By Travis Seeger
We would like you to picture this, you coast down your street, turn in the driveway and hit the garage door button. At that moment “your home” setting is brought on. The garage light is turned on, the kitchen lights come on, and the normal path way you take is lit to your liking. Your TV comes on and the thermostat is set to the preset temperature that you prefer.Yes cool, but how is this “earth friendly?” Well let’s look just a little deeper into this system, yes it’s a programmable energy star thermostat, from your pc or smart phone, you can also be sure all of your lighting is turned off during the day, while you are away. One of the things that drives me crazy is when I get home to find out our wonderful daughter has accidentally left her lights, tv, computer, and whatever else she has in her room “ON” all day while at school. I can set a program that automatically shuts down certain lights, and/ or outlets at scheduled times every day. Thus taking out the remembering part that is all too often not at the top of the list for my daughter.
From a security aspect we can turn on lighting and/or other things remotely, PC or smart phone, or as I did this summer while on vacation, set a daily program that mimicked our normal lights on/off as if we were home. (the temperature was left at a toasty 85*) but our home had a normal “at home” look with lighting, tvs and the like going off and on.
Finally a great feature that is being added currently is the ability to look at your “live” energy usage and make decisions based on what you are willing to do without to save energy. While we love the energy savings of cfl bulbs they do require special handling for recycling and do contain mercury. You can choose to “dim” your incandescent bulbs or some of the new LED bulbs. This can mean substantial energy savings as well as greatly increasing the life of the bulbs. This system also has options to have zoning for the heating and cooling systems that allow you to divide your home into areas of use.
We can tell you a little more about the systems that are custom designed for your home at 636-532-5841. You can also visit www.chesterfieldservice.com to learn more.