i live in a long 4 br house in the Bluegrass, KY. All 5 kids are moved out and I intend to live here until the market improves. I use two rooms only. The kitchen/family room at one end and the master br at the other. I have a Trane heater/ac that is gas I suppose. There are flames inside the box when it is on!!! (That shows you how uninformed I am!!!! Sadly. Anyway,I am able to shut off all the rooms with doors, and my main concern is the conservation of energyI have shut off the vents in all the unused rooms, and need to know what temp to keep the house at so that when I come in at 5pm I can turn on the heat and it will not have to work over-hard to restore the house to comfortable. Say 67 or 68. I can wear sweaters.
The best temperature is not one single temperature. When you are home you might want it cooler (say 67 or 68 degrees) than when other people are also there and you don't want to force them to wear multiple layers of clothing. When you are sleeping you should set it lower (say 64 or 65 degrees) than when you are awake because you won't notice the cool temperature when you are asleep; as well, you can sleep under several layers of blankets to keep you warm. When you are away you can set the temperature even lower (say 61 ot 62) than when you are asleep because you won't notice or be uncomfortable. Don't forget to also close the doors in those unused rooms where you have closed the vents as well as install some inexpensive door sweeps to keep the cool air inside those rooms and not in the areas you use.
67 or 68 is fine. turn off the gas heater at night and use a space heater where you sleep. ceramic heater is cheap was only heating one room, cut my gas bill in half.
I would say forget the $200 thermostat as well if you don't mind manual setting. Instead of an oil heater and fan, get a coil heater with a fan, some oscillate to spread the heat around, if that is the way your going. Actually electric heaters heat up quicker, flames has to heat up the heat exchanger first, while electric coils are already in the air supply. Anyway, what some don't realize is a central system is sized to supply air to the entire house. When you start closing off room registers, this increasing the duct pressure. The air tries to go other places, like duct leaks or create duct leaks, so now your starting to heat outside. Commonly the register fittings going though the wall/ceiling/floor has gaps, closing the register forces air into these gaps and heat inside the walls, etc. Blowers usually have fan speed taps to change the CFM, but may require an electrician to change it. Just some tid bits to kick around.
With all due respect to the HVAC contractor,..... IF you are going to spend any money, please do it having the unit cleaned and serviced, as you quoted you suppose the furnace is gas fired. That means it probably is not operating at peak efficiency performance. It probably needs a tune-up. Forget paying someone 200 bux for a thermostat that you don't need. Part of being a contractor is being ethical. That being said, it is fine to set the stat at around 55 to 58 when not at home, then at 68 when you return. returning the stat to around 60 at night when you retire to bed and using an electric space heater such as an oil filled radiator with a small fan blowing across it from about 8 ft away will circulate heat around the bedroom..... Also, if there are considerable gaps at the bottom of the doors of the unused rooms, place an old rolled up towel at the bottom of the door.
The good thing is that the unit is gas. Gas heats up quicker than electric. I suggest you get a Honeywell Vision Pro 6000 programmable thermostat. Honeywell thermostats have a feature called adaptivegenic recovery. What this does is enables the thermostat to learn who soon it need to come on to reach the desired temperature at a desired time. With this feature you can set the temp down to 58-60 and when you get in the temp will be back up to 67 or 68 as you desire. You just set the time and temp you want it to be and the thermostat learns how to accomplish that, it does take a few days for the t-stat to learn your home. I do not recommend setting the temp to low though because the colder you let it get the longer the unit will have to run to get temp back up, so you kind of defeat the purpose. You can purchase and install this thermostat yourself, but I do recommend you having it installed. Installed price should be around $200. You could also try spot heating (using space heaters in the rooms you are using). If you go this direction, I recommend oil filled radiator heaters. They are safest IMO.
