20c=68f
15c=59f
10c=50f
Away from home: Temperature above freezing, I'll set the temperature to 45 degrees. Below freezing, I'll set it to 50 degrees. After the house was at 45 degrees for a long time I measured water temperature out of the faucets and got 39 degrees. 7 degrees to freezing is a little too close for comfort when it comes to water in pipes for me.
When I'm home and active: Usually at 55 degrees unless I'm going to be doing a bunch of moving around. I'm usually not bothered by this temperature at all unless I spend more than 30 mins in the kitchen which is about long enough to cook up almost anything. This is with jeans, tshirt type wear. Socks required on the bathroom tile and kitchen hardwood.
If I'm home and sleeping: I'll set(or leave) the temperature at 50 degrees and use my mattress pad heater to make up the temperature. With the 100 or so watts, if I leave it on high I will sometimes wake up to turn it down.
If I'm home and in bed: I spend plenty of time on the computer, tv, eating, reading various books or magazines and if I can do it from bed, I will when the weather is cold. 50 degrees for this too.
When I have people over: I turn it up to 65 degrees, nobody has ever complained. Most people enter my house and say it feels a bit warm as they take off their coat. Due to cold and snow, I usually don't invite people here that often during the winter.
The only thing that kills this is if the humidity drops too low in the house because then suddenly even 60 degrees feels cold. I balance the humidity with how I take showers and leave the door open between the shower and the bedroom with the exhaust fan off. At 40% humidity 65 feels cold. At 55% humidity, I can handle 55 degrees. 60% and I can comfortably walk around for awhile in the house at 50 degrees. I must be careful though, right now it is 18 degrees out and 55% humidity is condensing the bottom of my windows so there are limits to how far I can go with humidity to try and maintain comfort. I'll add thick layer over my tshirt.
Heat loss is a weird thing. If I set my house from 50 degrees to 70 degrees and turn it down to 50, it will lose 4 degrees in the first 15 minutes(possibly the anticipator on the digital thermostat and thermal mass absorption though), then will drop slower and once it gets down to 60 or so it takes pretty much all day to get to 50 again. On recent 20 degree days, at 50 degrees the furnace cycles on once every 2 hours or so for 5 minutes or less. At 55 degrees, it's 5 minutes every hour or about an hour a day. At 60 degrees it runs for 1.5-2 hours a day. Haven't tested 70 degrees. If I did I'd have to wait hours for thermal mass temperatures to equalize to the higher temperature and then pay attention to it.
RobertSmalls, I'll join your 'furnace-free day'. I've already joined in November, more or less. I've run an entire day at about 20f outside starting by running the temp from 50f to 65f when I woke up(~11f degree rise per hour). Waiting for the cooldown and ended up going to sleep and wasn't sure when it actually kicked on for 50f again. The problem is, my house was designed at a bad angle where in the winter the sun comes down a little too south for my SW wall to get enough solar gain to be worth it but in the summer the sun is still up as it passes west and the house gets very hot. ...so my losses aren't helped much with gains from the sun, which really sucks. I've considered chopping the SE wall of the bedroom, using an appropriate awning for the summer with a window that will allow as much of the winter solar heat in as possible and filling in the NE facing wall that has a window that doesn't do much. ...oh wait, I'd be staring at a house and it would block a decent amount of the sun. S#$%
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