More people fight over the thermostat than the remote and those battles become more pitched during periods of extreme heat. The disputes aren’t just about comfort, they’re about money too because every time you lower the thermostat in hot weather it raises your electric bill. So what’s the best setting for your central air conditioner? Well, that depends on whether you care more about keeping cool or keeping your utility bill in check. Fortunately, there’s a happy medium. Energy Star says, for optimal cooling and energy efficiency, the coolest you should keep your house is 78° F and that’s only when you’re at home and awake. A programmable thermostat makes it easy to match your cooling needs to your schedule but you can make the adjustments manually if you don’t have one. Try the following setpoints: • 78° F when you’re home. • 85° F when you’re at work or away. • 82° F when you’re sleeping. More heat tolerant folks can experiment with the temperature, raising it one degree at a time to see how it affects your comfort and your budget.

You’ll save 3 percent on your air conditioning costs for every degree you raise the temperature. If you aren’t comfortable at 78° F, lower the temperature a degree at a time. A ceiling or box fan causes a wind chill effect that enhances cooling, helping you feel comfortable at a higher temperature as long as the humidity isn’t too high.hvac air conditioner parts Of course, if you live in an area with more moderate temperatures, you may not need your central air conditioning all day and night. best prices on window ac unitsIf so, you can take advantage of cooler night temperatures by keeping your windows open overnight. size of ac unitClose them on hot days and keep your shades and curtains drawn when it’s sunny outside. If you need the AC when you get home, you can program it to go on before you arrive or turn it on with a smartphone app.

It’s more difficult to reach the perfect temperature when you have a window air conditioner. Because the thermostat is in the unit itself, it registers the temperature in that part of the room and may not provide a consistent temperature throughout the space you want to cool, depending how big and open it is. That means getting the right comfort level is more trial and error. Start with it set at 78 degrees and see how you feel. If you have a window unit in your bedroom, turn it on 30 minutes or so before you go to bed so you’re not cooling an empty room. Ways to beat the heat. No matter what type of air conditioning you have, it’s easier to keep the temperature at a comfortable level if you can prevent heat from getting into your home. The three main sources of unwanted heat are heat that seeps in from the outdoors, waste heat given off by appliances and incandescent lightbulbs, and heat from sunlight shining through the windows. During a heat wave, avoid using your washer, dryer, and dishwasher during the heat of the day and make sure you use the exhaust fans in your kitchen and bathroom when you’re cooking or taking a shower.

Cook outside on your grill.Consumer Reports tests energy-saving programmable thermostats with and without remote access. Our top-rated thermostat with remote access is the Honeywell RTH9590WF, $300, followed by models from American Standard and Trane. The best thermostat we tested without remote access is the Honeywell Prestige HD YTHX9321R, $250, followed by models from Lux and Robert Shaw. How do you keep your cool? Let us know below.Written Written Written I'm not able to state an ideal setup, but I think I would turn the downstairs thermostats higher than the upstairs. It seem that in the winter the warm air would rise and help to raise the temperature upstairs and in the summer the cool air from upstairs will drop and help cool the lower floor.There are many reasons to upgrade to a fast new wireless network for your home. You may already have access to NBN (national broadband network) fibre and need the extra Wi-Fi capacity to distribute your faster Internet connection;

or you may just want to move files across various devices at a quicker rate than you're used to. Whatever your reasons, the wireless network standard that you should be looking is 802.11ac. It's the latest and greatest and will provide the best transfer rates.This is the wireless standard that has replaced 802.11n at the top-end of the Wi-Fi market, and while take up of this new standard has been somewhat slow, we are now starting to see more devices being released with support for the faster transfer rates that it can provide. There are many 802.11ac wireless routers on the Australian market now, and, rest assured, while they offer the brand new standard, they are also backwards compatible with 802.11n devices.Speeds available from 802.11ac wireless routers vary (starting at 867Mbps), but there are now products on the market that support rates up to 1300 megabits per second (Mbps). The 802.11ac standard runs in the 5GHz frequency band, which means you won't have to run it on the congested 2.4GHz band (though you can still run the 2.4GHz network simultaneously), and some routers that use the standard also implement new features such as beamforming antennas, which can adapt to the way signals are sent depending on the environment.

Some of the marketing terms used for 802.11ac wireless routers are a little misleading, and you should keep this in mind when purchasing. Often, a vendor will quote a single speed such as 1.75Gbps (gigabits per second) for its wireless router. This doesn't mean that the router can perform at that maximum speed. That figure is an amalgamation of both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz capabilities of the router. For example, to achieve the 1.75Gbps figure, the vendor is adding up the 1.3Gbps speed of the 5GHz network with the 450Mbps speed of the 2.4GHz network. The total figure is the speed at which the router can run both networks simultaneously.To reap the benefits of an 802.11ac wireless router, you will need to run client devices on it that also support the faster specification, and this means either buying computers that already have 802.11ac as part of their configuration, or buying USB adapters that can be used to connect to the 802.11ac wireless router at a faster rate than 802.11n. Many flagship smartphones that have been on the market since last year also support 802.11ac and will benefit from the extra speed that an 802.11ac wireless router can provide.