In the endless battle to keep your home cool during our sweltering Covington, LA summers, it’s important not to forget about your thermostat as a key tool. It controls your whole system after all, and just like the old-fashioned, VCR, people often refrain from using it because they think it’s too complicated. But the more you educate yourself about the thermostat, the more you’ll see just how invaluable it is for keeping your cooling costs down, and if yours has been around for 10 years or more, you can replace it with an up-to-date model fairly inexpensively to help you handle high monthly cooling costs. Here’s a quick breakdown of some tips and techniques to help you.
- Turn off the air during the day. Some people erroneously believe that turning the system on in the cool hours of the morning, then running it all day, is a way to save energy. It isn’t. Instead, shut the air off about 20 minutes before you leave for work and leave the air off in your empty home, then program the system to turn on again 20 minutes before you arrive home.
- Look for units with 5-1-1 programming. The numbers refer to the five days of the work week, plus one for Saturday and on for Sunday. That allows you to program the air differently on the weekends than on weekdays. It helps you address the fact that you may be home during the weekends and away during the week.
- Lower the settings at night. Sometimes, our summer nights are too hot to go without air conditioning, but most of the time, you can do just as well by opening the house and running the fan. Program your thermostat to turn off about an hour before you usually go to bed, then dress lightly and run the fan.
A Professional Heating and Air can install a new thermostat for you!