I’m having fun training my new thermostat!
According to the manual, how it works is that you set a time at which you want to have reached a certain temperature and the thermostat will estimate how long it will take to reach that temperature. For example, if you want to get up at 8AM to a rig that is at 60F, then the thermostat might start as early as 6AM.
For some reason, it takes me weeks to get used to the sound of the furnace cycling on and off at night and until then it wakes me up every time. So while we’re having these fairly mild nights where the electric heaters are enough to keep the temperature at 55F or higher keeping the furnace from cycling on unless absolutely necessary is a priority.
This morning, I had the thermostat set to reach 70F by 8AM. At about 5:45, it kicked on. At about 6:00, I was boiling hot and badly needing to get a few more hours of sleep (I’ve been swamped with work and burning the midnight oil). So I got up to lower the temperature threshold and saw that it was about 63 in the rig. I reset the threshold for 60 and went back to bed.
When I got up around 9:00, it was 60F in the rig and perfectly cozy for about a half hour and then my body temperature dropped. So I reset the daytime threshold for 65 and that ended up being too much. I finally settled on 63.
What’s interesting in all of this is that I need the temperature a lot lower than I thought I did and that I don’t have to work in increments of 5 or 10 degrees anymore. I think this new thermostat will make my furnace run more efficiently and it will be interesting to see if I notice a difference in my propane consumption.
Right now, the propane consumption has been negligible. I hadn’t had time to go to town to refill and was being super conservative with my bottles, thinking I was on dregs, but I had a full 10lbs left between the two of them when I finally got to town yesterday and I’ve been running on these so long I can barely remember the time before that that they were filled.
As for power, Laura has yet to analyze her power bills, but I’ve been using a Kill-o-Watt meter to track power usage with my electric heaters and it’s coming out to about $1 a day each so far, and that’s with them running 24/7 on low. So I’m not too worried!
You have me remembering a time when my son and step-son slept in the camper one night in the winter. I set the heater on the kitchen counter not thinking about heat rising. Step-son came into the house in the morning saying he was freezing all night. He had been sleeping on the sofa that was below counter height. My son was sleeping in the bunk area over the sofa and he came in the house minutes later dripping in sweat saying he was cooking all night. Do you have a thermometer you can set in your bed area and see just how much heat is getting up there? Then maybe you could set your temperature even lower at night.
I can’t set the thermostat any lower than 55F to protect the plumbing. 55F is perfect for me to be cozy up in my bunk since it’s well-insulated, I wear several layers, and I have about five blankets. But it’s brutal when I pull back the blankets. The trick is to find the temperature I can handle while under the blankets and which won’t make me gasp when I get up. 🙂
One of the things that I really noticed in our rig (fifth wheel) is the hot head cold toes (air stratification). I turned on a small fan at the floor blowing up and mixing the air (bottom to top) seemed to make a big difference.
If you have them, try a thermometer at the floor, 60 cm, 120 cm, 180 cm and 2 meters (ceiling??) and notice the differences.
Or, if you have one for measuring the tire temps, an optical one and measure the wall all the way up.
We leave ours running 24/7 . It balances the temps out a LOT.
Bill, with the electric heaters, I’ve only needed the furnace during the day when it’s been well below freezing. We dipped just below freezing a couple of hours ago and the heaters are still keeping the rig at a comfy 65F. Propane is so much more expensive than electricity here and I have to drive quite a distance to get the bottles refilled, so it’s worth it to me to have the furnace only cycle on when I really need it to to keep the plumbing from freezing. Otherwise, I prefer to add another sweater. 🙂