I didn’t put two and two together until I starting talking to some other folks and found out they have the same problem. They said it started when the electric company installed their smart meters.

I keep the house really cool at night but around 4:00 I wake up hot. About an hour later it starts cooling down again. Can anyone give me any insight on how these things work?

They aren't related. Some power companies offer discounts for being able to turn off A/C or hot water heater during peak demand, but if you had one of these energy management devices installed you'd be able to tell by a new box being installed by electric meter.

Thanks, that eases some concerns.

Do you have a programmable thermostat? And if so check the programmed schedules.

Do you have a menopausal wife? aka thermonuclear carbon based reactor?

If you've got a programmable thermostat I'd check that too for some weird changed schedule at an odd time.

My electric Co-Op uses a device on the central air units called Load Management . It allows them to kill the compressor remotely . They agree to only do it at peak demand times and for a set number of minutes per hour . No more than six or something like that . In exchange they credit me $1o per unit per month . It's a voluntary program and if they have ever used the function I never noticed .

Has to be the thermostat

My unit died Sunday and I'm having a new system put in tomorrow. I just wanted to make sure these new fangled meters weren't damaging the units.

The thermostat I had was a manual one, not programmable. Maybe the old unit just died a slow death

quote:

Originally posted by olfuzzy:
My unit died Sunday and I'm having a new system put in tomorrow. I just wanted to make sure these new fangled meters weren't damaging the units.

I'm going out on a limb here and guessing that your home was getting hotter because your a/c unit is about to die.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
They aren't related. Some power companies offer discounts for being able to turn off A/C or hot water heater during peak demand, but if you had one of these energy management devices installed you'd be able to tell by a new box being installed by electric meter.

This right here... The only way for a smart meter to effect your a/c would be to shut off the power to the whole house. Which isn't happening.

Could be a combination of things.... one is there is a time delay on many houses as to when the heat of the roof transfers through the attic and then the ceiling into the house... even with insulation this can happen... Roof I was on this past Monday at 1:00 in the afternoon was 180 degrees.... that is not the air temperature but the radiant heat coming off of the roof... same radiant heat is going in the opposite direction... down.
Here is that temperature on Monday:

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Blume9mm,

One data point. Even if you had a peak demand management system, 4AM isn't peak time.

Something at the house is making that happen.

Assuming you looked at the thermostat and it is still set correctly, what would be more concerning is your statement that it doesn't start to cool until an hour later. That shouldn't be happening....if a thermostat says 'too hot' the AC should be doing its thing right away.

That might be your smoking gun.