If you never pay attention to those articles explaining how a smart thermostat can save you money during the summer – because you don’t have central air condition – this post is for you. A smart thermostat can be just as valuable during the winter months. And with autumn now here, it is only a matter of time before you turn on the furnace.
Depending on where you live, winter heating can be the most expensive use of your utility dollars. As such, properly controlling the temperature inside your home is key to managing your bills. And according to Vivint, the best way to do that is to install a smart thermostat.
Vivint is a Salt Lake City, Utah company that has built a successful, nationwide business by paying attention to the details. They know what a difference just a few degrees can make. With the right adjustments, they know you can save quite a bit of money on winter heating costs.
What a Smart Thermostat Does
A smart thermostat is not just programmable. It is a piece of smart home technology that can actually ‘learn’ to some degree. No, it is not a robot that thinks and acts by itself. But it does monitor activity in your home for the purposes of adjusting its own programming.
A smart thermostat works on a basic principle: minimizing energy use when there is no, or little, activity in the home. The overnight hours are great example. Let’s say your entire family is in bed by 10 PM and no one gets up until 6 AM. Those are hours when it doesn’t make sense to keep the house as warm as you do during the day. You are all sleeping under covers anyway.
You can program your smart thermostat to automatically adjust to 65° at 10 PM and back up to 70° at 6 AM. But what if you normally stay up till 11:30 PM on weekends? After a couple of weeks, your smart thermostat should auto adjust. Sensors indicate that you are up an hour-and-a-half later on a regular basis, so programming is modified.
Yes, a smart thermostat really can monitor activity and adjust itself. And should you need to manually adjust the settings, you can do so at home or from anywhere you have an internet connection. Just bring up the associated mobile app and change the programming.
Just the Right Temperature
Smart thermostats save money by allowing you to control the temperature in your home every hour of the day. You can set just the right temperature every time without having to run the furnace when you don’t need the house to be so warm.
Perhaps you want things toasty warm when you get up in the morning. Everyone has left the house at some point, with you off to work and the kids going to school, so your thermostat can automatically turn down the temperature during those hours. Some 30 minutes before the kids are due to arrive home, the thermostat can kick up again and get the house warm.
The point of this is to say that you don’t have to worry about temperature adjustments once your thermostat is set. And because you are dealing with a smart thermostat, the amount of programming you have to do is minimal. Setup is not nearly as complicated as the programmable thermostats of yesterday.
You Can Save A Lot
So, how much can you save with a smart thermostat? The U.S. Department of energy estimates savings of roughly 1% for each degree over an eight hour period. Turning your thermostat down by 5° during the eight hours you are sleeping will save 5% on your energy bill. That same setting during the eight hours you are at work saves you another 5%. That means you save $20 on a $200 bill. That may not seem like much month-to-month but think of in terms of how much you spend on heating over 5, 10, or even 20 years.
A smart thermostat is a no-brainer these days. If you are not controlling the temperature in your home automatically, you could be spending money you don’t have to spend. As such, winter is the perfect season for the smart thermostat.
