Programmable Thermostats – A good first step toward a greener home
Keeping your home at a comfortable temperature while keeping your energy bill in reasonable territory can be tricky. One of the easiest solutions – and an great first step toward a greener home — is to install a programmable thermostat. With the old fashioned thermostats, you picked a temperature and it worked to keep you house at that level all of the time. If you wanted to change it, you had to go manually adjust it.
With a programmable thermostat, it is relatively easy to program it to allow the house to warm up or cool down during different times of the day. Why would you want to heat/cool you home while you are at work? If you have two units in your home, perhaps it makes sense to only heat or cool the upstairs bedrooms at night.
All in all, a programmable thermostat is one of the best ways to get bang for your energy buck. When we do energy audits, we find that people are unaware of how simple digital programmable thermostats can be installed (it’s really just 4 wires) and how inexpensively they can be purchased – now usually under $40 at your local hardware store.
This weekend try switching out your conventional thermostat for a digital programmable model. The project should take about 20 minutes and cost about $40. It will likely pay for itself in about 2 months!
For a helpful video on how to do this home improvement project, check this video from The Home Depot.
