How a Smart Thermostat Can Save You Money on Heating This Winter

If you’re looking for ways to save on your winter energy bills without impacting your comfort, installing a smart thermostat is one of the best and easiest options. Although it usually doesn’t cost that much to heat a home in the Burbank, CA area, a smart thermostat can still save you money on heating. We’ll explain how smart thermostats work and explore the various ways they can help you reduce your energy bills this winter.

How a Smart Thermostat Works

Some people believe that smart thermostats don’t differ much from other programmable thermostats aside from connecting to Wi-Fi and being controlled using a mobile app. While this is somewhat true for the most basic units, most smart thermostats on the market today are far more advanced. They have learning capabilities that allow them to know when you’re home and away and start recognizing your normal behavior patterns. You still have to input your desired temperature settings at first, but the thermostat should be able to program or adjust the settings on its own after 10 to 14 days.

Most smart thermostats have a built-in motion sensor that helps them to determine whether someone is still home. If no one walks near the thermostat and triggers this sensor for a set period, the thermostat will assume no one is home and go into away mode. That means it will turn the temperature down a few degrees so that your heating runs less. The thermostat will then automatically start switching to away mode at these times without you needing to do anything. Some thermostats can also monitor the weather forecast and current temperature and keep your heating shut off except when it’s cold enough to run it.

If you’re worried about the thermostat sometimes switching to Away mode when you’re home, you can usually set it so that it waits longer without the motion sensor being triggered before switching modes. For instance, the default setting on some units is 75 minutes, but you could increase this to 300 minutes or whatever you want. That way the thermostat won’t switch to Away mode when you’re watching a movie or otherwise don’t walk past it for a while.

Some units can also link to everyone’s phone and tell if anyone is home, depending on whether their phone is connected to the home Wi-Fi network. This type of feature can override the thermostat’s motion sensor to ensure that it doesn’t switch to Away mode unnecessarily. It’s also another method the thermostat uses to adaptively learn your routines.

Other thermostats instead use a geo-fencing feature to determine everyone’s location and when it should switch to away mode. With this feature, you can create a boundary line a certain distance from your home. When anyone is within the specified boundary, the thermostat will remain in Home mode and switch to Away mode only once everyone is outside the Home zone.

If you’re going on vacation, any of these features will enable the thermostat to know that you’re away and stay in Away mode while you’re gone, so your HVAC system conserves energy by running only occasionally. You can always use the app to switch back to Home mode if you’ll be returning earlier than expected. If you’re going to be much later, you can then set a delay so that the thermostat doesn’t switch back to Home mode at the normal time.

How Much Can You Save on Heating Costs With a Smart Thermostat?

A smart thermostat can save you money by regularly switching to Away mode to limit how much your heating system runs. The exact savings you can get with a smart thermostat vary from house to house. That’s because it depends on things like how much someone occupies the house, what temperature you program the Home and Away modes to, and how efficient your HVAC system is.

Nonetheless, the majority of homes will see around an 8%–10% reduction in how much their heating runs and how much energy it uses. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), you can usually expect a smart thermostat to save you around $50–$100 a year when factoring in both heating and cooling costs. That means the thermostat could more than pay for itself within a couple of years.

What to Look for When Choosing a Smart Thermostat

The first thing to check is if any smart thermostat you’re considering is compatible with all your household’s phones and mobile devices. While most units can connect to both Apple and Android devices, some are compatible only with one operating system or the other.

If you have something like an Apple, Amazon or Google smart home assistant or smart home hub, you need to make sure the thermostat can connect to it as well. While this isn’t entirely necessary, it does allow you to control the thermostat and adjust your heating and AC using voice commands instead of always having to use the app.

If you already have another smart home device like a Ring or Nest doorbell camera, it’s a good idea to choose a smart thermostat from the same brand. That way the two can connect together, allowing the thermostat to use the doorbell camera as another method to learn your patterns more quickly and to know if someone is home.

Always choose a smart thermostat that has been ENERGY STAR certified. These units must meet specific standards in terms of improving energy efficiency and have been proven to provide tangible results in terms of energy savings. All these units are also required to have an energy-monitoring feature that enables you to see how much energy your HVAC system consumes in a day, month, etc. This feature makes it easier to determine if your HVAC system isn’t working efficiently by noting unexpected increases in energy usage. You can also use the feature to get tips on how to further reduce your heating bills.

Another useful feature to look for is performance monitoring, which can send a notification to your phone if your HVAC system shuts off unexpectedly or fails to turn on. It can also alert you if your HVAC system stops performing as effectively and even remind you when it’s time to change the system’s air filter or schedule cooling or heating maintenance service.

At Air Max HVAC, we’ve been helping residents in Burbank and the surrounding areas with their heating, cooling and indoor air quality needs since 2001. We specialize in smart thermostat installation and offer a wide selection of different units. Once you’ve chosen which unit you want, our team can hardwire it to your HVAC system and make sure it’s calibrated correctly. We will also help guide you through all its features, so you know how to make best use of it. To schedule a consultation and learn about all the smart thermostat options we offer, contact us today.