Turning your heat off at home while in Florida

almcc wrote:

MDKMDK wrote:

DougE wrote:
For a rule of thumb, you can assume the temperature of the pipes in the exterior walls will be halfway between the interior temperature and the outside temperature. If its 0*F outside and you have the thermostat set to 60*F inside then the pipe could reach 30*F. BTW, pipe insulation does not stop freezing, it just increases the amount of time till the pipe does freeze.

Good point. That's why we don't drop our T-stat below 65F when away, and the auxiliary heating is set to fire at the same temperature, so as to not lose too much ground in the event of a power failure that takes out the HVAC system. Our security system tells us if a power outage happens, and we deal with it, as required.
So far, so good.

I guess I would add the phrase "it depends" to the above comments. It depends on your house design (does it have a basement, are the water pipes internal or in the walls, what sort of heating system do you have, how well is the house insulated etc.)

In our case all the water pipes are internal in the basement (except for the hose bibs outside that I drain), the heating is forced warm air, the heating ducts in the basement keep it 2C above the main floor set point and keep the pipes warm, and the house is well insulated. I don't have concerns about setting the temp at 10C. If you have the knowledge of your house and how it's built it's OK, if not, a higher temp may be mandated. The quality of the power supply network is also important.

As a FYI, we had the transformer that powers our (and our neighbours) house blow up 2 years ago during in an ice storm. It took 30 hours to bring the main floor temp down to the ambient outside temp, the electric guys installed an "extension cord" from another neighbours place to restore our power while a new transformer was installed. This experience confirmed some of the calculations that some of us did to prepare (and prevent freeze ups) for the worst Y2K situation that didn't happen at that time.

Our power supply is as good or as bad as any. That's the only real variable in this equation, imo. Whether the pipes are inside the exterior walls or buried in the bowels of your basement won't make much difference if your power is out for a long time, say a week or more like New Brunswick over the years, and it takes out your electrically powered HVAC, and you're not home, and even if you were, there aren't any friendly power company guys around to help you get through it, as you cite in your example. Like has happened several times in New Brunswick recently. No idea why it's always NB. Bad luck?
We set the heat sources at 65F, because it makes the drop to freezing a longer fall, in the even that both the primary and secondary heat systems fail. Our alternate heat sources function whether the HVAC is on or off, and will work for days, weeks, if necessary. At least until we can get home to address a lengthy power outage situation, if there's anything we can actually do about that.