Air conditioning systems can help keep your home or commercial building at a comfortable temperature throughout the year. However, figuring out what exactly defines a ‘comfortable’ temperature setting for your family or your employees can be more complicated than it seems. It depends on various defining factors like a person’s weight and gender along with the season and humidity level. The best option is to conduct your research (ask your family or colleagues) and find a middle ground.

It is important to understand that you don’t need to operate your domestic air conditioning system constantly, especially if you are away from the house during the day. Now, if you turn off your A/C before you leave and switch on again when you return, the air conditioner actually works more smoothly than if you leave it on during the day. If you use the air conditioning system only when required, rather than constantly, you will save on your energy consumption and minimize the wear and tear on the fans and the compressor. It is advisable to consult an air conditioner maintenance company to periodically inspect and service your A/C.

However, when you return home or to your office, you shouldn’t automatically turn up your A/C on the coldest possible setting and let it run full blast. If you happen to do that, it will just shoot up the interior temperature and go way above the ideal temperature setting. It is a popular belief that an A/C should do more work to cool your house on a hot day rather than maintaining an ideal temperature comfortable enough to stay without having to use additional clothing.

Let us take a look at some of the deciding conditions which will determine setting the ideal temperature for your air conditioner.

Seasonal Changes

It might shock you to know that the ideal temperature setting doesn’t necessarily stay the same throughout the year, but it changes with respect to the changing season. Hence, you should keep in mind that you will need to alter the temperature settings of your thermostat or air conditioner to match the fluctuating seasons. Now, you should tailor your home temperature according to family requirements but as a reference point, it is normal to have a temperature of 22 to 24 degrees during summer and 24-28 degrees during winter months.

Characteristics

Each individual will have minor changes in preference when it comes to their comfort levels but there are a few factors which have a notable effect. Some of the most common factors are age, weight and sex of the person. You must have seen observational evidence of these in your own family or workplace. For instance, have you ever observed it’s more likely to be women who feel the cold and need an extra layer of clothing? This is due to the fact that women prefer a comparatively warmer environment. A report suggests that women have lower metabolic rates than men and hence prefer ideal temperature around 3 degrees warmer.

Most air conditioning maintenance london companies will advise you to keep an ideal temperature which is one degree warmer than the temperature where you feel uncomfortable and need extra clothing. Most new age air conditioners these days are equipped with dynamic features that makes it easy to manage temperature settings. The most popular among these are Daikin air conditioning system and Mitsubishi air conditioning system.

Energy Consumption

As a household, we understand you will want to keep costs down inside the budget wherever possible and the energy usage of your A/C plays a major role in doing so. To use your air conditioner in an optimal way, you can use the good old trial and error method along with the timer function.

First and foremost, you must use some trial and error to know what temperature setting your family feels comfortable at. For instance, in the summer you might start setting your A/C at 24 degrees and then raise this by 1 degree per week till you and your family feels it is getting too warm. By this way, you can save at least 3-4 % on your energy bill by increasing 1 degree on your air conditioning system.

Second of all, by utilising the timer feature efficiently, you will make sure you’re not cooling your home and exhausting energy unnecessarily. For instance, you may set the A/C to turn on 15 minutes before you reach home so it has time to cool down before you arrive and turn off automatically at night after a few hours when the outside temperature is cool.

Conclusion

As we have seen the factors affecting the ideal temperature settings for your air conditioner, it is best to maintain your A/C by annual maintenance for optimum results. If you are looking for help, you can contact air conditioning expert for domestic air conditioning installation and maintenance throughout the year.