I always thought it was an urban myth that if you set your thermostat to 68 degrees during the winter months that your furnace would run at optimal efficiency.

• I don’t know where I originally heard this, but it was something that I caught myself living by even though I didn’t have any proof to back this theory up.

For a long time I felt really guilty about turning the temperature past 68 degrees because in my mind, I would be wasting money. I also worried that I would be hurting my furnace because it would be running aggressively to heat my house. During my last HVAC tune up though, I decided to ask the HVAC professional if setting my thermostat to 68 degrees during the winter was really best. I was really scared about asking him because I didn’t want him to think less of me, especially if I was believing something that wasn’t true. However, the HVAC professional told me that the lower I set my thermostat the better. This was for obvious reasons because the lower the temperature, the less hard my furnace would have to run in order to warm my entire house. He said that most people recommended 68 degrees because it was the average temperature that most homeowners thought was warm and wasn’t deemed as “too cold.” Running my furnace at 70 degrees instead of 68 degrees wasn’t going to cause the furnace to stop working, even though it probably wasn’t going to run as efficiently as if it were set to 68 degrees.
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