What is a smart thermostat?
Do you want to make your home much smarter? The smart home revolution is in full swing, one of the best investments you can make right away is a smart thermostat.
Why? Switching a conventional thermostat to a smart thermostat will not only make your home more “high-tech” but also help you manage and reduce your energy bill. Smart thermostats also offer a level of convenience we’ve never had before.
With many features that you simply cannot get with a regular thermostat, a smart thermostat is truly one smart investment you should be making right now.
Let’s take a look at the various features that make up a smart thermostat – remote control, geofence, voice control, presence detection, training and usage monitoring.
Control from anywhere
The main advantage of any smart device is internet connectivity, and smart thermostats are no exception.
With a Wi-Fi connection and a phone or tablet app of your smart thermostat, computer, web browser, or virtual assistant like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, you can monitor and control your home temperature, program schedule, or start A / C or fever even when you’re not at home.
For example, there may be days when you come home earlier than usual. Instead of manually adjusting the thermostat when you get home, you can remotely pre-set the temperature of your thermostat ahead of time so that you feel pleasant and comfortable when you arrive.
The remote control of the smart thermostat is also an important power-saving feature when you are on vacation or traveling. For example, you might be lying on a beach in Florida and still be able to raise or lower the temperature of your home many miles away.
Remember that shaving a few degrees above normal thermostat settings results in significant energy savings. The ability to do this remotely when you need to can lead to impressive results in the long run.
Voice control
Here’s a standard feature on most smart thermostats that always makes you feel like you’re living in the home of the future – voice control!
As mentioned earlier, you can control your smart thermostat with a virtual assistant like Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple Siri (via Homekit).
Pair it with Amazon Echo, Google Home or Apple Homepod and like magic, you can simply say “Alexa, set the temperature to 21 degrees” or “OK Google, lower the temperature 2 degrees” to operate it without lifting your finger …
The Ecobee4, one of the leading smart thermostats, even comes with built-in Alexa. So, in addition to controlling the temperature of your home, the Ecobee4 can do most of what a stand-alone Amazon Echo or Echo Dot can do. With it, you can control your other smart home appliances, play music, read news, ask questions, and more.
Remote Sensors
Another advantage that advanced smart thermostats have over traditional thermostats is their use of remote sensors that you can link in different rooms throughout your home.
These sensors operate various functions that can help improve the efficiency of your heating and air conditioning system and in turn save on energy costs.
In particular, Ecobee temperature sensors can detect whether a room is occupied or not and automatically adjust the temperature in your home.
This balances hot and cold areas in your home.
They do not define employment; rather, they are used to set priority areas for interior areas.
However, you can pair the Nest thermostat with other Nest products such as Nest Camera, Nest Smoke Detectors, and Nest to get similar presence detection features as motion detection is built into these gadgets.
Usage statistics
To better manage your energy consumption and see how to set the thermostat to your electricity bill, smart thermostats have usage and statistics available to apps or over the internet.
These free energy and usage reports usually show you how much energy you have saved (or were using) per month, and your air-conditioner and heating equipment is operating efficiently.
Saving
Smart thermostats, with remote control, geofencing, the ability to recognize and learn activities, have another advantage over conventional thermostats. They can help you save money!
The amount you can save still depends on a combination of factors such as the efficiency of your HVAC system, the insulation of your home, utility costs, local weather changes, and your temperature preferences.
But with all of the automated and learning features, smart thermostat companies claim that you can dramatically reduce your energy costs if you upgrade to their products.
Accordingly to energy.gov you can save as much as 10% a year on heating and cooling by simply turning your thermostat back 4°-5°C for 8 hours a day from its normal setting. The percentage of savings from setback is greater for buildings in milder climates than for those in more severe climates.
This means that smart thermostats are significantly more expensive than their traditional style counterparts, you can recoup your investment in a short time. Yes, you can say that a smart thermostat pays off in the long run.
In Conclusion
In conclusion, installing a new thermostat is not exactly rocket science. However, it is always a good idea to work with professionals to ensure high quality and consistent results without the risk of injury or further damage to the device. You can also contact us for your A / C or heating service to keep your system running at peak performance on hot or chilly days.
