My fiance and I have made our new year’s resolution to be one that will benefit both of our lives, as well as the environment. Instead of worrying about diets and how many pounds we can lose, he and I are trying to do right by the environment by lowering our energy use. Our first step was to tackle our utility use. We’re usually pretty careful about our central heating use, but we both knew we could be better, especially since our thermostat was already so old to begin with.
Since we’ve only got a small budget to work with, we opted for a fairly basic programmable thermostat. This device was less than thirty dollars, which is perfect for us! The downside is that the price tag comes with a lot of labor. While installing it was easy enough–we just had it done during our first HVAC maintenance visit of the year–getting it do exactly what we wanted was not. The two of us spent long hours programming our schedules into it; figuring out how to do so took an hour all on its own.
But with the programmable thermostat, there is no forgetting to turn down the heat before we go to work, and remembering to change the settings as we go to bed. The programmable thermostat now does all the work for us, and in doing so we’re saving on our utility bill! Since we got the new thermostat, our oil furnace is going through the fuel a lot more slowly. Who knows; maybe we can get through the rest of winter on the current tank…