By Susan Nichol

It isn’t just about temperature anymore, these days we consider the comfort and expense as well as our carbon footprint when we look at our heating and air conditioning.

Pictured: The Ecobee Programmable Internet T-stat, accessible via, PC, smart phone and tablet – one of the many options available to improve your energy efficiency.

Today’s newer thermostats are better looking and better functioning than ever before.  More goes into the choice of a thermostat than you may imagine.

Usage: Do you want the ability to control your furnace when you are away from home or do you want to set a schedule for your thermostat?  Let’s say you have elderly parents or animals in the home and there is a sudden change in weather, just jump on line and set the thermostat and no need to worry about running home to adjust the thermostat.  How about a preprogrammed schedule for your thermostat?  This alone takes the worry out of manual adjustment of the thermostat.

Equipment Match Up: Two comfort features immediately come to mind for the furnace, the number of stages of heat and the blower speeds.  The furnace needs to be matched with the type of furnace. First the stages of heat…many furnaces now have 2 or more stages of heat, there is a Lennox model furnaces that has over 60 stages of heat to increase efficiency and comfort.  The blower speeds (also called fan or motor speeds) indicate the number of speeds that the equipment has to circulate the air whether in cooling or heating modes.  If you can picture a portable fan – these fans typically have more than 1 speed.

If the fan or the furnace blower has just 1 speed it is called a standard speed fan or motor.  On the Standard Speed Fan there is one speed, on and off.

The better option for many applications is the variable speed fan.  This fan has many speeds.  It often starts the cooling or heating of a space on high or mid high and starts to change the temperature.  As the temperature gets closer to the desired set point the speed slowly steps down and the air is gently and quietly mixed in the background.  The beauty of the variable speed fan is that it is quiet (so you don’t have to turn up and down the TV volume when the furnace cycles) and the comfort is great because it eliminates cold spots and hot spots (so that big picture window in your living space is more comfortable in the summer and winter).

So whether you are updating your walls by changing out the Thermostat or you have a need to replace the old one (like a new heating system) you would do your energy consumption and your decor well.

Call us 408.374.7292 for information about thermostats or an evaluation of your heating and cooling needs.

If you need help with temperature, contact Cold Craft, Inc.

408.374.7292 or [email protected]