Besides changing the filter and doing annual maintenance, your home’s thermostat is often the only contact most people have with their heater. And even then, sometimes we won’t look at the thermostat unless we’re adjusting it due to a high utility bill.
One of the best ways to see a significant drop in your electric bill is to upgrade your thermostat since your thermostat controls your HVAC system. Thermostats lose their efficiency over the years and become outdated. And an outdated thermostat will not control your home’s temperature as well and could lead to you losing money on your energy bills.
There are many benefits of upgrading your home thermostat, including:
Lower Energy Bills
Manual thermostats are pretty straight-forward in the sense that you can set it and forget it until you need to adjust the temperature. Unfortunately, they don’t automatically adjust to conditions that would have saved energy and money. When you’re not at home or when you’re sleeping, you could be using less heat and less energy.
When you upgrade to a programmable thermostat, you can set your thermostat to turn down the heat in certain rooms at specific times. For example, if no one is home from 8am-5pm, you can set your heating system to a cooler temperature from 8am-4:30. And then you can set it to heat back up in time for everyone to return at 5pm.
Total Control
With thermostat upgrades, you’re able to create specific zones throughout your home. In each zone, you can set specific temperatures and different times for each zone. This can save money on your electricity bills. Newer programmable thermostats allow you to monitor how your HVAC system is working. It can also alert you if you need to change your filter or schedule a service appointment. This can extend your heating system’s lifespan due to decreased wear and tear.
Usability
With so many new options for thermostats, they have had an update to their usability. Some of these new updates to usability on thermostats include:
- Touch Screen Controls
- Bluetooth to Phone Compatibility
- Large screens to see the temperature from far away
- Digital Read-Outs
- Lighted LED Displays, Buttons, Keys
- Wi-Fi Controlled
- Maintenance reminders to remind you to change the filter
- Alerts of system problems
- Easy programmability
Easy programming is one of the biggest benefits of new programmable thermostats. Older programmable thermostats were difficult to program. In contrast, modern thermostats are designed with an intuitive interface.
With easy-to-understand directions and controls, you can easily set the temperatures and times throughout your home. These controls have been made redesigned to be more intuitive. You can select specific days and times like older thermostats. But, most modern thermostats offer options like “weekdays”, “weekends”, and “evenings” to simplify adjusting the temperature.
Some programmable thermostats even allow you to make changes directly from your smartphone. Let’s say you take a vacation and forget to adjust the thermostat, you can do it from your phone at the airport.
Increase Lifespan of Heat Pump
Your heat pump is one of the components in your heating system that’s most prone to wear and tear. Fortunately, an upgraded programmable thermostat, when programmed correctly, can take part of the workload off of your heat pump because it’s used less. This can result in several more years out of your heat pump.
Eco-Friendly
As we mentioned, new programmable thermostats decrease your energy usage. However, they’re environmentally friendly in another way. Older thermostats were made with mercury, a toxic substance that can harm your health and the environment. New thermostats do not come with this substance.
Trust the Experts at J.A. Bertsch Heating & Cooling
Are you interested in upgrading your thermostat? Trust the experts at J.A. Bertsch Heating & Cooling to help you choose the perfect thermostat for your heating system. We’ll even install it for you and teach you how to set up your thermostat and program it.
J.A. Bertsch Heating & Cooling offers professional residential heating and furnace repair services throughout Kootenai County. Our licensed furnace technicians cover all of North Idaho and our neighboring cities. For the most trusted heating furnace repair services in North Idaho call the professionals at (208) 635-5480.
