this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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Title. We keep ours at 75F, parents do 77F, and in laws 68F. It made me curious what everyone else keeps theirs at?

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[–] snowe@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago

This is removing moisture from the air, making it feel colder.

That’s not how humidity works. Higher humidity means that cooler temperatures feel much colder and warmer temperatures feel much warmer. Even the heat index calculation shows this. Just try it out for yourself, or look at the formula. https://www.weather.gov/epz/wxcalc_heatindex

People's AC units are not actually cooling anywhere near those temperatures. The unit is just on 100% of the time at those temperatures, and they could realistically increase the temperature a great deal and get the same results.

I don’t know why you think this. Maybe you only have a single stage AC or maybe you’ve never actually measured the temp with an extra thermometer, but you can get the ac 40-50°F cooler than outside, both by removing humidity (which decreases the “feels like” temp) but also through actually heat removal from the house. You might just have bad insulation as well.

If you live in a dry climate you can do the opposite. Pump humidity in using a swamp cooler, which places moisture in the air and then immediately causes it to evaporate carrying heat with it in the state change. You’re cooling the air slightly and since moisture exaggerates temperature changes it feels cooler to you.