Finally: Your vacation week has come, and you’re ready to set sail for more exotic locales. But before you leave your house, there’s one thing you don’t want to forget: Your thermostat. While you might imagine that it’s enough to simply turn off your thermostat before leaving for a vacation or holiday, it can actually end up costing you more over time. If you pay money to heating companies in charlottesville, you don’t want to end up overspending when you could have saved. While you might want to keep your home warm for pets or guests, chances are you can afford to keep the heat and AC running without running up your bill. Whether you have a smart system like Nest or a thermostat you can program from your phone, here’s what you should do to lower costs while you’re on vacation.
Keep It Cool
Many of us like to save our vacation for the summer months when we can sail away to a tropical, faraway land for a week or two of total relaxation. But if you neglect your home while you’re away, it’s going to make the end of your vacation even more difficult to adjust to. If you’re leaving your home for a period of weeks or even days during the hot summer months, you don’t want to make the mistake of turning off your air conditioning completely. While it might not make sense to keep the AC on in an empty house, think of it this way: Heat is your home’s greatest enemy, especially if you have a wood foundation. During the summer, moist, muggy heat leads to mold in homes that aren’t well-ventilated. But leaving the window open and hoping for the best isn’t the right option. Instead, you want to make sure you set your thermostat for a reasonable temperature, such as 72. This way, you won’t have to come home to a stifling hot home or create a hothouse environment that gives way to mold and other dangerous elements. Even when you’re not using your home, it still needs to be taken care of. That’s why it’s important to keep your home at a consistent temperature during your time away. If you feel like it’s an unnecessary cost, just think about it in terms of money saved on replacing moldy or damaged walls and floors.
Warm It Up
Leaving in the winter for a warmer climate is always a good idea. However, though you might imagine that it would be easier to arm an empty home against the elements during a winter vacation, you’d be wrong. While you might think at first that cold temperatures won’t prove too damaging to your unoccupied home, the truth is that if at any point your home gets too cold, it could risk getting flooded. When your home gets too cold in the winter, the pipes risk freezing. While this might not be a big problem in a house that’s full of people constantly using the hot water and turning the thermostat up, it’s a big problem if no one’s there to check the problem or defrost the pipes through use. When your pipes freeze, they could end up causing your boiler to burst from the pressure. Not only is that a disaster in terms of cleanup, it could end up seriously hurting your home’s value. Before you leave for your vacation, keep the temperature set on 60 or 62. That way, you’ll keep your home reasonable cozy and won’t have to worry about coming home to a huge, expensive mess.
Think Ahead
While many households still boast an old-fashioned thermostat, others choose an ultra-sleek smart thermostat so that they can program their home’s temperature from far away. If you have a newer system like Nest, you can use your app to change the temperature and even link to home security feeds to see if anything looks amiss. If you’re leaving during a time of year when the weather is less certain, or if you’re leaving during storm season, and you want to be able to have more control over your home’s temperature while you’re away, it might be a good time to think about investing in a more technologically advanced thermostat option. You’ll be able to use it during your vacation to make sure your home is fully protected from anything that happens, including thieves and trespassers. You can also make sure that something like a blown boiler or a moldy wall absolutely never happens to you.
