Built my house next to the woods on a slight north down slope. No AC, except the natural kind. In the summer with the oaks all leaved out there's plenty of shade, almost too dark. So summer is fine, I don't like AC anyways. Now the winter is a different story. We will have snow all around long after it's melted from everywhere else. There's no free lunch I guess.
What is this "slope" of which you speak??? I contrived a water level out of a ladder, a bucket, 200' of garden hose, a 10'measuring pole, and some clear tubing. Best I can measure with that rudimentary getup: there's ~4' of difference NW->SE on the entire 5 acres.
Where the tree kinks left is 30 feet off the ground. I could have taken a picture from there or down by the second pyre, but then I would have to stop watching soccer game, walk down there, snap photo up at house, and call a cab (Fred on quad) get back up hill. Nah, this will do.
Odd perspective. You are looking downhill from a second floor deck. Looking back to the house on a level sight line from either large fire pile at the bottom of the yard would have you looking at non-existant sub-basements a couple/few stories deeper than the current basement. It's a deceptively long way to the bottom. Oh. Thermostats are set at 68ºF for the main floor. Its thermometer reads 65ºF but the AC thermostat says it's 71ºF. Upper floor is set at 65ºF and it reads 66ºF. AC gets set at 76ºF when temps exceed 80ºF or it's been in the upper 70ºFs for more than 3-4 days. I rarely change the settings but it does happen depending on door usage, humidity, wind, heat saturation, etc.
It's not hard to measure. Get a decent compass with a clinometer. Have Yzass go down to some spot you want to measure. Shoot her top of head to account for differnce in height to be accurate. Read in percent or degrees. Added benefit is you will get a good sense of what 45 degrees is, and why a lawnmower could never cut it.
I already know the property drops about 80' in 300' (~15º) when viewed from the perspective in the above pic, a southerly direction. Looking north, the property levels up a 10º slope. Off to the west, the property drops 30º-45º along the whole length of the North/South fall line and, yes, the lawn mower has never been there...yet.
We don't have heat! right now the AC has been running a lot to keep us at 72 for sleeping, 76 during the day. When I went to Italy this summer, I was amazed at how few places have AC. I hadn't been there in 10 years and I was thinking things might have changed. Nope. The only ice I saw was when one of the riders crashed and they brought out this big block to put on his shoulder. I told Kaleb- let's grab that thing and chip it up! But there's no coolers and their sodas taste like shit too. Well, at least they have wine.
We had the same situation with our master bedroom. When we replaced the AC, we ran a second duct right from the plenum and added a second vent. Works wonders. I was lucky though, plenty of space in the attic for it. Our bedroom is the hottest room in the house, due to it's location mostly under a flat roof, concrete exterior walls on 3 sides, western exposure / no shade. At midnight when I go to bed, the pillow is hot from being up against the concrete wall which is still retaining heat!
Got hot last night. Time to adjust down to 67. Maybe I'll get wild and try y'all's idea for different temps at night and go 66/67.
Just a thought... How about closing the vents in the coldest rooms to see how much cold air makes it into the master when doing so? Same for winter but, personally, I can't sleep in a warmer room than the rest of the house.
Heat comes on at 66 air on at 70 upstairs where we spend most of our time and 65/73 downstairs. So far I leave it all year - it will get some short term changes depending on the boss and her level of freezing.