This common AC and heating mistake is costing you money

As someone who reviews a lot of cooling and heating problems, I tend to notice how people have heaters and AC, both in their cars and homes, set up.

I notice one mistake constantly: setting devices to maximum or minimum temperatures.

Don’t do this; it will just cost you money.

Going for the highest or lowest setting doesn’t affect the output

When it’s hot or very cold, there seems to be an instinct to rectify the situation immediately, and people feel an urge to use the maximum or minimum settings available.

With an electric heater, for example, that might be whacking the temperature up to 37°C immediately. With an AC unit, it will be the opposite, and the temperature would be set to 16°C.

Having asked some people why they do this, it’s because they think that setting the maximum temperature will heat the room faster or that setting the minimum cools it quicker.

I kind of get the rationale behind this, particularly for car owners. Get in a car on a hot day, and there’s usually a Max AC button (or similar), which will set the temperature to 16°C, put the fans on maximum and turn on air recirculation.

But, the issue here is that there’s a general misunderstanding about what the temperature setting does. It is not the output temperature, but a setting for the thermostat. So, on a heating system, the heater turns off when the temperature rises to the target; for AC, the unit turns off when the temperature falls to the target.

In all cases, the output is the same. A heater’s output is the same regardless of what target temperature you set. The only way to change this is to either adjust the power output of an electric heater or the hot water temperature of your boiler.

For an AC unit, they don’t cool by blowing cold air, they work by pumping hot air out of your room (the cold air you feel is just the hot air with its heat removed).

But, I’ll say it again, adjusting the temperature on the device doesn’t affect how fast it cools or heats, and you risk damaging your appliance and running up bigger bills.

You’re putting undue pressure on your devices

A typical electric heater might have a high maximum target temperature, but it’s one that you’d never want to reach in a room. For example, I’ve seen plenty of times that someone has set a fan heater to 37° because it’s cold, but there are two issues with this: first, you don’t actually want your room to be 37°, because that’s insanely hot; secondly, your heater is never actually going to be able to reach that temperature, so it will just stay on and permanently and make you room uncomfortably warm.

It’s the same thing with a portable AC device. Setting it to 16°C is pointless: you don’t actually want your room to be that cold and, most importantly, the unit will never be able to achieve that temperature, so it will run permanently.

In both cases, the permanent running soon ramps up electricity costs, and you put undue wear and tear on each device by running it permanently, so you’ll see mechanical failure earlier.

Set your target temperature to something reasonable, and your devices will work as intended, and will shut down when the target temperature has been reached, saving money in the long run.

For a heater, a target of between 18°C and 21°C makes sense, for AC between 20°C and 25°C is more reasonable.

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