Easy Steps to Make Sure Your Thermostat Is Ready for Cold Weather

With summer in the rearview mirror, it’s important to look over your Springfield, OR, home’s mechanical systems to ensure that they’re properly prepared for the upcoming winter. One of the mechanical systems that will get the most use this winter is your home’s furnace. Controlling your furnace, of course, is the responsibility of your thermostat. To help prevent sky-high heating bills this winter, Jco Heating A/C Electrical wants you to know that it’s a good idea to make sure your thermostat is properly prepared and programmed to provide you with efficient heating all season long.

Upgrade to Programmable

If you’re still using a mechanical thermostat to control your HVAC system, now is the time to upgrade to a programmable thermostat. As programmable thermostats continue to become more common, they also continue to become more affordable, meaning that they can more than make up for their initial cost in terms of energy saved.

A programmable thermostat allows you to carefully orchestrate the times of day when your HVAC system will turn off and on. Therefore, whenever you’re home, you can always have optimal comfort without running your system as hard when you’re not home. This detailed approach can help save you a lot of money over the course of a heating season.

Understand Your Schedule

Part of properly utilizing a programmable thermostat from Jco Heating A/C Electrical is understanding your daily and weekly schedule. A good programmable thermostat will allow you to apply different settings for each day of the week, allowing you to account for differences in your normal routine.

For example, if you go to work four days a week and work from home one day a week, you can program your thermostat to run your furnace less while you’re at work and keep the temperature more consistent when you’re working from home. You can also program your thermostat so that your furnace runs less while you’re sleeping, since you’ll be staying warm underneath your blankets.

Connect to More Control

The newest thermostats from Jco Heating A/C Electrical, called smart thermostats, provide exceptional control over your home’s HVAC system. These thermostats allow you to set a running schedule for your HVAC system, just like a typical programmable thermostat. Smart thermostats, however, have the added advantage of being able to connect to Wi-Fi so that they are remotely accessible from your phone or tablet.

This means that if you have a sudden change in your routine that differs from your set schedule, you can quickly reprogram your thermostat so that your HVAC system doesn’t run more than necessary. Another benefit of smart thermostats is that they can sense when you’re home and when you’re not, meaning they’re always ready to provide optimal comfort.

Get Used to It

During the summer, if you had your thermostat set to 68 degrees, your air conditioner would likely be running constantly and you would stay quite cold. During the winter, though, a setting of 68 degrees is a great place to land to provide a balance of comfort and energy savings.

The key to sticking to this setting throughout the winter is giving your body time to get used to the lower indoor temperature. That’s another reason why a programmable thermostat from Jco Heating A/C Electrical is so useful, as it makes it far less tempting to adjust the temperature in your home on a whim.

By essentially ignoring your thermostat for the first few weeks after the weather turns colder, you’ll be able to adapt your lifestyle to the temperature instead of adapting the temperature to your lifestyle. Though this can cause minor inconveniences, it can save you a lot of money on your utility bill.

Don’t Forget to Change Your Clock

Thermostats have a built-in clock to be able to track the time to know when to turn the HVAC system on and off. However, many thermostats don’t have the ability to automatically detect when daylight saving time ends. Therefore, you’ll need to be sure to change the clock on your thermostat in the midst of changing your other clocks so that your thermostat can continue to provide you with reliable comfort throughout the winter.

Optimizing Every Facet of Home Comfort

When you call us at Jco Heating A/C Electrical, you can expect a professional and detail-oriented approach that seeks to optimize your home comfort and energy savings. Whether it’s a new thermostat, an HVAC repair, an installation, a maintenance service or a new ductless system, we take pride in offering our customers the tools they need to enjoy their home. For over 15 years, we have been taking pride in our community, which has led to an Angie’s List Super Service Award and the countless five-star reviews you see on our website. For more information about how to keep your Springfield home comfortable this heating season, contact us at Jco Heating A/C Electrical today.