Temperature hot or not?

Hello I have a 99 Alero 3.4L with 189,000km and I currently just changed my water pump and bleed the system. But my temperture seems to creep up to half way between half and 3/4 when idling in traffic even and drops down to 3/4 between 1/4 and 1/2 marks when driving (normal from when i bought it) its been about 0 celcius here when its been doing this. Now i was wondering what could possibly be causing this and also i have noticed that I have not seen my rad fans kicking in even when its idling and the temp is between 1/2 and 3/4 is this normal? and what is the approx tempertaure the car is reading at these markers....

I would say your fan is not working , could be the sensor or the fan motor. start with checking the wire to the fan

and also i have noticed that I have not seen my rad fans kicking in even when its idling and the temp is between 1/2 and 3/4 is this normal? and what is the approx tempertaure the car is reading at these markers....

Both cooling fans should turn on in low speed when the engine coolant temperature gets to around 220 degrees F and both in high around 230 degrees F. This is with A/C off.

Disconnect the electrical connector to the engine coolant temperature sensor (ECT) located by the thermostat area and start engine. Both fans should turn on after about a 5 second delay in fail safe mode. Also, how old is your thermostat?

Around half or a tick below on the temperature gauge should represent around 195 degrees F which is the regulating temperature of the thermostat, if stock.

Both cooling fans should turn on in low speed when the engine coolant temperature gets to around 220 degrees F and both in high around 230 degrees F. This is with A/C off.

Disconnect the electrical connector to the engine coolant temperature sensor (ECT) located by the thermostat area and start engine. Both fans should turn on after about a 5 second delay in fail safe mode. Also, how old is your thermostat?

Around half or a tick below on the temperature gauge should represent around 195 degrees F which is the regulating temperature of the thermostat, if stock.

Thanks, very informative I am unsure of the age of my thermostat as I just purchased the car approx a month ago. I am not very familiar with engines and locations or what things look like so if i could get a bit more explaination of the location and what exactly i am looking for to troubleshoot these fans it would be greatly appreciated.

So after some researching around i found the ECT and i disconnected the electrical connector for it and both fans kicked in as you said approximating 5 seconds later, with that tested now where does that narrow my problem down too? thanks again for the help so far. (and for the fantastic site I have gotten alot of other help for :) )

Hey BNaylor do you know of any previous threads that would explain the process of replacing the thermostat in my 99 alero 3.4L cheap fix for my red fan problem figured id give it a shot. Thanks in advance.
HTC_Dream Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 1.5; en-ca; Build/CUPCAKE) AppleWebKit/528.5+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Mobile Safari/525.20.1