Have you ever wanted to save money on your heating and cooling bills without sacrificing your precious comfort? What to do?? I, too, was in the same boat as you, until last weekend when I installed a programmable thermostat.

“What’s the big deal about a programmable thermostat, anyhoo?”, I hear you ask. Well, I’ll let the good ol’ U.S. Department o’ Energy tell you:

[During winter], by turning your thermostat back 10°–15° for 8 hours, you can save about 5%–15% a year on your heating bill—a savings of as much as 1% for each degree if the setback period is eight hours long.

Gadzooks. If your average power bill is $70 a month during the 4 coldest months of the year, a programmable thermostat can save you between $14 and $42 during those 4 months! Not to mention the painless energy savings.

But it doesn’t only conserve energy and save money during the winter, oh no. During those hot months, you can set the temperature higher while you’re gone, and have it cool down more when you’re actually at your house. Voíla, even more energy and monetary savings!

Read instructions carefully when installing a programmable thermostat

Me and some friends tried to install my thermostat on one of the coldest days of the year. We wired everything up perfectly, but the heat wouldn’t come on. A day later, my friendly neighborhood electrician fixed the problem by reading the manual and figuring out that you had to tell the programmable thermostat that we had a heat pump. Dang, that one night without heat was a cold night
indeed, but I learnt a valuable lesson about reading instructions.