Installing highly efficient heating and cooling equipment in your Apex, North Carolina home isn’t guaranteed to cut your carbon footprint or reduce your energy bills. This is especially true if you’re still using a standard thermostat and maintaining fixed temperature settings all of the time. Between natural human error, thermostat misuse, and low-function controls, there’s a good chance that you’re missing out on multiple opportunities to limit your household’s energy demands without diminishing your comfort. Programmable thermostats streamline temperature settings to perfectly suit the lifestyles and schedules of consumers. Read on to discover six benefits of installing one of these innovative and highly intuitive devices.
1. Stop Paying to Heat and Cool Your Home While You’re Out
With a standard thermostat, you’re likely taking a “set-it-and-forget-it” approach to regulating indoor temperatures. In fact, with standard thermostats, many consumers are only adjusting their temperature settings when the building gets too hot or cold for their comfort.
Although investing in high-efficiency HVAC equipment has merits, you’re not getting optimum value from this investment without using it correctly. A programmable thermostat can store and repeat multiple settings throughout the day. For instance, it can adjust your indoor temperature to slightly warm your home up just before you get out of bed on a cold winter morning or cool your home down just before you arrive home from work on a hot summer evening. Raising or lowering your thermostat setting by just a few degrees when you’re sleeping or out on errands can significantly reduce your heating and cooling demand and save money. Moreover, you can do so without feeling like you’re suffering for these gains.
2. Take Control of Your Zoned Heating and Cooling System
Central HVAC system zoning is an increasingly common measure for improving the efficiency of residential heating and cooling systems. With zoned heating and cooling, you can customize thermostat settings in each area of your home so that you aren’t paying money to regulate temperatures in spaces that no one is using. In theory, this is a great way to cut energy use. However, in practice, zoning can cause tremendous anxiety for homeowners when teenagers and everyone else in the building have access to their own thermostats.
Although you might like the flexibility that zoning provides, you’ll love the enhanced control and improved monitoring that programmable and smart thermostats allow. Programmable thermostats can be set to auto-adjust indoor temperatures in all zones according to your preferences. Smart thermostats can be monitored and adjusted from any location using an internet-connected device. As such, if your kids crank their thermostats way down on a hot summer day, you can moderate their settings before you get home.
3. Alleviate Stress on Your HVAC Equipment
Adjusting your thermostat during the nighttime hours and while you’re away won’t just cut your energy costs. It will also reduce your heater and air conditioner’s total workload. These systems won’t work to maintain your preferred indoor temperature when you aren’t present or awake to appreciate it. For heaters and ACs, having more downtime means sustaining less wear and tear overall.
4. Thermostat Upgrades Are a Chance to Refine Thermostat Placement
If you’re living in a home you purchased as preexisting construction, the current location of your thermostat might be less than ideal. Thermostats located near fixed heat sources, such as ovens, have a hard time accurately reading indoor temperatures. This makes them less effective in correctly guiding the functions of heating systems as a result. This is also true of thermostats positioned too close to cold, drafty areas, such as by access doors near garages and basements. A thermostat constantly subjected to cold drafts won’t turn your air conditioner on, even if the rest of the building interior is muggy and hot.
When you have programmable thermostats installed, we can choose thermostat locations that ensure accurate temperature readings both day and night. Like thermostat upgrades, strategic thermostat placement can also lower energy costs. More importantly, it will improve your home’s comfort.
5. Eliminate Human Error
Standard thermostats are incredibly basic devices that must be manually adjusted every time. When it comes to strategically raising or lowering your temperature settings before bed or before you walk out the door, the potential for oversights and general human error is huge. With programmable thermostats capable of making numerous temperature adjustments throughout the day, you can set your thermostat just once to reflect multiple changes in your heating and cooling needs and then enjoy indoor climate control perfectly streamlined to suit your preferences and energy-saving goals.
This benefit is greatly enhanced by opting for a smart thermostat. While programmable thermostats can be set to adjust indoor temperatures multiple times each day, smart thermostats constantly collect information on resident patterns and behaviors. These learning devices gradually become adept at independently making needs-specific adjustments for residents.
6. Collect Data to Refine Your Energy-Saving Plan
Another benefit of opting for a smart thermostat is gaining access to data that informs your energy-saving plan. These devices collect and retain information on past thermostat settings, total energy consumption, and heating and cooling system use that consumers can access on their laptops, tablets, and mobile phones.
Common Misconceptions About Thermostat Use
For years, countless consumers operated under the assumption that maintaining a static or fixed temperature throughout their homes was the best way to save energy. For instance, you might run your heater while you’re away at work to reduce its workload when you get home. The idea behind this tactic is that furnaces, boilers, and heat pumps have to work harder to heat cold homes back up than they do to maintain even and consistent temperatures all day long. This is also how many people approach home cooling, believing constant cooling is better than turning the thermostat down and letting the building interior warm up when a home is vacant.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), this is hardly the truth. Vacant homes experience constant heat loss during winter, especially when they’re warm and constantly being heated to maintain the same level of warmth. During summer, vacant homes experience continuous thermal heat gains, especially when they’re actively being cooled. Both heat loss and heat gains are minimized when the temperatures in building interiors are close to the temperature outside. Thus, raising your thermostat setting in summer and lowering it in winter will limit energy waste and energy use.
As per the DOE, strategic changes in thermostat settings during the heating and cooling season can result in savings as high as 10% annually. You only need to raise or lower your indoor temperature by seven to 10 degrees Fahrenheit when you’re unlikely to notice the difference. Best of all, a programmable thermostat can help you achieve these savings with minimal effort and virtually no changes in your overall comfort.
We’re committed to helping residents of Apex, NC, and the surrounding communities cut their energy costs, enhance their home comfort, and make the most of their heating and cooling equipment. We offer heater and air conditioner installation, maintenance, and repair services. Our clients can also turn to us for smart and programmable thermostats, crawl space encapsulation, HVAC air ducts, and preventative maintenance plans. To upgrade your home’s standard thermostat, contact 72 Degrees Heating & Air Conditioning today to schedule an appointment.
