Smart capabilities make a home more comfortable, convenient, and efficient. Let’s explore some of the best smart features you can add to your home in the upcoming year to make your house more energy-efficient, convenient, and comfortable.

Smart Hub

An inherent convenience of smart devices is that they can communicate with one another. That allows for the creation of ad-hoc networks with little technical know-how. Still, a more structured smart home network can provide many benefits. A hub gives you a centralized network you can access in person or remotely. Selecting a hub will also necessitate choosing features like an operating system and communication protocols. While doing that requires a bit more effort now, those choices can make it easier to build out your automation network later.

Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance has changed the landscape of commercial HVAC. It’s now one of the hottest trends in residential heating and cooling. These on-board and thermostat-based systems monitor HVAC equipment performance. When performance is outside normal parameters, the system alerts you to schedule maintenance. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates it saves about 10% over traditional preventive maintenance and 40% over reactive maintenance. This feature can reduce downtime by up to 45% and breakdowns by up to 75%.

Smart Thermostat

If you don’t yet have a smart thermostat, it’s one of the most important smart home investments you can make. The DOE estimates that the average household can lower annual HVAC costs by up to 10% with a programmable thermostat. That estimate is rather conservative — many homeowners save much more with advanced thermostat technologies.

Scheduling

Scheduling or programming is where the bulk of the savings lie with a programmable thermostat. The DOE recommends aiming for at least eight hours of a 7-to-10-degree temperature adjustment daily. Automatic adjustment of your temperature while at work or sleeping can reduce your energy use considerably.

Profiles

Profiles make it easy to have multiple schedules, and you can set them to activate and deactivate contextually. You could, for instance, have one schedule for weekdays and another for weekends. Many systems also support modes. Hold mode is a common example. It lets you override the current schedule either manually or with another profile.

Geofencing

Geofencing is a powerful feature through which the thermostat creates a virtual perimeter around the home. Through smartphone pairing, it knows when household members are inside the perimeter. It can activate a comfort profile when they are and an energy-saving profile when they’re not. Some homeowners with ever-changing work schedules will use this in place of scheduling. You can use scheduling and geofencing in tandem for even more powerful control.

Vacation Mode

Whenever you’re away for 48 hours or more, your system can waste substantial energy using your standard profiles. Vacation mode makes it much easier to set an energy-saving temperature appropriate for summer or winter. If you take a day trip that unexpectedly turns into a long weekend, just access your thermostat from your phone to enable vacation mode.

Adaptive Learning

Smart features with machine learning (ML) can monitor household behavior and achieve better performance through analysis. These features have gotten even more sophisticated due to cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI). Adaptive learning is notable when it comes to thermostats. These systems can adjust HVAC cycling for better efficiency. They can also update your schedules automatically for convenience.

IoT-Enabled Sensors

Sensors are among the most powerful aspects of the Internet of Things. Consider a thermostat that supports remote sensors. You can have remote temperature sensors. Since the location of the thermostat is no longer important for temperature sensing, homeowners can choose the most convenient placement. You can also have sensors for:

  • Relative humidity
  • Particulate matter
  • Airborne chemicals
  • Occupancy and motion
  • Carbon monoxide and other gases

Smart Zone Control

Zoning is a technique through which we organize a home’s HVAC systems into discrete areas. It improves efficiency by as much as 30% through independent temperature control. Zone control promotes better air quality. It also promotes better comfort by letting you have settings that are optimal for that area of the home. All these aspects can integrate with your smart home, including your thermostat and remote sensors.

Smart Humidity Control

Relative humidity (RH) is integral to home comfort and health. Achieving optimal RH in winter and summer can be difficult without whole-home humidity control. A humidifier adds moisture to the air to increase RH in winter. A dehumidifier removes it to lower RH in summer. With smart integration, you can enjoy fine humidity control as well as “feels like” temperature settings.

Energy Monitoring and Insights

Real-time energy monitoring is a great tool for any home. It can alert you to usage surges within hours. Such surges are often the first indications of a serious HVAC problem. Many of these systems can analyze that data and provide you with insights. That can help you change household behaviors to improve comfort and reduce your carbon footprint.

There are a number of ways to achieve real-time energy monitoring in the home. Some smart thermostats have this feature. There are also smart electrical panels and electrical meters. Many other smart devices, including refrigerators and water heaters, provide such information, too.

Rate Awareness

Another tool at your disposal is rate awareness. Thermostats with rate awareness can dial back the setting a bit during peak rates to lower consumption while maintaining comfort. Many local electric companies offer demand response programs as well. These are opt-in programs for homes with smart thermostats. If you opt in, it gives your provider light control over your thermostat when demand on the grid is high. In return, it offers you benefits, such as a discount larger than if your thermostat handled the adjustment itself.

Smart Shades and Blinds

Natural sunlight is a powerful tool in the winter because it can heat a room by several degrees or more. It can also be a hindrance to air conditioning in summer. Smart shades and blinds give you greater control because they can open and close automatically based on heat and light.

Smart Ceiling Fans

Ceiling fans are powerful tools to have in every room where they’re practical. They help to distribute heating and cooling more evenly throughout a room and improve air quality and comfort. Smart ceiling fans can turn off and on automatically. They can also change fan speed and rotation based on the current season.

Install New Smart HVAC Features in Cheshire

F.F. Hitchcock Plumbing, Heating & Cooling has served Cheshire, CT and the neighboring communities for over 100 years. Our team includes licensed electricians who can install and configure smart devices. We perform inspections and repairs, including electrical panels, surge protection, indoor and outdoor lighting, EV chargers, and standby generators. Our HVAC technicians install, maintain, and repair furnaces, heat pumps, air conditioners, and ductless mini-splits.

We’re available for home energy audits, insulation, duct cleaning, and ductwork sealing. Count on us for whole-home air purification and humidity control. Our plumbers specialize in boilers, drain cleaning, gas piping, water treatment, water heaters, and much more. We also have an expert roofing team that installs, maintains, and repairs roofing systems and solar panels.

To set up an appointment or get answers to your questions about smart home HVAC integration, contact us at F.F. Hitchcock Plumbing, Heating & Cooling today.

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