Smart phones. Smart cars. Smart appliances. It seems like the only thing that isn’t smart nowadays is people!
You can probably live without some versions of “smart” technology. Your cat won’t starve without the Tesla Smart Pet Feeder, and we expect you’ll manage to keep track of how many eggs you have left in your fridge without the Quirky Egg Minder egg inventory system.
But not all smart gadgets are gimmicks. Take the smart thermostat, for example. It is a Wi-Fi enabled device that optimizes your home’s HVAC performance by automatically adjusting cooling and heating, and which also makes it possible to control your home’s temperature so long as you have a phone and an internet connection.
Imagine that: always enjoying the perfect temperature inside your home, and adjusting it from anywhere on earth. It’s the kind of future the hacks who wrote The Jetsons could never have imagined.
A smart thermostat is certain to improve your life in more ways than one. Let’s delve into some of the benefits you’d realize by adding one to your HVAC system today!
Improved Comfort
Are you tired of coming back home to a sweltering hot or blistering cold house? Then you already have every reason you need to upgrade to a smart thermostat. It will preemptively raise or lower your home’s temperature in anticipation of your arrival, so you can always walk through the door to perfect comfort.
If we’re being honest, any type of thermostat can help you stay more comfortable so long as it’s new. The older a thermostat gets, the less reliable it becomes – until it one day fails altogether. Preemptively replacing your thermostat before it wears out can spare you a whole lot of grief.
Increased Savings
The old-fashioned alternative to returning to an uncomfortable house is to leave the furnace or air conditioner on while you’re away. Obviously, the thought of spending money on heating or cooling while you’re not around to enjoy it isn’t a savory one. Therein lies the chief advantage of a smart thermostat: it saves you money.
You don’t have to set your smart thermostat in order to trim down your energy bills. It uses motion sensors and software algorithms to learn when your home is occupied, and then implements the ideal heating and cooling schedule. Smart thermostats also track local weather, and some even prioritize heating and cooling when energy suppliers are charging their off-peak period rates. That’s why switching to a smart thermostat can reduce your heating and cooling costs by as much as 8%!
None of these cost savings come at the expense of comfort, though. Thanks to its energy-saving mode, a smart thermostat will not allow a home to get too hot or too cold (and waste energy restoring a habitable climate as a result).
Improved Indoor Air Quality
A smart thermostat doesn’t merely monitor indoor temperature. It also tracks humidity, and makes adjustments to keep it below the acceptable threshold of 60%. That prevents black mold from spreading, which in turn minimizes your exposure to mycotoxins that can exacerbate asthma and allergy symptoms.
Black mold isn’t just bad for your health. If allowed to spread long enough, it can create unsightly soot-colored spots on walls and ceilings, damage HVAC equipment, and ultimately destroy an entire house. And even if mold weren’t a problem, high humidity could still warp wood until it destroys furniture, flooring and door frames.
Increased Convenience
A smart thermostat will help you keep track of your home’s HVAC maintenance needs by sending alerts to your phone whenever you need to change the air filter. It will also alert you when your heating or cooling system is exhibiting serious performance issues. That enables you to request the repairs which prevent more serious issues down the road, as well as postpone having to replace an aging heating or cooling system.
A smart thermostat will also spare you the considerable effort of standing up whenever you want to manually adjust the temperature. Do it right on your phone, tablet or computer! And if you have a smart home assistant like Alexa or Siri, you can just tell them to do it. (Be polite. A Terminator-style robot uprising could always be right around the corner.)
Are you ready to upgrade to a smart thermostat? If you live in Sioux City, IA or the surrounding tri-state area, then O’Connor Heating & Cooling is standing by to install the future of climate control at your homestead – and as a Rheem Pro Partner, we are always available to install the HVAC industry’s highest-quality air conditioners, heating systems and water heaters. Contact us today to get started!
Recent Comments