The State of the Union at 3am is Sweaty

I'm not saying you should keep your house at 45 degrees, but how do most Americans sleep at night with their house so warm at 68 degrees? I thought we all looked forward to cool summer nights - why do we keep our homes set at a warm summer night in the wintertime?

My wife and I bought a very warm comforter (only a few dollars more than a light comforter) and were saving big on our gas bill by letting our home cool off to around 60 at night. We raised it back to 68 after having our baby, but quickly tired of the sweat-drenched nights. Once she hit 8 months old, we bumped it back down to 65, about as high as we can tolerate.

But it's hard to blame people with programmable thermostats being so complicated to use (the model in my bedroom has 18 button)s. Next-generation thermostats like Nest lower the technological bar, but they're really expensive. Maybe we should subsidize those instead of shoveling taxpayer money at new climate-disrupting, water-polluting fracked gas pipelines that won't solve our energy problems?

The iPod of Thermostats?

Yeah, sure, saves tons of energy, learns what you temperature you like it & automatically adjusts, yadda yadda yadda. But wait ... being able to turn the heat up on a cold winter night from your smartphone without having to get up from under your blanket?? That's change I can believe in!

Check out the Nest thermostat, created by the same guy who invented the iPod & expected to hit the market next month for $250:


Via Grist