Setting the room temperature to 17/18C when people are dressed in summer clothes and 23/24C when people are in warm clothes

[Multiplenames10]

Am I being unreasonable to think people who do this are illogical?

To me it makes much more sense, is more comfortable and environmentally friendly to set room temperatures to higher in the summer (but still comfortable) and lower in the winter when people are wrapped up anyway.

I guess people who set it like this are assuming the machine isn't going to be perfect at maintaining the temperature they want (approx 20C all year round) so they are overshooting a bit.

Set room temperatures? Are you talking about air conditioning, because I don’t know anyone who doesn’t just switch the central heating off in summer?

When I lived overseas in a seasonal country with summers at 35 and winters -18, the recommendation (there were public adverts) to heat to 20 and cool to 26.

Yes I'm talking about air conditioning for 17/18C and heating

I guess I should say make rooms actually 17/18C or 23C with AC or heating.

But I do get annoyed by people set something thermostatically controlled (and is either off/on) to a more extreme and it just over shoots rather than getting there faster.

Who do you know that sets the aircon at 17/18? We set it to 26-28 and then only overnight.

@Kepler22B this seems very very sensible and good to hear that a whole country understands what I'm saying. Thank you, that makes me feel happy.
I'm in the UK and sometimes I suggested this to people, when I've spend a winters day in a furnace of an office or shivered (or resorted to jumper) in summer, and people really don't get it!

My air con doesn’t even go that low, the lowest is 19 and that’s what it’s set to all year round.

The heating does get set to 22 in winter though, but I like to be cosy… I’m under a blanket right now.

You are around much more sensible people than me. I turned the temperature up a little in my workplace office today when I realised it was set to 19 and felt chilly. So many places I've work have done this.

24c in a room that's been heated feels very different to a room that has been cooled.

When in a heated room you will still get random pockets of cold air and feel it sap away your body heat. I regularly would wake up shivering at 20c during the winter.

A cooled room has the opposite - random sources of heat that make you feel hotter and your body is already working hard to keep you cool and can't cope with the extra heat well. 20c in summer often has me waking up severely dehydrated with a dry mouth.

And that's before we start factoring in things like humidity which drastically changes the way hit and cold feel. You'd have a point if the temperatures actually felt the same and triggered the same bodily responses, but they don't.

I think I'm more used to modern well insulated rooms (as my work tends to be in this type of building), not drafty and have good heating and cooling systems. Perhaps that is a big part of the problem there are poorly insulated and drafty buildings/ or poor heating control and people get into habits of doing extremes.

My house is new build and we never change thermostat from 20 and it is a comfortable even temperature all winter.

I'm mostly talking about work places where the high set temperatures in the winter can make it really hard to focus or low temperature from AC in the summer. I certainly feel hot in 23/24C offices if in more wintery clothes and cold today in a summer dress in a 19C office.

I've now spent 3 days feeling progressively cool/cold in the office building and going out at lunch to warm up. I heard a few people from other offices saying the same. I'm gently encouraging it to be turned up to a bit higher temperature.

Thank you those who responded. I'm genuinely surprised that people think it is ok to over cool in summer and over heat in winter (I'm not talking about ineffective heating or AC drafts or poor insulation ie places where it doesn't get to the set temperature).
I really do think it is better to have indoor temperatures trending towards outdoors, for the reasons I suggested in the op. Also it's just more comfortable not to have extreme differences between indoors and outdoors.

In my country it is a law.
Workplace must heat up at some minimal temperature (or more), but isn't allowed to cool under some temperature.

@Multiplenames10 I find a lot of people here don't understand how air-conditioning works

To be fair, I became good at it when I was working in the US. But yes, 19 is going to be cold. It might make sense for somebody to set it to that when they first walked in and there's loads of heat trapped in the room, to get the temperature down, but after that, it needs to go up.

does it have a timer?

It gets very warm where I live during the summer, 40+ degrees. I set the ac to 23 at night and 25/26 during the day and that's fine. Ceiling fans in the bedrooms help a lot too. We had visitors once who werent used to the heat and whacked it down to 17. It was like an icebox upstairs

In winter I set the heat to around 20c

What you do sounds entirely sensible and yes is the ones who wack it down to 17 I think are being unreasonable (especially if they leave it there and don't just use it to cool an initially hot room as mentioned by @EmeraldRoulette ) .

One office I worked in was a bit cold in the morning in winter and a colleague would put on one of those liquid radiators on max (fine to get it warmed up a bit), but then she would leave it going all day and sit there in skimpy summer rest tops. I had to keep asking her to turn it down, once the office warmed up and I would often end up feeling fuzzy headed and head achy from the heat. I suspect she had her heating on high at home and anything else felt cold, rather than trying to adjust a bit to the season.

@FourSevenThree that is interesting that it is the law in your country. Makes a lot of sense if even more extreme than UK and saves a lot of energy

My thermostat is off in summer and 13c in winter. 😂

Yes my office this week has been unpleasantly cold due to the AC (commented on by multiple people so it’s not just me!), but during winter it’s a perfectly reasonable temperature. I don’t want to have to carry a jumper on the train when it’s 33 degrees outside but freezing in the office.

I have air con at home and it’s been set to 20 in this hot weather. During the winter I never put my heating on above 21 so very little difference.

I need a colder room in the heat to keep my core temperature down. It was 28 outside yesterday and I went for a 20 minute walk. I was only able to do this as my core was still cool from the air con. This meant that I didn’t overheat during the walk. If I had it at 26 I’d already be hot and the walk would have finished me off!

People who refuse to put the air con to a cool temp in the office during summer used to really annoy me. One of the reasons I’m glad I wfh now.

This

I do - but also in the winter my heating is also set to about 18/19. I hate being hot

Yes that would help if you have to go out in the heat of the day, but you surely you wouldn't make a room of colleagues cold sitting a desks, when you could just take a cold drink to achieve the same thing or a cool shower, or a cool damp cloth over neck.... Seems a very energy inefficient way to do this

that is interesting that it is the law in your country. Makes a lot of sense if even more extreme than UK and saves a lot of energy

Nothing really extreme, our number of very hot days is maybe double compared to the south UK.

The original reason wasn't saving energy, but public health. It isn't healthy if you repeatedly switch between overcooled spaces and the outside. So there is a limit for max difference between inside and outside temperature. Additional benefit is, that the overcoolers can't freeze everyone else.

I think this makes sense in the less hot countries, where the aircon just takes an edge of it and people still flow in an out, use public transport (which means waiting outside)

Once I ve spent some time in the US heatwaves and our max difference wouldn't work there at all, but they are more adjusted to not flowing in and out, they really remained inside and used cars only.

Why can't they just put on a cardigan if they're cold? It's not like I can strip off! I have health issues and struggle to regulate my temperature. A cold drink or cool cloth just isn't going to cut it and I can't go off for a shower at work.

It just feels ridiculous to have to put a cardigan in your bag on a 34 degree day. I'm not saying the AC shouldn't be used, but just makes sense not to have on very low temperatures.

@FourSevenThree makes a good point about health benefits of not going between extremes from indoors to outdoor.