Is It Cheaper To Keep Aircon On All The Time? Do you save on energy by shutting off the air conditioner when you’re at work, or is it better to let it run at the same temperature? At some point, all of us wondered, typically after coming home to our soaring house on a long hot day.
Not only you’re increasing the electricity budget by wasting energy on aircon, but you’re burning fossil fuels and coal at a higher rate. This also contributes to climate change worldwide.
While this is a commonly understood issue among most people, we still ought to know whether we’re saving more for the long term or doing the opposite by keeping the Air Conditioner system on throughout the day.
In the hot months, air conditioners provide comfort, while providing the house with free-flowing air. While it might not sound true but it is efficient to leave on aircon unit when you’re out. However, this doesn’t mean that you should keep the air conditioner on 24/7.
There is a right and a wrong way of doing this, which we’ll explore.
Air conditioners are helpful for maintaining indoor humidity and temperature levels. When the AC unit gets turned off during a hot day, even just for a mere a few hours, things become off-balance pretty soon.
After turning it off for some time the air conditioner will need to work harder for restoration of comfort levels when turning it on. This happens mainly when you’re doing things that are done by most people, which is cranking the AC thermostat down.
Rather than making the house environment comfortable, you’re just abusing the dial and making the air conditioning function inefficiently. You can also check the post for an explanation of why it happens.
On the contrary, a properly tuned air conditioner maintains the right balance in temperature and humidity. To conserve energy even while keeping the air conditioner on, you can follow these simple guidelines.
The best thing you can do is to maintain the AC unit temperature near 78°F when you’re outside. With this setting, the AC unit won’t run throughout the day. Modern AC units generally have functioning cycles and release air 15°F to 20 °F is less than ambient temperature.
Then the thermostat determines whether more cycles are required for reaching the thermostat temperature or not. As 78°F is quite a warm setting, your AC unit won’t take long to recognize that more cycles are not required.
Also, by turning down the thermostat 10 degrees, you’re able to roughly save 10% of the energy bill annually.
Sometimes homeowners forget about turning the AC thermostat up when leaving the house. They can avoid problems by using a programmable AC thermostat.
AC Unit owners without programmable thermostats spend most of their time while tinkering with these devices for getting the settings right. This can disrupt the function of the unit. The air conditioner frequently starts and stops, adding needless wear-and-tear, while lessening the unit’s lifespan.
There is much more than only getting savings on energy bills with the aircon unit. One benefit is that you avoid insects and mold prevailing inside humid houses. It happens quite fast too! 60% humidity is the ideal level of humidity for insect infestations and the growth of mold.
It’s essential to keep the aircon functioning at a low level throughout the daytime for fostering around the preferable 55% humidity level. This quickly goes back to 50% level after turning down the thermostat upon returning home.
So overall would it be cheaper to leave them on the aircon unit throughout the day? The straightforward answer to this question is a yes. By keeping it on, you save on energy and repair costs, especially during hot weather.
Also, the house is less likely to get negative effects of excessive heat and humidity at day. This results in the protection of health and also saving more on money for long. You just have to turn up the thermostat a little bit while you’re not present in the house.
