Has The Time Come to Change to a Digital Thermostat?

We have all seen them and probably used them.   The round dial thermostats with the temperature setting on the top and the current room temperature on the bottom.  They are easy to use, no learning curve, and have been doing the job for years and years.  But here lies the problem.  They are just doing the job.  Why fix it if it’s not broken, right?  Well, just like all of the new appliances and gadgets you would purchase for your home, the new digital thermostats come with some pretty great advantages.

Replacing your thermostat to a new digital thermostat is one of the most simple and least expensive ways to improve the efficiency in your home.  You can set it and forget about it.  Most come with the ability to preset the thermostat for different temperatures throughout the day.  A lot of people like to turn the thermostat down at night while they are sleeping, but wouldn’t it be nice to wake up to a nice warm room?  Or, in the middle of the summer when you are at work, you don’t need your AC working on overload, but wouldn’t it be nice to walk in to a nice cold house?  Setting it to different temperatures throughout the day is a big energy saver, which we can all appreciate.

The new digital thermostats are also a much greener option because they don’t contain any mercury like our old round dial friends do.  In fact, the old thermostats contain the most mercury of any of the typical household items found in your home.  The older ones also contain a lot of moving parts, which can make them inaccurate, and therefore a big energy waster.

Some of the higher end digital thermostats also come with multizone features.  You can control and preset the heating in cooling to different temperatures in different rooms.  Maybe the rooms in the back of your house don’t get the hot afternoon sun so they don’t need as much air conditioning in the summer as the rooms in the front of your house that are at least 10 degrees warmer from the sun.  They can also detect the air quality and tell you when you need to change the filter.  Also, some can be linked to your Smartphone, which allows you to access and change your settings from anywhere.  So if you are having an unusually hot day, you can bump up the AC from work.  Now that’s pretty “cool”!

So do you need to change out your old thermostat?  Maybe not, but it will make a big difference in the comfort of your home and the bottom line on your energy bill.