New Smart Thermostats Can Do Nearly Anything

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If there’s one product that has benefited from cutting-edge “smart” technology, it’s the residential thermostat. And that in turn has benefited countless households’ efforts to conserve energy while maintaining whole-house comfort in a convenient manner. Yet, if you get a smart, programmable thermostat installed in your home, it’s important to know how it works and what capabilities it offers you and your family. Following are some important details to know about the benefits of your smart thermostat.

Five Things to Know About Smart Thermostats

  • It’s all about technology. In recent decades, huge gains have been made in computer technology, and that, not surprisingly, has spread to how HVAC thermostats are designed, including how they operate and what they can do. The first smart thermostats that came along were basic programmable models that are common in homes today. The idea was to enable the homeowner to program a daily schedule for temperature changes into the thermostat, to fit a family’s schedule and lifestyle. That programmability evolved into thermostats that could have a different temperature-change schedule for each day of the week. But of course, that’s not all.
  • Modern smart thermostats now can be programmed – or reprogrammed – from a remote location, using a smartphone, tablet or personal computer, as long as a cellular or WiFi signal is available. This can be useful in situations where your schedule changes during the day. Say a meeting arises on a winter’s day and you won’t be home until three hours later than expected. From your workplace, you can change the setting so your home heating doesn’t return to a comfortable level till your later arrival time. You’ll save energy while not fully heating an empty house for those three hours. Some modern smart thermostats offer “geofencing,” which allows your device to know when you’re on the way home, automatically adjusting your home’s temperature to your liking.
  • Many of the smart thermostats on the market today aren’t just used for controlling temperatures in the home. They also can monitor such things as relative indoor humidity and needed air filter changes in your forced-air HVAC system. Some thermostats will provide periodic reports on home energy use, which can help you devise ways to save energy and money.
  • The technology just keeps on progressing. Even before you read this, thermostat technology is being developed that will leave the features you’re reading about here behind in the dust. In recent years, much of the R&D focus in smart thermostats has been in adaptive technology. This gives the thermostat the ability to “learn” your climate and home-comfort preferences and adapt accordingly. They rarely require human intervention.
  • As with anything else in today’s world, you get what you pay for when purchasing a smart thermostat. In general, the higher the price, the more elaborate the features. However, programmable thermostats with basic “smart” features are well within most household budgets.

Discuss with your trusted HVAC technician what sort of smart thermostat will work best in our home, at a price that you can afford. They should be happy to install the new thermostat, while explaining how it works and what it can do for you.

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