Thermostat Vacation Setting for Winter: What to Set It To

The best thermostat vacation setting for a Sacramento winter trip is about 58°F, held with your thermostat's vacation or hold mode, not the heat switched off. At 58°F the system runs far less while the house is empty, but the house stays warm enough to come back to normal in a few hours. Then set it to return to your usual temperature before you get home, so you walk into a warm house instead of waiting for one.

The thermostat does more of the saving than most people expect. ENERGY STAR estimates that a certified smart thermostat saves about 8% on heating and cooling bills, largely by not heating the house when nobody needs it. A week away over the holidays is the easiest version of that.

A setting around 58°F gets most of the savings without a slow, expensive recovery. Going lower saves a little more, but not much in our climate.

Sacramento winters are mild. Many days reach the 50s and 60s, and the coldest stretches come at night, often with tule fog and lows near freezing. With the thermostat at 58°F, the system only runs to make up for those cold nights. Drop it to 50°F and the heat runs a little less on the coldest nights, but the extra savings are small. The trade-off is the climb back: 18 degrees instead of 10, which takes noticeably longer, and with a heat pump a climb that big is what brings on the backup heat strips.

Our recommendation for most homes: 58°F for any trip longer than a couple of days. For a single overnight, a normal nighttime setback is enough.

Leave the heat on at a low setting instead of switching the system off. An empty house with no heat can drift well into the low 50s on cold valley nights, especially a single-story slab home with older windows.

Two things suffer when it gets that cold. Recovery takes much longer, because the walls, floors and furniture have all cooled and have to be warmed back up. And water lines in outside walls, the garage or a crawl space are better off in a house that stays heated. A low vacation setting handles both for very little energy.

Most programmable and smart thermostats have a vacation, away or hold setting built in. You enter the temperature to hold and the dates you will be gone, and the thermostat returns to your normal schedule on its own on the end date.

The names differ by brand. Google Nest, ecobee and Honeywell Home thermostats all offer some version of a vacation or hold feature in the thermostat menu or the app. On an older programmable thermostat without a vacation setting, use a permanent hold at 58°F and change it back by hand when you return.

A few settings to check before you leave:

• Set the end date for the day before you return if your thermostat has no time option, so the house is warm when you walk in.
• Leave the fan on auto. Running the blower all week in an empty house only uses electricity.
• Check how vacation mode and geofencing interact. On most models vacation mode takes priority, but if yours does not say so, turn geofencing off for the trip. Our post on smart thermostat geofencing covers how that feature decides who is home.

With a heat pump, use the same 58°F vacation setting but plan the return earlier. A heat pump warms the house steadily, not quickly, and a big jump in setpoint right before you arrive can bring on the backup electric heat strips, which cost more to run.

End the vacation hold several hours before you get home, or raise the temperature from the app when you start the drive back. Many smart thermostats also offer an early-start or smart recovery feature that warms the house gradually ahead of the schedule. We cover the backup heat side of this in our post on heat pump setbacks and AUX heat.

A gas furnace recovers faster, so returning to normal an hour or two ahead is usually plenty.

Here is how it usually goes: a Roseville family leaves for a week at Christmas, sets the thermostat to 58°F on vacation mode, and sets the end date for the morning they fly home. The house holds at 58°F through the foggy nights, the heat pump starts bringing it back up that morning, and it is at 68°F when they walk in that evening. Nobody comes home to a cold house, and the system skipped a week of heating rooms nobody was in.

Call us if your thermostat has no vacation or hold option and you want one that does, if your heat pump runs backup heat every time it recovers, or if the house takes much longer than it should to warm back up. Slow recovery is sometimes a setting and sometimes a sign the system needs service.

PULSE HVAC installs and services thermostats and heating systems across the Sacramento area. Call (916) 850-2221 or book online to schedule a visit.

Sources

• ENERGY STAR — Smart Thermostats
• ENERGY STAR — Heating and Cooling