With increasing concerns about energy efficiency in today’s world, it becomes necessary to properly manage the heating and cooling of your home. Smart thermostats help you monitor your indoor climate more effectively while reducing your carbon footprint. By changing the way your HVAC works, you reduce energy waste, reduce utility bills, and help create a cleaner planet. Let’s discuss seven ways you can leverage a smart thermostat to make a real difference in how your home uses energy.
1. Use a Schedule for Your Thermostat
Perhaps one of the most significant benefits of having a smart thermostat is the ability to personalize heating and cooling according to your lifestyle. By minimizing runtime when you are out, you will save a great deal of energy. For instance, when you are not at home, lower or raise the temperature accordingly so your system is not working unnecessarily, saving energy.
You can also program your thermostat to heat up or cool your house just before you get home, achieving comfort without consuming energy throughout the whole day. By reducing the amount of power your system uses, it reduces your carbon footprint. It also, though, can help you save money. Those savings can add up quickly, especially if you have the kind of schedule that includes a lot of hours per day outside of the house.
As an example, you can set a smart thermostat to kick your heating system down a few degrees upon departure for an eight-hour workday during the winter months. You can also set it to get your home to that temperature before you get home. Then, by the time you return home in the evening, your home will be back up to a comfortable temperature, as if it had been there the whole day. It can also keep your home warmer when you’re away during the summer and start cooling just in time for when you get home. Either way, by not using extra energy when no one’s home, you reduce your carbon footprint.
2. Take Advantage of Adaptive Learning
Some smart thermostats have machine-learning capabilities, so they auto-adjust based on your habits. For example, if you keep changing the temperature before going to bed, the thermostat can start doing this for you. This means that there is less need for input on your part and greater energy consistency in terms of saving. The thermostat tunes to your schedule and utilizes the appropriate temperature settings.
Many smart thermostats can even detect whether you’re at home and set the thermostat accordingly so it doesn’t heat or cool when nobody’s there.
3. Consider Local Weather
Some smart thermostats can also take into consideration weather conditions to control temperatures indoors more comfortably. Many of them pair with weather forecasting services to display your local weather. Some, though, can use that data to optimize your indoor comfort with the use of as little energy as possible. For instance, if a really hot day is coming up, a smart learning thermostat may understand it should begin pre-cooling the house early in the day when the temperature outside is cooler. In return, it doesn’t have to use as much energy to maintain a cooler temperature in the afternoon. Being proactive about temperature management with this technology contributes to improved comfort. It also helps your home’s HVAC system run at peak efficiency, further reducing your carbon footprint.
4. Activate Geofencing Technology
Geofencing comes as another smart component in most smart thermostats. It uses your smartphone’s location to know when you’re approaching home or when you’ve left. When it senses that you have left your house, it can immediately go into an energy-saving mode, reducing heating or cooling until you return. Then, when you approach home, your thermostat can begin adjusting the temperature so that, upon arrival, you have a comfortable environment. This enables a carefree transition from one mode to the other. It also transitions from comfortable settings to energy-efficient modes that save energy without any extra effort or intervention on your part.
Geofencing is helpful in homes where your schedules are random. Even if you can’t program specific temperatures due to that, geofencing can monitor when people come and go. That lets the thermostat operate your HVAC system only as necessary, avoiding the nuisance of excess energy usage and waste. In essence, the use of geofencing reduces the amount of time your heating or cooling system is in operation without negatively impacting comfort. This leads to reduced carbon emissions.
5. Remotely Monitor and Control Your Thermostat
If reducing your carbon footprint is your priority, a smart thermostat offers another way to monitor energy usage. They connect to apps designed to monitor your home’s temperature around the clock, no matter where you are. If you ever leave home for the day and forget to change your thermostat, you can change it from your phone or computer. In the same manner, if plans happen to change and you are held up longer than expected, you can change the temperatures without much hassle.
You can also use the remote-control feature in unexpected situations, like a cold snap coming through your town while you are on vacation. If you see the weather gets bad while you’re away and you don’t want it to have lasting effects on your home, then you can use the remote-control feature from anywhere.
6. Energy Usage Reports and Insights
Most smart thermostats provide energy usage reports, which make it clear exactly how your home uses energy for cooling and heating. These reports include information on heating and cooling patterns, which may be significant in the search for leaks. Looking over this data gives you data to utilize when adjusting thermostat settings to optimize energy use. For example, if the report shows that your HVAC runs excessively during certain times, you can then adjust your schedule or temperature preferences to eliminate excess and unnecessary usage.
Reports also highlight the effectiveness of various energy-saving measures taken. With this feedback, you can inspire better energy management practices in everyday life. Some smart thermostats may even give you suggestions or recommendations based on your usage patterns, helping you further reduce your carbon footprint.
7. Integrate With Other Smart Home Devices
Pairing smart thermostats with other smart devices within the home may also help efforts to conserve even more energy. For instance, if you connect your thermostat to smart shades or blinds, it could work in tandem with these smart devices. Adjustments will be made according to how much sunlight there is. If the sun is pouring directly into your residence, the smart shades can close themselves to eliminate heat gain and reduce the need for air conditioning. Allowing some natural sunlight into your home during the cold months by merely opening your blinds will warm it up, which in turn will reduce demand for the heating system.
At Markool Heating & Cooling in Frederick, MD, we provide AC installation, repairs, and maintenance services for homes in the area. Our friendly team also provides heating, plumbing, and air duct cleaning services. Contact Markool Heating & Cooling for more information today!
