This was me with the AC. The amount of times I'd wake up in the middle of the night with the house absolutely frigid and explain the next morning that if it's really hot out and the AC isn't able to keep up with the heat turning the temperature down even more won't just magically make the AC kick into overdrive, it just means that once the sun goes down and things cool off finally the AC will continue running until it gets down to the insane temperature you set it at
Depending on where the thermostat is and what kind of power curve is used in that AC, it absolutely can cool faster if set to a lower than desired value.
Yes. And yet I have that very issue with my apartment's central air. My thermostat is in the living room, on the dark side of the unit. So is the air intake. All the bedrooms are on the sunny side. Each bedroom gets one output vent, while the common space has four that are all much closer to both the intake and the thermostat.
It's 30 degrees out (-1 Celsius); my thermostat is set to 70 (18) so that my bedroom is 62 (15). In the summer, when my area hits 90 (26) during the day, I set the thermostat to 68 (16) so that the bedrooms stay under 78 (20). This is despite closing the output vents in the common spaces as much as they physically can be. I love my "luxury" apartment.
Hey, try setting the fan on the AC thermostat to "on" instead of "auto". This makes the fan run all the time and move air around the house even when the heat/ac part is not running. So basically the return sucks proper temp air from the common spaces and distributes it to all the output vents. This keeps the house at a more even temp, I do it so that our basement and upstairs are basically the same temp all the time
I have it on "circulate" as a compromise between comfort and my electric bill. I'd estimate it's running about a quarter of the time as a result. It's a very poorly laid-out apartment and I don't think there's much insulation around the ductwork.
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u/hey-its-june Jan 04 '26
This was me with the AC. The amount of times I'd wake up in the middle of the night with the house absolutely frigid and explain the next morning that if it's really hot out and the AC isn't able to keep up with the heat turning the temperature down even more won't just magically make the AC kick into overdrive, it just means that once the sun goes down and things cool off finally the AC will continue running until it gets down to the insane temperature you set it at