Imagine it: you are collecting your things at work and miles away at your home, the oven turns on to prepare dinner. The air conditioning system is notified and adjusts the temperature down to deliver more cool air to offset the oven’s additional heat. When you get home the lights automatically turn on as you enter, dinner is prepared, and your home is at a comfortable temperature.
That’s the ideal experience! And also the type of advanced home interconnectivity that is available now and 2017 could be a crucial year for advancements in how your home’s heating and air conditioning system functions as part of the team.
“Smart phones revolutionized our lives in part because they enabled countless apps to make our lives less challenging and richer,” said Rob Haines, Marketing Manager for Service Experts Heating & Air Conditioning. “We anticipate that in 2017, developers will be concentrating on more new apps that allow all your home’s systems and appliances to interact versus being siloed, and this will include breakout new advancements in how your home’s heating and cooling systems work.”
Smart thermostats and new advanced HVAC systems can already send alerts to you about energy usage and standard maintenance such as when it’s time to change the air filter. Future systems might even be able to identify a likely equipment failure before it takes place and notify your heating and cooling repair company to call you and arrange a technician’s visit. The technician will arrive with prior knowledge about the malfunction and the needed parts to repair it.
Another work in progress is the use of infrared heat sensing inside the home that will determine which rooms are in use by people in the home and actually send heating and cooling specifically to those areas.
“Zoned heating and cooling systems have been one of the fastest growing parts of the HVAC industry for several years, and that will remain a big opportunity,” said Haines. “Also, systems will focus on heating and cooling specific rooms or groups of rooms as needed to improve comfort and energy efficiency.”
And yes, Haines adds, the millennials are driving the trends for at-home connectivity and more efficient heating and cooling systems. “As millennials buy their homes, they require their home systems like HVAC to not only do what they are told, but to track and adjust themselves and to proactively send notifications to the homeowner. We also see that the millennials and Generation X are much more aware about energy efficiency and those implications of their heating and cooling systems.”
While February is a great time to look at trends for the year, it’s also a perfect time to take advantage of savings that will pay off in the coming months. For the next several weeks many Service Experts centers are offering free or deeply discounted equipment when you purchase a qualifying item, such as a free furnace when you invest in an AC system. Heating tune-ups are also deeply discounted just in time for the coolest time of the year. Call Strand Brothers Service Experts in Austin today to schedule a free in-home estimate or to set up a furnace tune up to make sure your heating equipment is ready to keep you safe and warm all winter long.