subject: Is Your Thermostat As Efficient As It Could Be? [print this page] Thermostats are what control the heating and air conditioning in your home. It's near common knowledge now that setting your thermostats to a temperature closer to the one outside your house will cause for your heating and air units to work much less and therefore save you money. But what most people don't know is that they could theoretically save more money on their bills with a better thermostat. A proper programmable thermostat can regulate the climate of your house in such a fashion that you won't be able to tell the difference when it shifts from cold to hot at different times of the day to save you money. In roughly nine out of ten cases, it also comes down to properly adjusting your home's comfortable temperature and preventing temperature drops in order to make your climate control more efficient.
Not only can you change out your thermostat, you can also have someone install a hybrid system in addition to your already existing home heating and air conditioning system. Solar power and geothermal are two popular options that can make your home's climate control system much easier to maintain and much lighter on your checkbook.
Choosing the Right Thermostat (Or Making Sure Your Thermostat is Efficient "Enough")
Choosing the correct thermostat for your home comfort is all dependent upon what type of system you have set up in your house. Radiant floor heating is particularly slow and therefore may require some adjustment to a compatible thermostat. If you have heat pump or electric baseboard systems, both of which are also contained sometimes in hybrid heating, you'll need a specialized thermostat. Make sure that your thermostat has an Energy Star label. Energy Star compliance means that your thermostat will work to save you money. You should also make sure that your thermostat in question allows you to program each individual day of the week as well as each weekend day separately. There are also a plethora of features such as remote internet access, which allows you to delay the a temperature change a few hours by a remote location if you know you'll be out later than usual, and smart delay, which allows the thermostat to know how long it takes for the furnace/air conditioning unit to change temperatures.
Making Sure Your Thermostat is Installed Correctly
Your thermostat will be far from efficient if you happen to install it on an outside wall where the external temperature affects your house the most. You should also avoid walls with any ducts or moving air that comes in contact with the outside. Heating and cooling vents, direct sunlight and cold drafts can also throw off your thermostat's temperature gauge pretty wildly.
Programming Your Thermostat Efficiently
The U.S. Department of Energy released findings that energy bills can be cut 3% for each degree a thermostat is lowered or raised towards the outside temperature per month. In order to set the temperature as efficiently as possible, aim to set it every four hours. It's important when you're setting your thermostat to do so in a way that prevents your thermostat from dropping a few degrees and then forcing the furnace, for example, to work harder.
