Programmable Thermostats

As the trees start losing their leaves and the temperatures start to drop, we know that winter is not too far away, and that means turning on your heat. With energy prices on the rise, my wife and I were looking for any way to reduce our heating bill this winter. In reading an article of things people could do to save money, we ran across the idea of programmable thermostats. We hadn’t ever considered them before because we keep the thermostat set at 60 degrees all winter and didn’t figure that we could do much better. What we hadn’t considered though was the wasted heat during the times while we were at work and in bed. That adds up to quite a bit of time if you think about it. We are usually away from the house at least 12 hours for work and under the warm covers sleeping for around 7 hours for a total of 19 hours. That is 19 hours on each day we go into work and 7 hours on each day we stay in the house. That is a lot of potential heat wasted. Obviously if you have people on different schedules your heating times may be different, but as you can see it does add up pretty quickly.

So how do these devices work? Well, my research showed that these devices come in various models that range from very simple to pretty high-tech, but all do basically the same thing, turn the heat up at a certain time of day and turn it down at another time of day. The flexibility and complexity in the scheduling of this activity is where most of the differences are between the models. Most of them come with the ability to move the thermostat up or down four times a day. This is pretty logical since you want to turn the heat up just before you get out of bed in the morning, turn it down after you leave for work, turn it back up before you come home and back down when you go to bed. The cheaper models only allow you to have one schedule for every day of the week, which is ok if you are on the same schedule every day, but for people who have a different schedule on weekends this may not be ideal since the heat will go off for the majority of Saturday and Sunday. The mid-grade models account for this by allowing you to have one schedule for Monday through Friday, and a different schedule for Saturday and Sunday. This model will probably work fine for most, but if you happen to have days off that are during the week then you will need a model that will allow you to have a different schedule for every day. It is important to note, that most models that I saw all had the ability to override the schedule manually so you could take the chill off or turn it down on a warmer day. Also, most of the models control not only heat but also central air conditioning so it will save you money all year long if you have both. The cost of the models I looked at ranged from around $30 to $100.

Do you need a degree in electrical engineering to install one? Most of the models I read about seemed to be pretty simple, and the one we ended up getting was a snap to install. It took me about 30 minutes total to install and program two of these devices in our home. That being said, we do only have a simple oil heat boiler and no air conditioning so our system is probably simpler than most, but I would still bet most people could do it in less than an hour. Most of the models are battery powered which is good for the do-it-yourself installer since you don’t have to worry about running new power wires to the thermostat which was a concern of mine when I first started researching. The batteries are supposed to last a season, but since they are controlling if you system comes on and off it is advised that if you are going to be away from your house for more than a month that you put a fresh set of batteries in so your thermostat does not stop working while you are away.

As you can see programmable thermostats are pretty simple devices that can really help you save money on your heating and cooling bills. Just how much you save I guess depends on how many degrees you turn it down, and for how long it is at the lower temperature. We have ours programmed to go down to 50 degrees while we are in bed or away which is 10 degrees below our normal temperature. Time will tell if this works for us and just how much money we end up saving. I’ll report back in the spring with our results. Once again, this is just Life According to Troy.