Programmable Thermostat
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With cool weather here, and colder weather not far behind, it’s past time when you should have reset your home’s programmable thermostat. Its summertime settings have no energy-saving purpose during the heating season, plus they don’t do anything to improve home comfort. Follow these tips for resetting your programmable thermostat so you can save both energy and money throughout the winter.

If all you have is a standard, manual thermostat, consider upgrading to a programmable model. These thermostats allow you to program energy-saving temperature setbacks for when the house is empty during the day, and overnight when most people prefer cooler temperatures for sleeping. Most programmable thermostats offer one of three or four different programming options – the top-end model allows for different settings each day; another model allows for one group of settings for weekdays and another for the two weekend days; and a third allows one group of settings for weekdays, another for Saturday and a third for Sunday.

Here’s a typical weekday schedule for programming wintertime setbacks:

• At bedtime, program the temperature about five degrees lower than your regular comfort setting. As stated, most people are comfortable when it’s cooler at night.
• Set the thermostat to return to a comfortable temperature, perhaps 68-69 degrees, shortly before the household begins awakening. If everybody is up and out quickly in the morning, you might skip this temperature change since it’s a waste of energy to warm up the house for a very short period.
• Program a setback of 5-8 degrees – keeping the temperature around 62 degrees – during the day when nobody’s home.
• Set the programmable thermostat to begin returning to a comfortable temperature half an hour before household occupants begin returning from work or school, then leave it there until bedtime.

If you employ a programming schedule similar to this, and stick to it, you can save a significant amount on your heating bill. Devise a similar energy-saving plan for the spring, summer and fall.

For further help resetting your programmable thermostat, please contact us at Stack Heating & Cooling, providing quality HVAC services to the greater Cleveland area.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Cleveland, Ohio about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). 

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