When digital thermostats debuted in the 1980s, there were a lot of buttons and directions involved to program them to cool the house the way you wanted.

As a result, most people never bothered to try. (This was the era of the blinking VCR clock, after all.) Thirty years later, they still weren’t trying as only about 12 percent report ever programming their systems.

So, it’s understandable if you’ve been putting off a thermostat upgrade because a smart thermostat sounds a little intimidating. Fortunately, the wifi thermostat has evolved a lot in the past decade, becoming much easier to use and the hub of a smart home.

Adding one to your Lowcountry home allows you to take the most advantage of the efficiency of your HVAC system. Here are just a few of the benefits of a smart thermostat to consider if you plan to upgrade.

1. Convenience Features

Set-and-forget worked okay in the first programmable versions as long as your schedule was consistent time-wise. But as our lives have become less predictable, a smart thermostat has evolved to learn your preferences and set a flexible schedule for you.

It usually takes a week’s worth of usage data for a smart system to start programming itself around your habits. It learns your schedule as well as temperature preferences to determine when to run the system.

Remote sensors in different rooms allow you to balance hot and cold areas of the house. Because the thermostat connects to sensors around the house, it doesn’t make temp decisions solely based on the air in the vicinity of the control. Some sensors can even be set to tell if someone’s in the room or if it can go ahead and turn the air off in that room.

You can also take advantage of geofencing, which is when the app on your phone lets the system know you’re on your way home. The smart thermostat can be set to wait to adjust temperatures until it gets that notification to minimize the amount of time it runs the heat or AC.

We love the Trane ComfortLink II as a great example of how a smart thermostat can accomplish all this. The ComfortLink can detect temperature and humidity and adjust the compressor and fan speeds in real-time. You stay comfortable without having to get involved.

Given time, your thermostat will be programming itself and you can go back to forgetting about it.

2. Remote Control

By definition, programmable thermostats are smart, but to get the most out of them, you need to make sure you get one that’s WiFi-enabled. That’s the difference between a smart vs WiFi thermostat, although you’ll see the terms used interchangeably.

Smart means the thermostat can learn over time to adjust to your habits, while WiFi has the additional benefit of allowing you to connect remotely to control it through an app. This remote control is one of the biggest benefits of a smart home.

As your thermostat learns your patterns, it might know that you always come home late on Tuesdays. If your regular schedule changes and you’ll be home earlier, you can use the app to change the temperature manually so the house is comfortable by the time you arrive.

Smart thermostats increasingly come with direct connections to a smart home hub like Alexa or Google Assistant. This allows you to request temperature changes with verbal commands. You can have the system warm-up your studio space so it’s cozy when you’re ready to work.

Our example Trane ComfortLink II can even serve as your smart home hub through the built-in Nexia Bridge. You can use it to remotely monitor and control the temperature on a zone-by-zone basis with your phone, tablet, or computer.

With a WiFi link as part of your system, you can control it from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection.

3. Money-Saving Insights

We all love saving money, and it tends to be a big factor in why our clients upgrade their HVAC to more efficient systems. After all, the average home spends half of its energy bills just on heating and cooling. Adding in a smart thermostat improves your ability to heat and cool efficiently.

That’s where the smart part comes into play because saving money and using less energy is all about figuring out when to make adjustments. And with sensors and zones, the system can even decide where makes the most sense.

Most smart thermostats can log equipment use and temperature data to let you track and manage energy usage. Some can be set to send you reminders for service or air filter changes.
All of these are great for helping you estimate future energy costs and see how efficiently your equipment is operating. This means you’ll also see if it suddenly stops being so efficient.

The Trane ComfortLink II provides diagnostic data through the Nexia Diagnostics system and dashboard. Not only will it highlight any issues, but it can also alert us here at Carolina Climate Control so we can schedule a visit to check on it before anything breaks, and you’re left sweating.

Get a Smart Thermostat Upgrade

Today’s smart thermostat learns your preferences and anticipates your needs while managing your HVAC to deliver the most energy efficiency. It handles everything for you for maximum convenience while still allowing you complete control no matter where you are.

If you’d like to upgrade your thermostat in 2021, give us a call to talk about the Trane ComfortLink or other smart thermostat. Our Charleston customers find it a great way to optimize the performance of their systems and one of the best smart home devices to invest in.

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We all know the importance and role that thermostats play in our everyday lives, whether that be for your home’s HVAC system or your commercial heating and air.

They control the temperature and humidity by adjusting the operation of the HVAC system for whatever area or space they’re in. The temperature is set, the thermostat monitors the current temperature of the room or space and sends the on or off signal to the heating or air conditioning until the temperature reaches the set level.

It’s a pretty simple invention that dates back to the 1600’s and is an integral — if not undervalued — device of our time.

Even though the concept of the function of the thermostat has changed little since its early beginnings, the technology used to carry out that function surely has.

The Pre-Connectivity Era: Analog & Digital Thermostats

In the pre-internet connected era, two types of thermostats were most abundant: analog and digital.

Analog thermostats relied mostly on mechanical means to sense temperature, often using the expansion and contraction of a two metal strips that would then trigger a mechanical on/off switch depending on their position.

Digital thermostats on the other hand, use no moving parts to detect temperature; rather they rely on semiconductor (electronic) sensors that can improve the accuracy of detection. These models also have other electronics within them that allow for programmed settings, such as turning on/off at specific times of the day for example.

While the analog models are still hanging around in some areas, digital thermostats have all but replaced them due to their more advanced functionality.

Internet-Connected Thermostats

In the age of internet-connected devices, or the Internet of Things (IoT) era as many people refer to it, perhaps one of the first “non-computer” home devices ever to connect to the internet were thermostats.

This added connectivity allowed users to control and operate their home’s HVAC system by connecting through the internet, often through a web or app interface on their computers or mobile devices.

This useful connection, however, is not necessarily what makes a thermostat “smart thermostat”.

Smart Thermostats: Next Level Connected Thermostats

What makes an internet-connected thermostat a “smart” thermostat is it’s ability to store and analyze data about your home’s HVAC operation, give you real-time energy usage and offer automated ways to make your system more efficient.

Instead of simply manually programming your HVAC system to operate during the times when you’re away, by connected your thermostat with your home security system for example, it automatically turn on/off based on when you activate or deactivate your alarm system. Since this event-based and not time-based, it will never perform actions if you’re not home, allowing for a more flexible schedule and improved operational efficiency.

Smart thermostats also can be setup to send you reminders for things like tune-ups, air filter changes and notify you and your local HVAC company if there may be an issue with your system.

These added features allow you to always know the state of your system and help extend the lifespan of it by catching issues early before they cause a major breakdown.

With smart thermostats, connecting-to and monitoring your home or commercial heating and air system is easier than ever, leaving you more time to do things you like rather than worrying about your HVAC system.

If you haven’t thought about integrating a smart thermostat before, hopefully after reading this you have a better understanding of the different types of thermostats out there and how a smart thermostat can help lower your stress levels when it comes to your HVAC system.

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