The short answer: about 68°F while you are home and awake, and no more than two or three degrees lower overnight. Unless your thermostat has smart or adaptive recovery, skip the big setbacks. That last part runs against advice you have probably read. Most thermostat advice was written for gas furnaces, and a heat pump does not behave like a furnace.
Why the setback advice does not transfer
The U.S. Department of Energy estimates you can save up to 10% a year by turning the thermostat back 7–10°F for eight hours a day. For a furnace that is sound advice: the furnace heats the house back up just as efficiently in the morning as it did the night before.
A heat pump is different. Most thermostats call in the electric strips whenever the house is more than two or three degrees below the setpoint. Drop the house to 62°F overnight and ask for 69°F at 6am, and the morning recovery runs on strips. Those cost about three times as much per unit of heat as the heat pump itself. You save a little overnight on cheap heat and spend it back at dawn on expensive heat. The Department of Energy makes the same point, and suggests heat pump owners use a thermostat designed to manage recovery without the strips.
Florida makes the setback worth less anyway
In a northern winter the furnace runs most of the day, so cutting its hours saves real money. In Orlando, overnight lows in the 50s are a normal January night. The heat pump runs in short stretches, and a well-sealed house loses heat slowly. A two-degree overnight setback captures most of what there is to save, without dragging the strips into the morning.
Suggested settings
| Situation | What to set |
|---|---|
| Home and awake | Heat, 68°F |
| Overnight | 66–68°F. No deeper than 2–3°F unless the thermostat has smart recovery |
| Out for the day | Leave it, or drop to 64–66°F if your thermostat recovers without strips |
| Away for a week or more | Auto, with heat at 60°F and cool at 80°F, so it can handle both a cold snap and a warm, humid spell |
| A mild day in the 60s and 70s | Off, with the windows open if it is not humid |
The November problem: Auto mode
A Central Florida November can bring 82°F at 3pm and 50°F at 6am on the same day. Auto mode handles that by switching between heating and cooling on its own, and that is fine, as long as the gap between the two setpoints is wide. With heat at 68°F and cool at 72°F, the system will heat the house before sunrise and air-condition it by mid-afternoon, paying both ways. Set heat at 68°F and cool at 76°F or higher, and let the house drift in between.
On the nicest days, turn it off. Florida's dry season runs roughly November through April. Many days in it need no heating or cooling at all, and a day with the system off costs nothing.
Fan on Auto, not On
In winter, fan On keeps blowing room-temperature air between heating cycles, which feels like a draft at 68°F. If you have duct leaks in the attic, it also keeps pulling in cold attic air. Leave the fan on Auto so it only runs while the system is heating.
Ceiling fans cool people, not rooms. In winter, switch them off, or reverse them to clockwise on low so they push warm air down from the ceiling without creating a breeze.
The setting that matters most: the aux lockout
If you have a smart thermostat connected to a heat pump, the most valuable thing you can change is the outdoor temperature above which the strips are not allowed to run. On an ecobee it is called Aux Heat Max Outdoor Temperature. On a Nest it is under Heat Pump Balance. We usually set it in the high 30s for Orlando. With that in place, even a large morning recovery runs on the heat pump. It takes a little longer and costs a lot less. Our aux heat vs emergency heat guide explains what the strips are for and what it means when they run too much.
For what each type of heat actually costs to run here, see what it costs to heat an Orlando home. For the heat-mode checks we run on every system, see our heating repair page.
Written by
The Eco Air Orlando team — licensed Florida HVAC contractors, #CAC1814992. Everything here comes from work we actually do in Central Florida homes.