Program thermostat save energy

Department of Energy. Here are four tips that the Department offers to help homeowners achieve those savings. Setting your thermostat back 10 to 15 degrees for eight hours a day can save you from 5 to 15 percent a year on heating and cooling bills a savings of about 1 percent for each degree of setback.

Normal programmable thermostats are usually not recommended for homes with heat pumps, electric resistance heating, steam heat, or radiant floor heating. Energy Savers website, Thermostats and Control Systems. Points can be used on local shopping deals, dining, daily deals, travel, and even gift cards. It will not cool your home any faster and could result in excessive cooling and, therefore, unnecessary expense. A common misconception associated with thermostats is that a furnace works harder than normal to warm the space back to a comfortable temperature after the thermostat has been set back, resulting in little or no savings.

In fact, as soon as your house drops below its normal temperature, it will lose energy to the surrounding environment more slowly. During winter, the lower the interior temperature, the slower the heat loss. So the longer your house remains at the lower temperature, the more energy you save, because your house has lost less energy than it would have at the higher temperature.

The same concept applies to raising your thermostat setting in the summer -- a higher interior temperature will slow the flow of heat into your house, saving energy on air conditioning. Check out our home heating infographic to learn more about how heating systems and thermostats interact.

Programmable thermostats are generally not recommended for heat pumps. In its cooling mode, a heat pump operates like an air conditioner, so turning up the thermostat either manually or with a programmable thermostat will save energy and money. But when a heat pump is in its heating mode, setting back its thermostat can cause the unit to operate inefficiently, thereby canceling out any savings achieved by lowering the temperature setting.

Maintaining a moderate setting is the most cost-effective practice. Recently, however, some companies have begun selling specially designed programmable thermostats for heat pumps, which make setting back the thermostat cost-effective.

Meanwhile, your heat is still on, while no one is home. Sounds familiar? You just wasted energy and paid for it.

Finding the right thermostat for your home and programming it to the schedule of your family is easy! If you have a standard thermostat then you are turning your system on and off, and running it for hours at a time.

Here is what a program would look like in relation to the schedule above during the winter months:. The common misconception is that bringing your home up to a temperature is where the energy costs are. In actuality, keeping your home at a set temperature for hours of the day is where your system is utilizing the most costs. Turning your temperature down to where it uses minimal energy is the best way to save. For example, during school breaks or changes in your work life.

This will assure you stay comfortable while keeping extra funds in your wallet. If you decide to dispose of a thermostat that contains mercury, find a thermostat recycling site near you by contacting Thermostat Recycling Corp.

Not sure why mercury is so bad? When it enters the waste stream, it permanently damages the ecosystem. Skip to content. Top Spotlight.

Pick the Right Thermostat There are four types of programmable thermostats, each with a distinctive scheduling style: 7-day programming. Keep in mind, it will kick back on if the house gets too warm.