Unless you live in an apartment or rented building and your landlord controls your building’s temperature (and if that is the case, we really feel for you), understanding how your thermostat works is actually a very, very useful thing. We don’t mean just being able to turn on and off heating and air units with a thermostat — we mean really understanding how to use the thermostat to heat/cool your home efficiently and at the lowest cost possible.
There are tons of new “smart” thermostats on the market these days that creepily detect when you’re home and which can be controlled through mobile devices (like your phone) so you can adjust your home’s temperature no matter where you are.
But even the “dumb” old school thermostats come equipped with programmable technology that can make it possible for even the most scatter-brained person to maintain a reliable heating and air conditioning system. By adjusting the temperature settings, your thermostat can automatically turn the heating and air conditioning unit on/off.
For example, you might set your thermostat to keep your house five degrees cooler during the day in the winter time, starting around the time you leave for work, and then program the thermostat to start bringing the heat up by five degrees right before you get home in the evening. This way, your furnace isn’t running like crazy and heating an empty house, but your house is still kept warm enough so that it doesn’t turn into Elsa’s ice castle from the movie Frozen. Because sure, you might be interested in building a snowman, but no, not in the kitchen.
And another point: make sure that you place your thermostat in a good spot so that it gets an accurate reading of the temperature in your house. Putting it on a wall that gets direct sunlight will trick the thermostat into thinking that your house is super warm; putting it in a drafty spot will do the opposite. A good spot would be away from windows and doors, not in direct sunlight, and not right in front of a vent.
Not only will a good thermostat make your home more energy-efficient, but it’ll also save you a lot of money in the long run. If you don’t know which thermostat to buy, or where to place it, or how to just turn it on, any of your local HVAC repair services will be able to guide you through the process. Learn more about this topic here.
