[amdavidson]

Not having programmed schedules on thermostats seems ludicrous to me.

I don't have "smart" thermostats, they can only be programmed with the buttons on the front of them and they cannot talk to one another, but how do you turn down the heat when you leave for the day? or even set different temperatures for daytime and nighttime? manually?

[rsync]

We're cheating a bit here because we live in California ... so we don't need AC mechanicals (which is a big win for simplicity) and when we leave the house we simply turn off the heat.

If we lived in Duluth we could probably do the same thing for day-long absences, provided the house was very properly insulated, but you are correct - we would need a timer/schedule on the thermostats for any longer absences.