Smart Thermostats – Yes, Another Smart Device is a Good Thing

Essentially the thermostat, whether it is smart or not, has one function: to control the temperature in your home. Whether it’s a mechanical one, or a new smart thermostat, that is its one job. How and when it performs that job though is what can have a large impact on your electric bill.

Traditional Thermostats

Originally thermostats were mechanical, non-programmable, devices that relied on a mercury bulb to tell the HVAC system when to operate. While they do work perfectly well, mercury is a health and environmental hazard and the thermostats had to be adjusted whenever you wanted a change in temperature. Later models of mechanical thermostat did develop rudimentary programmability and did away with the mercury but their performance is rather poor.

Advantages of Digital Thermostats

Since then HVAC industry equipment manufacturers has sought to improve the thermostat. Digital thermostats were much better at regulating temperature than their mechanical counterparts and with a programmable function they became very good at controlling the temperature in a home or building. For a long time people were content with their programmable digital thermostats and that was pretty much the end of innovation.

Then in 2011 the first smart thermostat was introduced, the Nest. This thermostat was ‘smart’ in that it not only had sophisticated algorithms that would learn from your habits at home but could also link to your computer and smart phone. This ability to adjust the temperature based on your activity added up to significant savings on electric bills.

NEST Thermostats

Since the Nest came out, there have been a number of smart thermostats to hit the market, each one adding more features to the last. There are now smart thermostats available that don’t even require any input from you other than an initial set up of temperatures for home and away. Using geolocation through an app on your smart phone it will know when you are away and adjust the temperature, then adjust it again when you are within a certain range of home that you set. Other thermostats are Wi-Fi enabled and can link to your homes security system, using the motion sensors to detect when you are home or awake.

The technology for smart thermostats is constantly evolving and new and more energy efficient features are continually being developed. Smart thermostats are a great way to save on your energy bill and make your home more comfortable. At Cardinal Heating & A/C we can install a smart thermostat for you and offer the Carrier Cor smart thermostat. For all your questions about or installations of smart thermostats, give us a call today.