The pitch of the individual pipes in the organ go up and down as the temperature of the air in and around the pipe increases and decreases respectively.  Therefore, it is necessary to establish correct temperature for organ tuning, which we refer to as normal temperature for Sunday service.

In most cases, the normal summer and normal winter temperatures are different. As an example, it would be common for a church to heat at 68 degrees in the winter and cool at perhaps 74 degrees in the summer.  In this example, there would be a 6 degree difference between the winter and summer “normal” temperatures. A properly tuned organ in this example would be tuned to be slightly flat in the winter and slightly sharp in the summer.

Except in cases where the church sanctuary is used repeatedly throughout the week, we DO NOT recommend that the temperature be set at the normal Sunday temperature seven day a week.  First, this approach can wreck a church utility budget and second, the constant heating during the winter months can excessively dry out woodwork causing it to shrink and crack.  This not only effects parts of the organ but all other woodwork in the room.

A much better approach is to install a programmable thermostat and assign a schedule to suite the use of the sanctuary, e.g. Wednesday choir practice and Sunday service.  There are many inexpensive programmable thermostats available on the market and some can even be programmed from your desktop computer, ipad or iphone.  

A good starting point would be to program UNOCCUPIED temperatures of 55 degrees in winter and 85 degrees in summer.  The thermostat can then adjust the system to the OCCUPIED (normal temperature for Sunday service) automatically.  Note that the room will reach the OCCUPIED (comfortable) temperature long before the organ.  Organ pipes exposed out in front of the organ will reach normal temperature rather quickly but pipework enclosed in a case or chamber will take another 4 to 8 hours to adjust. 

For this reason the heat or air conditioning system MUST be adjusted to the normal temperature for Sunday service on the evening of the day before our scheduled organ tuning visits and by 10 – 11 PM on Saturday for a normal Sunday service.

Special Note about Steam Heat

Allow extra time for steam heating systems to stabilize.

When you turn up a steam heating system from an unoccupied temperature of 55 degrees to an occupied temperature of 68 degrees you can expect the room to heat to well above 70 deg on the first heating cycle.  In this case, the system has been heating “full blast” for several hours.  Steam pressure is at its highest, the boiler is red hot, as is all the piping and radiators.  The system won’t magically stop giving off heat when the thermostat kicks off at 68.  It will take a couple of hours (several on-off cycles) for the boiler system to come into equalization with the heating demand of the room.

It can be very beneficial with steam heat systems to program the thermostat to change from the set-back (unoccupied) setting to the normal room temperature in two stages.  For example, first turn the heat up to 64 degrees for a couple of hours and then to 68 degrees (or normal Sunday temperature).