Thermostats are the brain of your HVAC system, signaling when to start and stop heating and cooling cycles to keep your home comfortable. While digital thermostats are commonplace, smart thermostats are also gaining popularity. This guide explores what smart thermostats are, how they optimize HVAC performance, and the benefits homeowners experience when using them.
What Is a Smart Thermostat?
A smart thermostat is a technologically advanced brain for your HVAC system that makes managing your heating and cooling systems easier and more convenient. Smart thermostats are WiFi-enabled, allowing users to manage their HVAC system from a smartphone or tablet. However, it also has smart features that allow for more precise and automatic system management, including automatically building thermostat programs based on the household’s habits. They also gather additional information to make more informed decisions to keep your home comfortable while improving your system’s efficiency.
How Smart Thermostats Optimize HVAC Performance
So now that you know what makes a smart thermostat smart, let’s dig deeper into the how. While it may seem like magic, these devices analyze a series of inputs to help manage your home’s comfort.
Usage Habits
One of the most significant factors smart thermostats monitor and use to build usage programs is how you’re adjusting your temperature. To work well, you need to adjust the temperature for various parts of your day, such as when everyone leaves for the day or the temperature you want at night (if it’s different than the day). After a few days, the thermostat will learn when you make adjustments and can start telling when you’re home and when you’re not. Continue making adjustments and your app will show you what it expects to do to maximize your efficiency without sacrificing your comfort.
Outside Temperature
Watching your usage habits is good, but the outside temperature also plays an important role in managing your home’s comfort. While this may not affect the settings during the time you’re at home, it may impact the settings while you’re away, resulting in significant savings. Some models monitor the weather through published data from services like the Weather Channel and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. More advanced models may have sensors that mount outside to monitor the weather data at your home.
Home Occupants
Some models also have sensors to monitor the number of occupants in your home. This is important data because people generate heat, which directly affects your home’s heating and cooling needs. In the winter, it may mean not running the heat as much. In the summer, more occupants may require more effort from the air conditioner. This is especially true if the thermostat is mounted somewhere other than where people congregate in your home.
Geofencing
If your system adjusts the temperature while you’re away, you likely want it back to a comfortable level when arriving home. Trying to develop a program that achieves this can be challenging, especially if you have a variable schedule. Geofencing is a technology that uses your phone’s location to activate the change in your system’s settings. For instance, it can trigger a change when you’re within a set distance from your home. You can also install the app and have the change triggered when anyone from your household crosses the “fence” boundary.
Integration With Other Smart Devices
Smart thermostats can integrate with your home’s automation platform, like Google Home, Apple HomeKit, or Amazon Alexa. With this integration, you can use a single app to manage your HVAC system in addition to devices like a dehumidifier or air purifier. Further, when integrated with a smart thermostat, the devices can adjust their operation based on other factors like temperature changes and occupancy.
Benefits of Smart Thermostats
Some people simply prefer a smart thermostat because they are technology early adopters. For the rest of us, the following benefits often provide enough motivation for a switch.
Ease of Use
Many property owners prefer smart thermostats because they are easier to use. Rather than having to stand at the thermostat and hit a few buttons repeatedly to try to make setting changes, you make changes on your phone or tablet. This interface isn’t restricted by the number of buttons available, which most people find simpler. Additionally, when using the automatic program features, the thermostat automatically makes changes, reducing the number of times you have to go to the thermostat or open the app to make adjustments.
Reduced Energy Use
Property owners who are eco- or budget-conscious appreciate how smart thermostats help reduce energy usage. Many homeowners fail to use programs on standard digital thermostats because it’s challenging to set them up properly. However, the Department of Energy suggests property owners can shave up to 10% off their home’s annual heating and cooling costs by adjusting their home’s temperature by 7 to 10 degrees while they’re gone for eight hours or more. When the thermostat does this automatically, homeowners have no reason not to leverage these savings.
Energy Tracking
Tracking energy usage patterns is a great way to analyze how your home’s major appliances are working. The problem is the data you get from your utility provider looks at your home’s total power consumption. A smart thermostat looks at just the energy the HVAC system is consuming, giving you deep insight into its efficiency and performance. Additionally, the energy use reports can correlate usage patterns to known variables like the outside weather. This makes it easy to identify when you have unexplained spikes, signaling a possible need for maintenance or repair services.
Important Reminders and Notifications
It can be challenging to stay on top of HVAC maintenance, like tune-ups and filter changes. Advanced smart thermostats also have system diagnostics and can alert you to unusual performance issues. This can include abnormal temperature fluctuation and airflow reductions.
Improved Household Comfort
Home comfort is a constantly changing battle in many families, especially as you move from one part of the day to another. Smart thermostats can help improve the comfort of everyone in your home, especially when combined with a zoned HVAC system. The thermostat for each zone can help keep that zone comfortable. For instance, if you work from home and only need to condition your home office during the workday, your smart thermostat can keep you comfortable while reducing the strain throughout the rest of your home.
Extended Lifespan
By giving your system the information needed to automatically reduce the strain on your system, you’re also reducing wear and tear. This can help extend your system’s lifespan to the full intended 15 to 20 years for modern furnaces, heat pumps, and air conditioners.
Property owners around Cape Coral trust the award-winning team at Ultimate Homes & Cooling to keep their homes comfortable and powered. Our team provides heating and air conditioning services including installation, maintenance, and repair. That includes thermostat and control installation, indoor air quality solutions, and home electrical services like electrical repair, panel replacement, EV charging station installation, generator installation, and home surge protection. Call to schedule a consultation with one of our NATE-certified technicians to discuss whether a smart thermostat is right for your home.
