Save Money on Your Heating and Cooling Costs with a Smart Thermostat

With the cost of everything going up these days, everyone is looking for ways to cut back on expenses while preserving their comforts and quality of life. When it comes to your heating and cooling costs, you’re probably already making some good choices, like setting the thermostat a little higher than you used to, using fans to reduce the perceived temperature in your home, having your HVAC system serviced regularly to improve its efficiency, using curtains and blinds to reduce the effect of direct sunlight on your indoor temperatures. Those are all important steps to take to reduce your energy bills while keeping your family comfortable. But if you want to go further, reducing your energy bills a little more, without sacrificing indoor comfort, and simultaneously reducing your home’s environmental impact, we recommend a smart thermostat.

What Is a Smart Thermostat?

A smart thermostat is a Wi-Fi enabled temperature control device that is installed in place of your standard home thermostat and allows you, as the homeowner, greater freedom to adjust the temperature, even when you’re away from home; create preset heating and cooling schedules to maintain your family’s comfort while not heating or cooling an empty house; and allows you to keep closer, more detailed track of your family’s energy usage, identifying ways you can save without sacrificing comfort.

Using a smart thermostat enables you to lower the indoor temperature at night, for example, but increase it during the day when no one is home. You can set the thermostat to begin to adjust your home temperature an hour or so before you’re going to arrive home, so that your home feels as comfortable as you’d like when you enter, without having had to pay the cost of keeping the house the perfect temperature all day. Some styles of smart thermostat will even adjust based on tracking the location of your phone, turning your heating and cooling systems into a more energy efficient mode when it detects that everyone is out of the house.

What Would It Cost to Install a Smart Thermostat?

Because a smart thermostat is designed to work with your existing HVAC equipment, the cost is less than you might expect because it doesn’t require modernization of your home’s heating and cooling systems (in most cases). Having a smart thermostat installed by a heating and cooling service company will cost you between $200-$500 for the device plus labor. If you’re an ambitious DIY-er, you can install one yourself, with a purchase price of around $70-$300, depending on the brand and your region. In many cases, no change to your HVAC equipment is needed (though if your system is more than 10 years old and hasn’t been recently serviced, it’s a good idea to have it inspected before you try to install a smart thermostat — it’s not that the installation would cause a problem, but it’s always possible that fiddling with the electrical part of your system could uncover an existing issue). Most HVAC systems that were installed more recently than about 1990 can add a smart thermostat without significant work needed.

Who Should NOT Consider a Smart Thermostat?

If your HVAC system is older than the early 1990s, you might not be able to install a smart thermostat without upgrading your system … although if your heating and cooling system is more than 35 years old, it probably needs an upgrade, regardless. If you’re planning to upgrade major components of your HVAC system in the next year or two, it might be more cost-effective to have a smart thermostat installed at the same time as the other work is done, just because your HVAC technician will already be on site, working on your system, so connecting a smart thermostat would only add minutes to their effort.

If a smart thermostat sounds like a good choice for reducing heating and cooling costs for your home, mention it to your HVAC service company ahead of their next service appointment, and they can plan to install it while they’re there. Or, set aside a Saturday afternoon and tackle the installation yourself, if you’re a DIY enthusiast. Here in Cincinnati, you can contact us here at Jansen Heating & Cooling, and we’ll be happy to guide you to the right choice in a smart thermostat, and help you get it installed so that you can start saving on your home’s heating and cooling bills right away.