20 Comments
User's avatar
Ellen's avatar

As someone who walked in her home, found it too chilly at 77 and pushed it up to 79, frankly I am appalled. When it is 65 degrees inside it is time for gloves and passive aggression!

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Melpomene's avatar

Oh god. I have the misfortune to be dating some manner of exotic tropical lizard and even he wouldn't countenance that.

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J. Woods's avatar

You're probably one of my coworkers using a pseudonym.

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Ellen's avatar

It's possible I am just a lizard using a pseudonym, if that helps

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Auros's avatar

I will have A/C for the first time in my adult life, in another week or so. (Yay for homeownership.) I've spent twenty years with my summer indoor temperature being whatever The Lord Our G*d determines it should be... Or fleeing the house for cooler climes, like a mall or movie theater.

I don't plan to cool below 78 F.

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Auros's avatar

And if that sounds like I'm judging those who waste energy on cooling to below 70 in the summer, I absolutely am. You are terrible people who are destroying the environment because you lack the fortitude to sweat a bit. Drink more water and maintain a stiff upper lip. A damp, stiff upper lip.

(Similarly, cooling above 65 in the winter is for people too incompetent to locate a sweatshirt.)

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J. Woods's avatar

Doesn't it balance out if we barely turn on the heat in the winter?

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Auros's avatar

To be fair, depending on your climate, heating is probably the bigger deal than cooling. (Typically you're cooling in summer by fewer degrees than you would be heating in winter, so even though the energy cost to cool a degree is more than the cost to heat a degree, the heating matters more. Though if you live somewhere like Phoenix, that may not be true.) We will in our magnanimity grant that for every degree below 65 that you keep things in winter, you may cool an extra degree in summer. ;-)

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J. Woods's avatar

I'm in Massachusetts and keep the heat really low in the winter (which is basically 6 months out of the year here.)

Assuming that I have any control over the heat... sometimes the apartment has no way to lower it and you just sit there baking unless you open the windows.

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Auros's avatar

Er, "heating above 65". *shakes fist at lack of edit button*

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Margot P.'s avatar

I once had a lecturing professor mention, casually and unprompted, that he prefers to keep his house at 72 degrees year round. I can’t look at him now without silently wondering how and why he lives this way.

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emmaloo's avatar

This but bumped up to 78 degrees for a married couple I know AND they sleep under a comforter all year round. It sounds so impossible that I'm almost positive that I'm misremembering but I recall feeling very violent emotions when the information was disclosed, so maybe not??

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Allison's avatar

Then you have our house, in Atlanta in the summer, where my boyfriend keeps the temperature at 78 degrees (!!! he would live in a sauna I swear) in the summer. I lower it to 74 when I'm home to not die of heat stroke but still making an effort to not use excessive energy. We put it at 72 at night.

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J. Woods's avatar

OMG. I would be lying dead on the floor.

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Allison's avatar

My personal assumptions about what makes for a reasonable indoor temperature are becoming warped, and he acts like I am nuts for thinking upper 70s is unlivable inside. This is a good reality check for me!

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Lise's avatar

I loved this (as always) but as a European had to convert this to Celsius in order to understand it.

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Alex (they/them)'s avatar

Ha, I knew there was a reason I like it at 65 degrees!

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J. Woods's avatar

This is what we need in my office, where somebody keeps sneaking over to the thermostat and pushing it up to 80 degrees.

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Jessica Silverstein's avatar

I awoke one morning during my freshman year of college, drenched in sweat and convinced I was about to die, to find that my roommate had set the thermostat to 88. Why did it even go that high? Who gives college freshmen that kind of power????

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J. Woods's avatar

This is what it's like at work. We get these people who move here from some tropical area and keep complaining that it's always cold. They wear parkas in June. Any chance they get they sneak over to the thermostat and crank it up to 80 something.

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