The monthly cost of heating and cooling is easily the largest portion of the energy bill in the typical home — averaging around 45 percent. That leaves a lot of wiggle-room to save money, or to see red at the end of the month. Your new programmable thermostat can help ensure you don’t see red and maintain your level of home comfort, but it must be used correctly.
Comfort, Efficiency and Convenience
Programmable thermostats offer the convenience of programming multiple temperature changes, as desired, throughout the day and night, which sync with your lifestyle and comfort zone. On a bitterly-cold winter morning in Rochester, Farmington or Bloomfield Hills, for instance, you may awaken to a warm and comfortable home based on your time schedule and comfort temperature, which will help you to wake up on the right side of the bed, and save heating dollars.
Programmable Energy Savings — And Comfort
With a programmable thermostat, you don’t need to sacrifice comfort to save energy dollars. By simply utilizing sleeping hours and the hours spent away from home, such as working hours, you may significantly reduce your heating and cooling bills, and still awaken and arrive home to comfortable temperatures. The key to saving energy and maintaining comfort is consistency.
Start with moderate programmed temperature changes to find your comfort zones that sync with your schedule. If you are tempted to use the “hold” feature to change the temperature from the programmed setting, then you’re out of your comfort zone. If you actually do change the temperature, you’re going to scratch any potential energy savings you’ve earned, and perhaps increase your heating or cooling costs. Use this sample program schedule for starters:
- Sleeping hours — five degrees lower/higher (heating/cooling months) from your regular comfort zone
- Working hours — eight to 10 degrees lower/higher
- Weekend and comfort hours — according to your activities
If you are researching programmable thermostats as part of a heating and/or cooling upgrade, ask your HVAC professional about compatible smart thermostats for even more programming and system-control features. For best results, contact Aladdin Heating & Cooling in Southeast Michigan today for expert assistance.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Detroit, Michigan about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about programmable thermostat and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
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