Racking

If you are doing single stage, you'll notice the improvement racking makes.

I doubt there's a single good answer. Normally I rack at the end of vigorous fermentation, 3-5 days is the usual. I can only heat to keep the temperature up and set most of my fermenters at 50-60 degrees F.

The recipe (type of yeast and style of beer) will give you the temperature and time. Lager demands low temperatures and long times, but I think that ales do benefit from cooler and longer too (my opinion). Likewise high gravity, high alcohol beers require longer time in the secondary, and benefit from longer time in the bottle.

This time of year the ambient is 70 degrees, so the heaters aren't coming on, and I use ale yeasts. Soon I'll be shutting down for the year.

I think racking is overrated. It helps to clear the beer of yeast and sediment, but I don't think it has an enormous impact on flavor, except for lagers, of course, which require long periods of aging at cold temperatures. But for ales, the only reason I might rack is to clear it a bit if it is cloudy. Rack after primary fermentation appears to be complete, and leave it in the secondary for a couple of weeks at a cool temperature... anything around 60 F is fine for this purpose, or even colder if you like. But as I said... it's completely optional for ales, and more useful for lagers. One other thing to keep in mind is, wheat ales such as Bavarian hefeweizen and Belgian wit should NOT be racked because the yeast and haze is part of their character that you do not want to get rid of.