Installing and using a programmable thermostat can help you save energy and reduce your heating and cooling costs. Many programmable thermostats have a number of features which can be quite useful. For example, you can set your thermostat to allow for a lower (or higher) temperatures during the periods you do not need as much heat / cooling (e.g. when you are sleeping or when you away from your home for school or work). Some thermostats also have a Hold Temperature function which is handy if you are going to be away from your home. Last but not least, perhaps the most useful function of a programmable thermostat is that once the program has been set you no longer have to worry about turning your heat off!
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As I was typing it yesterday I was wondering to myself if this tip would be coming..
We set ours once and now forget it. During the holidays when we are home more and the temp is dropping it just a few simple clicks of the Up Arrow to get the heat coming again (although the fact that most days we don’t notice the lower temp. setpoint, makes me wonder if we should adjust everything down).
We have boiler heat (natural gas) so we don’t have a big range between night and day due to the amount of fuel that has to be burned to get the house warmed up (it can take hours). But we too can adjust the heat easily and it always reverts to the programmed setting on schedule!
We too have boiler heat but we still have a program set for day, night, and weekends. It works really well.
Us too Miss T – however, our furnace guy (cleaned it) recommended that we not drop the heat to 58 F during the day when we are at work and over night. His reason (which i’ve had a few people confirm) is that the amount of NG that gets burned to get the house heat back to 68 F is much more than maintaining a higher temp (63 F) during the day/overnight.
I agree that a programmable thermostat is one of the easiest ways to conserve energy and money.
Personally I like the Honeywell RTH7600D Programmable Thermostat best. It’s hard to beat it’s combination of price and features.
Thanks for the heads up on that product GreenerGreener.
I am in the favor of Honeywell thermostats. It is a source of saving money and energy as well.