run out of pellets or whatever, the furnace can kick in if it needs to.

 

[wilbilt]

Programmable stats would seem to be the answer.

To go a step beyond, consider network thermostats. We evaluated these at my place of employment (a public school district), and all of the reviews were positive. Unfortunately, the money is not available now to deploy them.

Since they are accessible via the Internet, you could reprogram remotely if plans change for the day, week, whatever.

(broken link removed)

 

[rowerwet]

I have a programable thermostat, that way my wife won't forget to turn down the heat at night and she gets up to a warm house every morning. But I have central heat.