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Typical American house uses a heat pump (basically an AC run "backwards") with a single thermostat (bigger houses might have multiple complete systems).

If you turned the heat off at 7am as you left for work, the house would probably be below 60 when you got home, and take most of the evening to reheat, only to be turned back down again at bed time. I don't know anybody who manually does any of this - at best, they have a smart thermostat that lets them schedule home/away time or uses cell phones as presence sensors. And even then, they'll lower the heat 5-8 degrees, not turn it off completely.




No heat pumps are a new thing here. Not typical at all. Most people have gas furnaces.


Heat pumps exist but they aren’t “typical”, at least depending on where you are. Gas heat is a lot more common in Texas.


Most US homes use gas furnace for heating:

https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/


That might be typical for new builds, but it varies a lot by region. Much of the northern half of the country is still burning propane, pellets/wood, or fuel oil for heat.




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