Reasons to Use a Programmable Thermostat

These days, homes are being designed not only to give shelter to the families living inside but also to give complete comfort. This is precisely why technology such as the programmable thermostat has become so popular in modern homes in recent years. A programmable thermostat is an advanced alternative to old thermostats, and they allow homeowners to alter the interior temperature of their home on a pre-set schedule. They’re generally quite easy to use and come with a whole host of benefits that any homeowner is sure to appreciate, including energy efficiency, huge savings on monthly energy costs, and an overall boost to convenience.

Enhance Home Efficiency

One of the biggest benefits of installing a thermostat that allows you to create a cooling and heating schedule for your home is that it gives a huge boost to your house’s overall efficiency. Heating and cooling costs make up nearly half of a home’s monthly energy usage, so making changes to this part of your household operations should be your first step when it comes to reducing your environmental footprint. A programmable thermostat helps accomplish this in a number of ways, such as:

• Automatically turning down the temperature at bedtime, according to your schedule
• Keeping the temperature cooler (or warmer) while you’re at work during the day
• Ensuring temperatures remain consistent, and your A/C unit isn’t struggling to keep up

Programming your thermostat to use less energy while you’re absent throughout the day or asleep at night helps to cut your overall energy use drastically. This helps to ensure you’re not being wasteful or contributing to negative impacts on the environment.

Save Some Cash

Since heating and cooling systems make up 47 percent of your monthly energy use, this also makes it the highest overall contributor to your energy bill. Programming your thermostat to run warmer or cooler while you’re away (depending on the season) helps you use less energy, which is just as good for your wallet as it is for your environmental footprint. Depending on the type of thermostat and air conditioning unit as well as the size of a home, it’s estimated that a programmable thermostat can save homeowners between 10 and 30 percent on their energy costs annually. This can mean saving hundreds of dollars throughout the course of a single year in some cases.

No Need to Adjust

When you’re dealing with a standard thermostat, you’re likely going back and forth to adjust the temperature multiple times every day. Leaving home, coming home, going to bed, waking up – all of these could involve a trip to the thermostat to adjust the settings. When you have a programmable thermostat, you can set up a custom schedule ahead of time so you can spend less time making adjustments at the wall unit throughout the day. You’ll just need to adjust your settings once per season, and then you can simply sit back and relax.

Keep Your Home’s Temperature Consistent

Another benefit of working with a programmable thermostat is that it keeps the temperature in your home more consistent than when you’re working with an old-fashioned model that needs to be adjusted. Regardless of the weather outside, the thermostat ensures your unit is working steadily to keep the interior of your home as warm or cool as your settings demand.

You won’t need to adjust it in the face of a heatwave or cold snap and can say goodbye to the presence of cold or warm spots throughout the house. Consistency is key to keeping your home well and truly comfortable, and a thermostat with a smart, well-thought-out schedule is the way to accomplish it.

Enjoy the Benefits of Connectivity

Many new smart and programmable thermostats come with the added benefit of connectivity with devices such as tablets, computers, and mobile devices. These often come with applications that make crafting a custom heating or cooling schedule a simple process that requires no expertise to deal with whatsoever. Furthermore, this allows you to make changes to your heating and cooling schedule whenever and wherever you’d like, so it’s possible to:

• Change the schedule from your bed
• Turn the temperature up or down in the light of unexpected weather developments while away from home
• Set a schedule while you’re away in the event your forget

In short, this connectivity makes controlling your A/C thermostat infinitely more convenient and gives you truly full control over your home.

Take Advantage of Natural Heating and Cooling

One rather interesting aspect of being able to control your home’s thermostat is that you’ll be able to work with the world around your house to keep it comfortable while saving money. Pay attention to the times of day and the temperature changes brought on by the sun or shade trees. During winter or fall days when the sun is hanging overhead, you can adjust your heating system to allow the heat of the sun to do some of the work for it, saving some energy (and cash) in the process.

In the summer, you can program in cooler temperatures in the middle of the day, when the sun is at its hottest in order to prevent your home from becoming sweltering. You can easily customize the temperature in any room of your house in response to the changing seasons.

Easier Control of Climate Zones

Some homes come equipped with climate zones, which allow you to control the temperature of certain rooms or sections of the house. However, when working with old-fashioned thermostats within these portions of your home, you’ll likely still encounter zones that are too hot or too cold, as you can’t change the temperature according to that individual room or zone’s needs at different times of the day without adjusting manually. For example, a zone that might receive full sun in the morning will require cool air, but as the sun sets, trees might shade the zone, making it cool and making air unnecessary. With a programmable thermostat, you can take details such as these into consideration and truly customize every zone of your home.

Extend the Life of Your HVAC System

Standard thermostats place a large amount of stress on your HVAC system throughout the day, especially if you aren’t adjusting your temperatures to maintain efficiency. Over time, the strain that a continual, unprogrammed workload places on your system begins to wear down the motor, blower, and other crucial parts, leading to serious and expensive repairs and replacements. Using a programmable thermostat to raise or lower the temperature about five degrees when you’re away from home helps to ensure you’re not overworking your air conditioning unit, which in turn keeps your system running at optimal levels and your most important equipment working smoothly for longer.

Installing a programmable thermostat is a simple task that can completely transform how you cool and heat your home throughout the year. However, you’ll need to pair this with a home A/C tune-up to get your system truly ready from the upcoming spring months. Together, the tune-up and new thermostat will keep your energy costs low and your entire system running smoothly. Contact Howard Air to schedule a tune-up and inspection and learn more about what a programmable thermostat has to offer your home.