How To Use Smart Heating Controls To Save Money

Smart heating controls enable you to control your heating remotely from your smartphone, tablet or internet connected device. Smart thermostats connect to your heating system, giving you more flexibility and control over how you choose to heat your home. This helps you to save money on your energy bills, as well as helping to create a more comfortable indoor environment. In order to make the most of the savings that you can make with smart heating controls, it’s important that you know how to use them efficiently. Here are 5 key factors to consider:

Set A Schedule 

There’s no point in your heating coming on when you’re not in the house – this is simply a waste of energy and time. One of the main benefits of smart heating controls is that they enable you to schedule your heating to come on at specific times of the day. You can set different schedules for the week and weekends to ensure you’re optimising your system’s energy saving capabilities. For example, if you’re out for work all day you can set your thermostat to come on just before you get in so that the house is nice and toasty when you walk through the door. As you can control your heating from your smartphone, if your plans change, you can adjust your schedule remotely. 

Heat Your Home By Zones

Many smart heating controls like the Heatmiser Neo range that our team can install allow you to control your heating zone by zone. This is a huge advantage when it comes to reducing your energy bills. Rather than heating areas of the house that are not in use, you can just heat the rooms that you need, when you need them. When installing smart heating controls with Pipelife, you can install a smart thermostat in every room of the house. You can schedule your heating to come on at a certain time in each room, or adjust them on an ad hoc basis remotely. 

Choose The Most Efficient Heating System

You can install smart heating controls with a range of different systems from traditional boilers to solar power to heat pumps. In order to maximise the energy saving benefits that smart heating provides, it’s important to choose the most efficient energy source for your heating system. Replacing a traditional boiler with a renewable system like an air to water heat pump when installing smart heating controls will make a significant contribution to reducing your energy bills. Traditional boilers use a large amount of energy to provide heat as they need to operate at high temperatures. Not to mention, they rely on oil or gas. Air to water heat pumps on the other hand operate at low temperatures, and work by extracting heat from the outside air and transferring it into usable heat. Relying on the outside air alone, air to water heat pumps can significantly reduce your energy bills particularly when paired with smart heating controls. 

Make Sure Your Home Is Insulated

One of the biggest causes of heat loss in the home is bad insulation. Poor insulation can cause a lot of the heat that’s created by your heating system to be lost straight away. Simple fixes, such as draught excluders can make all the difference alongside bigger upgrades including installing double glazed windows or ensuring your loft and walls are well insulated. It’s important to ensure your home is insulated in order to maximise the benefits of smart heating controls, and of any heating system for that matter. Letting heat escape from the home is simply causing pennies to go down the drain. 

Utilise All Settings 

All smart heating controls will come with their own specialist settings and modes, and so you want to make sure that you’re making the most of all the tools that are available to you. For example, the Heatmiser Neo range that the Pipelife team can install offers the ability to connect to other appliances in the home, other than the heating system, such as lights. This enables you to control these devices remotely. As a result, you can ensure devices aren’t left on unnecessarily, wasting energy and money. If you forget to turn a light off before leaving the house, you can simply turn it off using your smartphone. 

For more information on installing smart heating controls in your home, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.