Should You Use Programming with a Heat Pump?

                Programmable thermostats have become increasingly popular over time.  The ability to set it and forget it regarding the temperature in your home is a feature which has made itself almost a necessity in our face paced and fully automated world.  How does setting a programmable thermostat affect your heating and cooling bill?  Are you really getting the most efficient use of you system with the ability to set the temperature you want and leave it alone?

                With many systems, all of the heating systems will engage when the temperature drops below the preset allowable temperature.  This means the main heat and auxiliary heat have both been engaged in the system which causes an increase in the heating bill.  Using a programmable thermostat, while providing you with the comfort you want, can actually cause you to spend more money on the heating bill than without it.

                What this also can mean is if you choose not to have a programmable thermostat you might have to set temperatures that will keep the system from running unnecessarily when the home is unoccupied.  This can become a real hassle for most people, and I’m sure you will have a very hard time selling many of you customers on the idea they have to adjust their system on a daily basis.

                Even if someone is willing to set their thermostat daily to ensure the least amount of system operation while they are at work, what happens when they forget to do this?  Most likely they are then going to be upset with themselves for having a system that is not using a programmable thermostat and even worse, probably be upset with you for selling this nuisance to them, that won’t be very good for your word of mouth advertising at all.

                Pro1 has come up with a fantastic solution to this problem.  They have a wide variety of thermostats that utilize a feature called Satisfy Setpoint.  By using the Satisfy Setpoint feature of the Pro1 thermostat your clients can have the luxury of a programmable thermostat, without having the increase in their heating bill associated with the entire system operating when it doesn’t need to.

                With the Satisfy Setpoint feature of the Pro1 thermostats the main heat system will engage when necessary, but the auxiliary will not engage to start with.  The feature allows the main heat system to be responsible for bringing the temperature back up to the desired point without engaging the auxiliary for a selected time period.

                This can be a huge advantage for your customers as well as a great selling point for you when preparing to install the thermostats in your clients’ homes.  Many homeowners today are under the impression using a heat pump is supposed to be this major energy savings all by itself, but how much better will they feel when you tell them they can save even more with the Pro1 line of thermostats armed with Satisfy Setpoint.

                At this point you might be wondering when the auxiliary heat is going to kick in, is the time period adjustable or is it only a set time for all systems that really doesn’t show a savings?  The reality is the time period can be set to a wide variety of times.  The main heat will be afforded the opportunity to return the home to the correct temperature from as little as five minutes and as many as ninety with several selections in between.  In addition, this is a feature your customers can set for themselves so they don’t have to be stuck with a setting you gave them if it’s not really working for them. 

                By having the ability to set the time for the delay in auxiliary heat themselves, you won’t have to make unnecessary trips to their home just to adjust settings until they get used to the way the new system works, that can be a real problem for you and them, wasting your time and energy to do something that they now are able to do for themselves.  In fact, if the homeowner doesn’t like the Satisfy Setpoint feature, they can even turn it off and allow the main and auxiliary systems to bring the temperature up more quickly.

                By creating the Satisfy Setpoint feature on many of their thermostats, Pro1 has provided the installers of thermostats and heating systems the ability to provide their customers an even larger savings than ever before when using a heat pump system.  No more does a homeowner have to worry about whether or not their system is running when they aren’t home as long as they have set their program correctly the delay in auxiliary heat operation provided by the Satisfy Setpoint feature will keep a customer’s heating bill down and your word of mouth advertising up.