Do programmable thermostats save money?

Do Programmable Thermostats Save Money?

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As a homeowner, you already have enough to deal with in terms of costs. You’ve got a mortgage, property taxes, and things in houses always need repairing. However, of course, unless you are in the top 1%, chances are that you are operating on a budget, especially if you have kids and other family members to look after.

Therefore, anything that can help you save some cash, both in the short run and long run, is going to make a huge difference indeed.

A part of this has to do with energy costs, because as you probably know, heating and cooling your home costs a whole lot of money. Did you know that around 42% of all energy costs that you pay in your home have to do with heating and cooling?

That is a whole lot of cash to be paying just to keep your home comfortable and livable. The way of the old manual thermostat is gone, you know, the ones where you simply set a certain temperature, and that is what your furnace or air conditioning unit will heat or cool your home to.

Well, this is very inefficient, and it can end up costing you a whole lot of money. You might be cooling or heating rooms in your home that are relatively unused, which is of course totally useless and futile.

On that same note, you may be heating or cooling your home at times when it is not needed, such as when you are sleeping or when you are not home. This is where the programmable thermostat comes into play, because yes, they can indeed help you save some cash. Let’s talk about how exactly a programmable thermostat can help you save money.

What Is A Programmable Thermostat?

Before we get into talking about how a programmable thermostat can help you save money, it is probably wise to discuss what exactly a programmable thermostat is. Well, just to start, a regular old thermostat simply has a dial on it which allows you to select a certain temperature.

If you have a heat only thermostat, this means that setting the temperature will cause your furnace to heat your whole home up to a specific temperature at all times, and that’s it. If you have a heating and cooling thermostat, it will achieve a specific temperature whether heating or cooling is required to do so.

On the other hand, a programmable thermostat is one where you can program your furnace and/or air conditioning system to heat or cool to certain temperatures at specific times of the day. In other words, you can program them to heat or cool your home to specific temperatures according to times of the day.

For example, you can set a higher temperature for the morning when you get up, you can then set it to be lower during the day when you are not home, and then increase the temperature again to make your home cozy for when you come home from work.

There are also more advanced thermostat systems out there which come with several thermometers located in different rooms, so you can actually set specific temperatures, at various times, for specific rooms in your home. It’s pretty convenient no doubt.

Do Programmable Thermostats Save Money?

So, the main question here is of course whether or not these programmable thermostats can help you save money when it comes to heating and cooling costs. Well, the simple and straightforward answer here is yes, a programmable thermostat can help you save lots of cash. How exactly does a programmable thermostat help you save money on heating and cooling costs?

  • Programmable thermostats tend to be digital, and generally speaking, their thermometers and abilities to meet exact set temperatures are much better than older manual thermostats. In other words, a programmable thermostat will accurately read the temperature and will not continue heating or cooling your home past the setting you have chosen. Accuracy does make a big difference here.
  • Another way in which a good programmable thermostat can help you save money is by ensuring that your home is heated or cooled only when needed. For instance, when you sleep or leave home to go to work, you don’t need the temperature to be ideal in terms of living comfortably. If you are under the covers, you don’t need the home to be as hot as you would normally need it to be, and the same goes if you are at work. With a programmable thermostat, you can set it so that the heating or cooling systems can turn off during the times of day and night when they are not needed. Instead of always maintaining the same temperature through 24 hours of the day, you can save money by turning the heating or cooling off, or at least turning it down when not needed.
  • Something else to keep in mind here is that with really advanced systems, you can even program them to heat or cool certain rooms in the home more than others. Therefore, if you have spare bedrooms or other rooms that nobody uses, you can save money by not heating or cooling those rooms as much, or at all if you see fit to do so.

Conclusion

As you can see, a nice new programmable thermostat can definitely help you save money by allowing you to control the heating or cooling for specific times of the day, and potentially even for individual rooms.

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