Guests and air conditioning

[Marco65]

Are your guests normally free to use air conditioning at any temperature and throughout the year? What is the temperature you consider appropriate inside the house? Have you ever had problems with guests and air conditioning?

I ask because in the past guests used to put the air conditioning at 66 degrees F, and once they destroyed my air conditioning engine and I had to close the house for seven days and replace the engine. 

Now I use remote controls that limit the use in accordance with the law on energy saving but I see that this creates discontent and retaliation in my evaluations.

[Jim472]

For your questions: Yes, it didn't matter to me, and yes huge problem. I had some students sitting a lawyer exams for 14 days and mid way through  I came by to water the plants. Come to see that they had the ac blasting with the doors open. OMG. The electric bill was 3/4 of the rent. Good luck to you. 

[Alice595]

@Marco65  Only one guest had the issue. And he made a great deal of it. Here is the link to my post about it.

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Guest-wanted-to-cancel-due-to-temperature-and-got-full-r...

It is is your house. As long as it is reasonable temperature range, you should control the setting.

[Marco65]

That' a bad story, @Alice595!

[Mark116]

@Marco65   Yes.  We pre set the A/C's on 72 in the bedroom and 74F in the living room, and hope that the guests don't pay attention or reset them, but maybe about 25% of people will set it artificially low to yes 66F and so it will run all day and night.  We're also looking into some type of remote control.

[Roumen3]

You can install Google Nest Thermostat if you have WIFI and remotely control it from your phone.

[Roumen3]

You can install Google nest thermostat and if you have a Wi-Fi you can remotely control it from your phone.

[Laura2592]

We just let them use it. I was shocked by the number of people who mention AC in their reviews. Our place has 18 inch thick stone walls so it stays naturally pretty cool in summer yet some people have it blasting. I don't get it as we rarely use our central air in our primary home in summer unless it gets really hot. But humans are calibrated differently regarding comfortable temps. I notice many people from warmer climes like Texas and Florida are simply used to the AC on full blast no matter what is going on outside. 

This is one of my many reasons I limit my stays to a week or less. At least we have a better chance that the next guests will keep things at 72 degrees and the utility bill doesn't get too much damage. 

[Susan1404]

@Marco65- I now lock people out of being able to use the controls on both upstairs and downstairs thermostats.  I made the mistake of trusting guests and all it took was a few who decided they needed it on 60F to convince me I needed to take control myself.  If guests are uncomfortable, I will made a moderate adjustment, but after that I provide floor fans.  I keep the downstairs unit set on 73 and the upstairs one on 72 since heat rises.  I did have a recent incident where a guest must have searched on line and figured out how to override my upstairs thermostat lock-out, at which time it knocked that unit out from running too long and too hard, which then  caused the downstairs unit to run too hard.  Fortunately they were simple repairs, but I plan to put cages over the thermostats for next year so they can't even get to the controls.

[Marco65]

@Susan1404 , floor fan, this is an additional idea! 

[Zacharias0]

I put a clear lockbox over my thermostat years ago. Like the ones you see in hotels. I also can control the temp remotely via an app. It only takes one or two or twice walking home to a frigid house of 66 degrees and the weather outside is 77 to learn that lesson. There's a comfortable temp and then theres bone chilling cold at 3pm. I tell guests in my rules to not touch it and that's its automatically set.

[Marco65]

@Zacharias0 Great idea, I just discovered that there are protections for thermostats. How do guests react if they can not decide for themselves how much and how to abate the temperature?  Do you mention it in the ad?

[Marco65]

For me this conversation is interesting to understand how to continue to be hospitable while keeping me responsible for the environment, 99% of my guests are American and we in Italy use air conditioning only from June to August and never below 76 degrees, for health reasons, energy savings and limits set by law.

[Susan1404]

@Marco65- as I mentioned in my prior post, I've had some guests who really took advantage and lowered the AC to well below what is reasonable.  However, I live in the deep south in the U.S. and although heat is absolutely terrible between July and the first half of September, we also fight very high humidity.  If humidity is allowed to get too high in our homes, it causes mold, especially black mold.  My personal AC in my home is set at 73 and I hate it, but it is a must.  So while there are a lot of Americans who are simply spoiled to cooling as they need it, I just wanted to point out that in my area, it becomes a necessity.

[Pete69]

Yes I had guests who would leave for the day while keeping the AC on, and it seemed to be running constantly. Even though I don't share any space with my guests I can hear the rumble of the AC. My rules say not to leave the AC (or any other appliance) on while gone. So I emailed them to remind them. They ignored my email until the next day and didn't even address the AC issue when replying. That 2nd day they were gone for about 11 hours... with the AC running!

The next day when they checked out I discovered the AC thermostat was set to 67 degrees! They also left the coffee machine on and the fan in the bathroom on. So they were just all around irresponsible guests.

After this guest experience I now keep the remote control.  I'm also going to be replacing the bathroom fan and heater on/off switches with countdown timers. In my listing I now discourage guests from staying who want a really cold room.