Nor is the journey to the thermostat so arduous that I can’t get up and walk over to it if I should ever feel the need. Maybe I’m just too old to get it.

I live in a three story house, and sometimes only notice when what the thermostat is set to when I'm tired and ready for bed. Climbing a flight of stairs after going down and changing the thermostat doesn't appeal much. I also got it on sale, which was nice.

[–] Bluewing@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

That's why you have a programmable thermostat. Set and forget. No need to climb stairs, (good exercise), to change the temp.

[–] RogueJello@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

LOL. That's not a bad approach. What I find happens in practice is that we turn it off during season transitions so we can open the windows, and then forget or need to turn it back on again to deal with the fluctuations in the weather. The temps here have shifted as much as 50 degrees in a single day. Hard to program for that in advance. :)

[–] Bluewing@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I live in northern Minnesota, so we get that a lot too in the spring and fall. But my thermostat is set to auto with a minimum temp of 68F to turn on the heat. And 74F to run the air conditioner when needed. It works with very, very little intervention from me year round.

[–] RogueJello@lemmy.world 1 points 22 minutes ago

Yeah, that's a good option. However those temps swings also mean that it's likely to get back down (or up) again the next day, and in the mean time I'm potentially running the thermostat.

I've also got an old brick house, which means that thermal mass is a thing in a way that's hard to explain to people who live in modern buildings, but the easiest way to understand it is to realize the house walls are a lot slower at changing temps than the air, which will also mess with the thermometer.