For those of you with AC, what are you keeping your thermostat set to when you have guests during a heat wave? My current guests are keeping mine at between 70-72 (21 celcius) all day long. My basement apartment is like a walk in freezer!! I am down here with fleece pants and a fleece jacket! I keep having to go outside to warm up a bit! Thinking about editing my listing to say something like "due to my basement apartment being on the same system as the main house, please do not turn the AC down past 74 (23-24 celcius) degrees. 74 seems very comfortable for me when I am in my main house. When it is just me, I keep it at 75-76. Just curious as to how you manage your AC?
Oh my goodness. Canāt you put a governor on it? That way it is kept within a range that YOU control, and the guests can only control it within that certain range. I can recommend Landlordstat. I am way up in the cold northeast, no a/c, but I certainly have my heat on a governor!!! You can bet on that. It takes maybe 2 minutes to install. We actually put it in and take it off and put on a manual, depending on when we have people in the unit (for example, in the winter if I donāt have people in the unit, I put in the manual so I can turn the heat to 50). Good luck.
21 degrees is in no way cold for Northern Europeans etc., itās what we heat our homes up to! Its also about the temperature shops etc.set AC to. Personally I would not have it on all day for environmental reasons, plus I would most likely be out. However I would hope to get it to 20 or hopefully less at night just to sleep. Yep get a landlord thermostat to save your bills.
1 Like
As a European I disagree. Yes in winter we heat our homes to be at 21Ā°C, but to put an airco at 21Ā°C when thereās a heat wave outside doesnāt seem normal to me.
3 Likes
Northern Europe. We have a heatwave in the UK at the moment! Believe me, when itās 25 degrees at night I would 100% use Aircon if I had it. As I say I would not use it in the day for environmental reasons, but might be tempted to do one room just to get some work done. A lot of people are not working very hard in the heat at the moment! Most shops, big restaurants and offices are indeed air-conditionined down to about 20 degrees, so it is definitely desired!
In the winter itās much easier to wear more clothes and blankets, in the heat thereās nothing you can do thatās really effective apart from Aircon.
@pdxwindjammer, In my listing I have temperature limits on a/c explicitly stated. I have the cottage around 75/76F when they arrive, and there are notes on each thermostat that tell them not to set any lower than 73F. I had guests who said they āneededā it 62F at night, and the system is just not capable of doing that! They didnāt read the listing, and were very unhappy. Besides the obvious issue of cost, my HVAC guy told me that heat pumps stand a chance of the compressor freezing if set too low. I did put a window unit in the bedroom that catches the afternoon sun, and tell them they can cool that room to as low a temperature as they want.
I live in South Florida where 90-105F temps are normal for summer (May through October). My partner and I keep the house at 78-80F day and night, but our listing has itās own AC. We set the AC to 80F before guests arrive, but they can set it to what they want. The vast majority will set the temp between 72 and 75F and we donāt care what the they set it to. We do ask them to turn it back up to 80F if they are going out for the day (it only takes 15 minutes to chill down the whole listing).
We have had a few āwackosā who set the temp down to 62-65F, but if we see condensation on the windows, we make them turn the temp back up above 70. Itās ridiculously stupid to be in a place where ambient temperatures are warm and then turn the AC down so far that you have to walk around in long sleeves and a sweater to be comfortable.
3 Likes
Iām from Northern Europe, and I never use an Airco in a hotel room or house.
A few times, I used it in a hotel, to run it half an hour before bedtime to cool the room a bit.
But I cannot stand them while sleeping.
Whit the current heatwave in Nortern Europe, I just wear pyjamas and sleep on top of the blankets, with the windows open.
I heard of a rule of thumb that the AC temperature should not be set lower than 6C from the outside temperature. With a bigger difference the body has problems adapting, making it more vulnerable to viruses and bacteria.
1 Like
I have AC but I have something called a āswamp coolerā or evaporative air as my central AC. It works reasonably well if the humidity is low and itās not too hot. I supplement that with a window AC in the guest room and in my bedroom. I ask that guests turn it off when not in the room and I have it on a internet connected plug so I can turn it off from outside the room if they donāt do it.
Like Ken I can tolerate a much higher temp than many people and do so for environmental reasons. Itās usually between 72 and 80 in my house in the summer. But I expect guests to be comfortable. I donāt believe it would be possible to get the temp lower than 68 or so with the equipment I have.
If and when I get central refrigerated air Iāll have an smart thermostat.
Ditto, Ken. We donāt have central air but one wall unit in the entire apartment. And we very rarely use it. THereās no AC in any other part of the apartment (nothing in the bedroom but a fan).
The two rental apartments both have central air so guests can choose for themselves. I donāt think Iāve ever had a guest set it at below 72 - why come to South Florida and be cold? Iāve had guests who set it to 80+ so costwise, it balances out.
Not according to the internet - it says that London is 84 at the moment. (3 pm English time). Itās 87 here (only ten in the morning) with a āfeels likeā of 94 - probably something to do with humidity which I donāt understand.
So everyone is different. Like the OP Iād be cold if the temperature was 72. Some people might find that cool though. In a rental thatās not a budget one, guests would prefer to choose.
We have a similar issue as you in that we have an attached in-law suite but we have the thermostat on our side of the house. Since the guest suite is single story and our side is two, they get the brunt of the sun.
We have a Nest thermostat and I put a Nest temp reader in the guest bedroom and their living space. This way I can monitor the temp in their space. We have noticed thereās about 2 degrees difference, with theirs being warmer. I personally prefer 76 during the day but we keep it two degrees lower for the guests.
Edited to add: We are in Southern California and itās been triple digits this summer.
Thanks for all the detailed replies! I should clarify that I have a Nest Thermostat. I can change it from my phone but donāt like to do that without first talking to my guests. I can also set the high and low temp. For instance, if I change my rules that the AC should not be set lower than 74, I can block it so the guests canāt change it to below that. I want to add some info in my rules about keeping the AC at a reasonable temperature but trying to decipher what most folks feel is reasonable.
When I visit friends in the southern part of the USA, it seems most of them keep the thermostat at about 74 degrees.
We use nest(s) and dont tell guests a temperature paramater restriction.
But this week when they kept putting it on 67 F , I simply notched it slowly back up to 72 F.
I have 2 houses and my teeth were grinding all weekā¦one house group at 67 F and the other at 69 F.
My a/c bills are very high, and I charge accordingly for a night stay in anticipation of polar bears.
I understand this is not the same as many of you, but it is how I handle it.
During the heatwave the air coming in my bedroom window has sometimes been hotter than the air in my curtained house, and there has been no breeze, so open windows do not help! If you can get to sleep wearing anything at 25 degrees (I am naked under a damp sheet constantly fanning and spraying myself) then you are very, very lucky indeed. For two thirds of the UK population it is difficult to sleep. Heat can prevent the release of melatonin and make sleep impossible.
You canāt compare a heatwave in the UK with Florida! Itās a heatwave for us, all fans and portable Aircon units have sold out. Itās 26 degrees this afternoon, so not fresh but you can move. Trouble is in the city the stone buildings all act as convector heaters at night. Weāre just not set up for it, and closed most of our lidos when we became centrally heated pussies.
2 Likes
@Jess1 I agree that it is much more difficult to deal with hot weather in a climate zone which is not used to it. Our daughters and grandchildren are escaping from sweltering London to us in Southern Spain! Our houses are built for heat with tiled floors, blinds which shut out the sun, multiple fans and aircon in the guest apartments (though we donāt use it in our bedroom, just a ceiling fan.)
Also, of course, we have pools which make you feel cooler even by just looking at them! I thought that some of the lidos were re-opening in the UK (what a short-sighted policy it was to close them!) but of course they get very crowded.
Anyway, donāt worry, just wait till the school holidays start and then youāll get back to the British weather we all know and ā¦ love?
1 Like
But do you have to provide what the guests are used to?
Why go on holiday to a hot area when you cannot stand the heat?
āWhen in Rome, do as the Romans doā that is how my parents raised me when we traveled.
I expect the same (with some margin) from my guests.
I do have an AC, and I am not planning to get one. But I also do not heat my rooms much higher than normal, not in the winter for mu Russians, and not in Summer for my Arabs.
2 Likes
This is probably the best advice of all regarding temperatures. Youāve only got to read here how the English and the South Floridians (for example) have totally different ideas about thatās cold and whatās warm.
If hosts can supply a couple of fans and an electric space heater then most people should be satisfied. I expect to freeze when I go to the UK (even in summer) and when English family visit me here in Florida they expect to swelter and sweat. Part of the fun of travelling is tha fact that things arenāt like they are at home,
Thatās what I thought? Electric always more expensive than gas in US, I think, especially in the summer. Could be different though, depending on climateā¦Lucky for me a I have a swamp cooler, as one of the mods mentioned having. Water bill goes up a bit, but electric is just the cost of running a large fan. YAY!
1 Like
@cabinhost beat me to the punch! lol
We use the space heater in our apartment for about one week a year 
Usually, some time between the end of December and the end of February we get what we Floridians call a ācold spellā. We dredge all our cold weather clothes out (coats, scarves, boots, woolly jumpers etc) and walk around looking as though weāre off on an Antarctic expedition. We laugh at the tourists wearing shorts and t-shirts and they laugh at us.
Plenty of people throw their windows open to air out the house because itās been sealed all year to keep the AC in. (We donāt because I open the windows when the weather is warm to let the heat in!)
During this ācold spellā the temperature is usually in the sixties which is bloody cold to me (But just a nice pleasant temperature, I know, in England!) At night, it can dip to the upper 50s - shock horror. I freeze.
So we have the space heater. Each of the two rentals also has one that lives in the bedroom closet that people can move to the lounge and use if they are colds when they are immobile - watching TV or whatever. Iām pretty sure that the one in the downstairs rental has never been used as Iāve never seen it be moved from itās place in the closet. The upstairs rentalās heater lives in the lounge and Iāve never seen that move either. So I doubt that guests have used them much, if at all.
The guests probably donāt even notice that itās cold. In those winter months they are 99.9% from places that are colder than here (Canada, UK, New York, Norway etc.) and probably think that theyāre in a warm paradise whilst Iām freezing! But the heaters are there is theyāre needed. I think they cost $25 each or something.
Like this one:
