Features You Should Look for in a Modern Thermostat
A thermostat is one of the most important elements of an HVAC system. It detects when your home is too warm or too cold and, if so, ensures that your system starts making your living conditions more comfortable. However, it’s not just about comfort. A modern thermostat that works effectively saves you money on your energy bills.
But which features are the most important to have in a modern thermostat?
Remote Sensors
Remote sensors can be a valuable feature of a modern thermostat. That’s because if your thermostat is located in a drafty area or where the sun shines on it throughout the day, its readings may not be indicative of your home as a whole. But if you use remote sensors that are in more ideal and accurate locations, you won’t have that issue. Sensors can also help your thermostat effectively deal with uneven conditions.
Remote Access
Remote access can help reduce your stress related to your HVAC system.
If your modern thermostat has Wi-Fi capability, that’ll allow you to monitor it and your home’s conditions from anywhere, and you can also alter its settings from wherever you are. So, if you learn that the baseball game has been rained out and that you’ll be home sooner than you’d expected, you could use your thermostat’s remote-access settings to get your home’s interior conditions ready for your unexpected midday arrival.
Profiles and Modes
Profiles and modes provide you with the ability to make exceptions to your modern thermostat’s regular settings.
Profiles and Setbacks
Profiles allow you to plan ahead for known varying circumstances, such as adjusting to your home being empty on weekday mornings and afternoons and it being full on the weekends. They can also be programmed to make your preferred adjustments at certain times of the day, such as if you prefer warmer or cooler overnight conditions.
You may be able to take advantage of automated setbacks. A setback, which can be included in a profile, is a temperature change that’s being done in order to experience energy savings and cost savings. For example, increasing your home’s temperature by several degrees when you’re expected to be away would be a setback that could save energy and money.
This can be especially useful if your power company charges more for electricity that’s used from 4-8 p.m. but you know that you won’t be home then, like if you work a swing shift.
Modes
Modes consist of adjustments to the present situation. For example, say that you unexpectedly had only a half-day at work and are home on a Thursday afternoon. You could then use a hold that would take your thermostat and HVAC system as a whole out of the weekday afternoon profile that they had been in. Or if you’re going on vacation, you could use a vacation mode to account for the house being empty for days or weeks.
Demand Response
If one of your thermostat’s features allows participation in your local power company’s demand-response program, if one is offered, you can allow it to adjust your home’s conditions during peak demand to save you even more money, generally as bill credits.
You could potentially have a thermostat that adjusts to demand response while also meeting your provided parameters so that you can save money while also being comfortable at home. This can be done by, for example, setting a maximum temperature adjustment that cannot be exceeded.
Geofencing
Geofencing helps people and households that don’t really adhere to set schedules. How it works is that your thermostat is connected to your phone’s GPS and simply reacts to you being home or not as far as what settings to utilize. In some cases, it can even assess exactly where you are and where you’re heading while away from home, such as realizing that you’re driving home and getting things set for your arrival.
Automatic Updates
An often overlooked but valuable feature of a thermostat is automatic updates. When this is included, you won’t have to be notified about updates or see if there are any yourself. With it, there would also be no need to manually transfer updates to a thermostat. It would simply be automatic and save you time as well as save you the stress of regularly checking if any exist.
Energy Monitoring
A feature that your thermostat could have is monitoring your energy usage and detecting if there’s an unexplained spike, which will oftentimes be related to wear and tear becoming significant or something breaking down. In any case, you can use this warning as an impetus to schedule a diagnostic appointment and see what’s going on with your HVAC system.
Energy monitoring can also provide you with more specifics on, for example, how much that intended increased usage that you engaged in last July affected things relative to the July before it.
Maintenance Reminders
Some thermostats provide reminders for you to schedule regular maintenance and change your air filters.
Smart Home Integration
If you want your modern thermostat to be closely integrated with your smart home, you should ensure that the ones you’re considering will do this to the degree you’re looking for.
Compatibility
Is that thermostat that you’re looking at compatible with your HVAC system’s features? For example, if you use a zoned or multi-stage system, you’re going to want a thermostat that’s compatible with those features.
Conclusion
A modern thermostat can offer more features than you’d imagined it would, and all of those combine to help things run smoothly while you’re home and when you’re away. They can help you save money as well.
For more information on modern thermostats and to make an appointment to get one professionally installed, reach out to One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating. We serve Bradenton, FL, and the surrounding area. Not only that, but we’re also on time, or you don’t pay a dime.
