Prep for Fall With Money-Saving Programmable Thermostats
In cold-weather climates, winter's arrival heralds the joys of downhill skiing, ice skating and snowball fights. It also ushers in a season of higher utility costs. Regardless of whether you heat your home with gas or electricity, the cost of running a furnace can add hundreds of dollars to a seasonal utility bill. Adjusting the interior temperature to match your schedule can shave plenty from your heating bill -- it reduces the average family's annual utility costs by $180, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency -- and a programmable thermostat makes the process a snap to manage.
Other People Are Reading
-
Setback
-
Of the $2,200 the average family spends each year on utility bills, nearly half covers heating and cooling. The EPA suggests that savvy scheduling of temperature control, aided by programmable thermostats, is the optimal heating and cooling strategy. You may like your home at 70 degrees in the winter, but there's no reason to maintain that temperature when no one's in the house. Nor is it necessary at night, when people are sleeping under their covers. Thus, the EPA's suggested energy savings comes from setting back the heat by roughly 8 degrees when no one's going to experience the cooler temperatures -- during the night, and during the day when everyone's at work or school. The home only stays at 70 for a few hours in the morning and during the evening before bedtime.
Scheduling and Overrides
-
Dozens of models of programmable thermostat are currently on the market, and most let you configure two or more separate schedules. These schedules set standard indoor temperatures that can vary at certain points in the day. For example, if you get up at 7 a.m. for work, leave by 8:30, and arrive home by 6 p.m. before going to bed at 11 p.m., you could run a weekday schedule to keep the house at 62 degrees during the night and while you're at work, and 70 degrees between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. and again between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. A second schedule could be put in place for weekend needs. You'll get the benefit of a warm home without paying to heat the house while you're away or asleep.
If you need a jolt of warmer air, simply turn up the heat; the thermostat will let you perform a short-term override of the schedule without canceling it. So if Granny stops by for Thanksgiving, you can push up the temperature up a few degrees for a few hours without having to reprogram the device.
-
Thermostat Tips
-
The EPA recommends that all programmable thermostats remain at their set points (the low point, when no one's around) for a minimum of eight hours at a time; schedules that fluctuate every few hours will have a smaller impact on your overall heating efficiency.
Use more than one thermostat to control your indoor temperatures. Many houses, especially older ones, may have zones where the ambient air is warmer or cooler than the air around a single thermostat. Installing several thermostats can help normalize temperature and reduce your discomfort.
Adaptive thermostats track the time it takes to heat or cool a zone and then begin the heating or cooling process to reach a set point according to the schedule. Nonadaptive thermostats simply kick on or off at the specified time. Cranking nonadaptive devices to very high or very low temperatures won't necessarily change the temperature any faster and could lessen your energy savings and stress your equipment besides.
"Only the Behavior Saves"
-
An internal review of the effectiveness of programmable thermostats conducted by the EPA showed, unsurprisingly, that the projected energy savings only became manifest after the consumer changed his behavior. David Shiller, the Energy Star marketing manager, noted in 2006 that "only the behavior saves, not the box," concluding that people who failed to set recommended schedules didn't see any appreciable change in energy costs. In fact, the EPA noted that five different field studies showed no statistically significant difference in total energy savings between users of properly configured programmable thermostats and users of traditional thermostats that were consistently set by hand, by energy-conscious homeowners. A full 50 percent of homeowners with programmable thermostats never dialed back the heat at night, for example.
In other words: The act of aggressively managing temperature set points and setbacks is what causes energy savings, not merely owning a programmable thermostat that never gets set with optimal heating and cooling schedules.
-
References
- Photo Credit Comstock/Comstock/Getty Images
