Smart technology is rapidly making inroads in the home, and the smart thermostat is one of the leading ways to improve your house. By controlling the home’s HVAC system more precisely, a smart thermostat is a great way to improve efficiency and effectiveness. It also can help your system deliver comfortable air in a more targeted manner. You should know the following about what smart thermostats are, how they work and what the benefits of owning at least one may be.
What Makes a Thermostat So Smart, Anyhow?
In an age where labeling things smart is a go-to marketing gimmick, you do need to know the difference between a thermostat that calls itself smart and one that actually does the job smartly. Minimally, a smart thermostat needs to be programmable. You might be able to program the thermostat to kick on at a specific time. If so, then that is at least a little smarter than one that just waits for the temperature to hit a particular degree mark.
Ideally, a smart thermostat should have some degree of adaptability, remote control and monitoring. The best smart thermostats have learning features that allow them to detect energy usage patterns and improve their performance over time.
Programmability for Convenience and Efficiency
Programmability is a benefit because it allows you to tailor the thermostat’s performance better to your lifestyle. If you’re going to be gone all day, it would be nice if you didn’t spend money heating or cooling an empty house. At the same time, you would probably prefer to come home to a comfortable house as opposed to needing to manually adjust the thermostat. A programmable system allows you to note when you want the system to cut back and when you want it to kick up performance.
Not only is this more convenient, but it should also be more efficient. By not overusing the HVAC system, a smart thermostat should reduce energy usage. It also should reduce unnecessary wear and tear on the HVAC system.
It is worth noting that people sometimes use the programming features of smart thermostats to save money based on the time of the day. If your electric company uses variable-rate pricing based on peak demand, you might configure the air conditioning system to run more when electricity is the cheapest. You can even configure the system to reduce usage during peak demand if you’re worried about contributing to possible blackouts during the hottest times of a heat wave.
Remote Access and Integration
Nearly all modern smart thermostats have some form of remote accessibility. The simplest version of accessibility will be some kind of secure access through a phone app. You can check in on the state of the HVAC system and even adjust the thermostat.
Remote accessibility for smart thermostats has become quite advanced in recent years, though. You can find systems that will work with voice assistants, entertainment systems and even home security setups. There are also sometimes options for connecting them to your vehicle’s infotainment system and voice assistant. This allows your vehicle to send information to the smart thermostat and even alter its settings. If you want the thermostat to warm or cool the house when you’re 15 minutes from home, your vehicle can send a signal and trigger the programmed behavior.
Monitoring and Reporting
Understanding your home’s energy usage is just as important as managing it. Fortunately, a smart thermostat can track the data from your HVAC system. This includes information about total runtime, operation cycles, daily temperatures and even the humidity level.
Suppose you’re trying to determine if your electricity bill went up because of overuse or just because the weather was hotter this year than last year. The data from the smart thermostat can tell you how things shook out in terms of usage and prevailing conditions.
Similarly, this data can tell you about the condition of the HVAC system. If your unit is approaching its expected mechanical limit, you may want to start thinking about maintenance or replacement options. The data could tell you if the system is beginning to fail. For example, it might alert you that per-cycle run times are running longer. This is often a warning sign that the system’s efficiency is degrading.
Simple reminders are also available. If you need an annual reminder to schedule an HVAC system checkup, the smart thermostat can text your phone or send you an email. It might seem like a minor thing, but there is a benefit to not using your mental bandwidth to remember to schedule an annual checkup. Also, anything that reduces the odds of a missed checkup is a win for system longevity.
Zonal HVAC Operation
While there are plenty of ways to create HVAC zones in a home, electronic control is almost always the easiest way to do the job. For example, many zonal HVAC setups use fans to control airflow. This ensures that more or less air goes to specific parts of the house. A smart thermostat adds an extra layer of control.
This kind of setup is especially useful if you have low-use areas in your house. Perhaps you have a guest bedroom. Most of the time, it doesn’t need full airflow at the same temperature as the rest of the house. However, a panel for a smart thermostat in the room can allow guests to adjust the setting when they visit.
Zonal control is also frequently a good way to balance air in your house. A smart thermostat will do a better job of monitoring the zonal system’s performance. Not only will it operate more efficiently, but the smart thermostat can send you a notification if a component in the zonal system, such as a damper or fan, fails.
Learning and Optimization
Finally, the top versions of modern smart thermostats offer learning systems that can optimize the HVAC system’s performance over time. This can go as far as tracking how many people are in the house. If the system knows that the house tends to warm up faster once X number of people are there, it can adjust its performance when you have guests. Similarly, it can incorporate cost-saving data and determine when the best time might be to run the heating or air conditioning.
Your Trusted HVAC Professionals
Cool Power LLC is an HVAC company that provides commercial and residential services in Nassau and Suffolk, NY and the surrounding areas. Our company has helped customers proudly since 1975, and we are a PSEG Long Island Home Comfort Partner. You can rely on our technicians to handle work on furnaces, boilers, heat pumps and AC units. Our team also handles indoor air quality projects, and we even tackle ductless HVAC work. We are happy to take on installation, repair, upgrade and maintenance projects.
Our company has financing available for qualified customers, and we often run specials. Maintenance agreements are available, too. We even provide emergency HVAC service on a 24/7 basis. If you are interested in adding a smart thermostat or need some other HVAC help, call Cool Power LLC now and request a quick estimate.
