How Cold Do You Have Your Home Air Conditioner Set?

Hot on the heels of the story on QuickCountry.com yesterday that said office productivity increased while mistakes decreased when companies raised the temperatures in the workplace, it made me wonder at just what temperature most of us have our home air conditioners set.

I know it gets nippy at the office when the air conditioning is on. At a station where I used to work in Wisconsin, it was not uncommon to see other coworkers routinely wearing sweaters in the office during the summer because the air conditioning was set so cold. Even here in the Quick Country studios, I've had to go out to the car and get my fleece warm-up jacket a couple of times because I was cold, although that has to do more with the fact that the air conditioner vent is located directly above where we stand while we're on the air.

I, however, used to always LOVE the cold air conditioning. You couldn't ever get it cold enough for me. I think that stemmed from a few instances where the air conditioning failed, and the small studio where I worked heated up to a balmy 86 degrees. And that's not fun. So, ever since those couple of times, I've always liked it being too cold at work rather than too hot.

But I liked it cold at home, too. At my old house back in Wisconsin, I used to have my central air conditioner set at 68 degrees during the summer. It was an older, two-story house, and to keep things comfortable upstairs when I went to bed, I needed to keep it that cold downstairs. And, it was cold... and expensive.

So, when I read that you could reduce your power bill by about 10 to 11-percent simply by raising the temperature at which your central air is set, I was glad to see my wife and I are already there. I've been reformed from my 68-degree days, and these days don't mind it if we keep our a/c at a more reasonable 77 degrees (although, I do sometimes still lobby to turn ours down to 75...)

If you have central air at your place, at what temperature do you have it set?