What Temperature Do You Leave The Thermastat At Home?

[TNFSolitude]

For the second year in a row we've been notified by a neighbor our smoke detectors were alarming throughout the house. Because they are wired together, when one chirps too long they all go into alarm mode. He was sure there was no fire and we confirmed it by viewing our security camera system. This happened twice last year and when we got home I changed every battery with a 5 year Duracell.

Now, we leave the thermastat at 54 degrees when we head south for the winter and apparently this is too low. I did some reading on the internet and a low temperature will cause the 9v battery to lose power. Our daughter came over and changed out a new battery with another new battery. We had her turn the tstat up to 60 degrees for us.

I could not find a recommended tstat setting for an unoccupied house so that the smoke detector battery will stay good.

Any thoughts out there? Has this happened to others? What temp do you leave set for extended absences?

Thanks for any input you can offer.

[bertschb]

What temp do you leave set for extended absences?

I set my thermostat at 50 degrees. I do this because if we get too much snow on the roof, we can get ice dams if it's too warm inside the house. We've never had a problem with our 9v smoke detector batteries.

[DougW9876]

We set ours to 45deg and not had problems with the smoke alarm batteries.

[RVRunners]

We don’t full time so I typically leave the thermostat setting “as is” when we go on trips (some up to 2 weeks in duration). With batteries typically excessive heat will impact them/shorten the lifespan I have not heard of any detriment from lower temperatures. I think 54 degrees is fine.

With that said it is likely more important to keep something relatively close to normal living conditions in your absence for the benefit of components in your home such as wood flooring and other moisture/humidity sensitive components. You also need to avoid inadvertently setting up conditions to promote mold growth. You should still be good at 54 degrees.

[Houndbb]

For the second year in a row we've been notified by a neighbor our smoke detectors were alarming throughout the house. Because they are wired together, when one chirps too long they all go into alarm mode. He was sure there was no fire and we confirmed it by viewing our security camera system. This happened twice last year and when we got home I changed every battery with a 5 year Duracell.

Now, we leave the thermastat at 54 degrees when we head south for the winter and apparently this is too low. I did some reading on the internet and a low temperature will cause the 9v battery to lose power. Our daughter came over and changed out a new battery with another new battery. We had her turn the tstat up to 60 degrees for us.

I could not find a recommended tstat setting for an unoccupied house so that the smoke detector battery will stay good.

Any thoughts out there? Has this happened to others? What temp do you leave set for extended absences?

Thanks for any input you can offer.

Hi, Tom and Nancy,

The best thing we ever did was buy a programmable thermostat. It really saves a lot of money. We live in the same USDA hardiness zone as you, so any lake effects notwithstanding, your house is exposed to roughly the same climate as ours. If we were to go away for an extended period of time in the winter (we have, but not often), we would set the program to turn on heat to 68 twice per day for 2 hours, say, at 6 or 7 am and pm. In between, probably 58 degrees. It’s enough to keep pipes from freezing, while saving lots on heating. They are readily available at home improvement stores, they are low voltage and very easy to install.
Nancy

[Phansen404]

Is it possible the detector is expired? We leave the thermostat at 55 when we leave for a long weekend or longer.

[Jerryr]

In my experience, a hard wired smoke detector with a low voltage 9 volt battery backup will usually not cause an alarm but it will cause it to chirp.

As Phansen404 suggested, perhaps they are expired. These are cheap to replace.

You could always do what realtors do which is remove all batteries from the smokes when you leave for long periods.

[TNFSolitude]

Thanks all for the input. I'll check the smoke detector life span, it's likely time to swap them out. Also, I do have a programmable tstat. I might try the idea of boosting the heat into the 60's twice a day.

[Jerryr]

Tom,

If you have internet at the house you may want to look into a WiFi thermostat. We have this one at our vacation/weekend cabin. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Honeywel...80WF/203556922

If it works for your heating system it’s an inexpensive solution at $69. You can control it from anywhere. You can even change programming remotely.

[JColeman]

It's interesting. We worry about how high we can set the thermostat before leaving in the summer. Pipes don't freeze here but the inside of an un-cooled house gets ridiculously hot.