Does “smart home” technology really increase your home’s efficiency, or is it just a gimmick?
Most homeowners these days are extremely concerned with their home’s energy bill and log homeowners are no exception. After all, you may pay off your home in 10, 20 or 30 years but, unless your log home is totally off the grid, utility bills are forever.
If you’re concerned about energy efficiency, the first, most important step is to build a well-insulated and sealed log home and make sure it’s properly orientated on your land to take advantage of passive solar gain. But beyond that, what can a homeowner do to increase and maintain energy efficiency once their home is built? Smart home technology actually does have the answers.
When we say “smart home technology,” we’re not talking about George Jetson’s sky pad. Rather, we are talking about new home innovations that can monitor your energy usage to help you regulate your home’s heating, cooling and energy usage.
The Sense Monitor is an excellent example of this. The monitor is a small device that plugs into your electrical panel and reads the unique electronic signature of all the things in your home that are plugged in. By reading these signatures millions of times per second, the Sense Monitor can actually differentiate between them to tell which is which. Using Wi-Fi, it then sends all of this data to an app for you to review. This makes it easy to see where your energy is going and what you may need to adjust to save money.
Smart home technology also can assist with your home’s heating and cooling. Smart thermostats, like the ones offered by Nest and ecobee, can take human error out of managing the temperature and humidity of your home. You set the temperatures you’d like to see and the thermostat will make small adjustments as needed to keep all your rooms in line. Smart fans and smart lighting technology are great ways to conserve energy as well.
As you plan your log home it would be beneficial for you to take some time and research which smart home technologies you can incorporate. A little financial investment now could add up to big savings in the long run.
Published on: June 29th, 2017
Like what you read? Need more information? Achieving energy efficiency for you log homes goes beyond the logs. We've asked industry experts, Katahdin Cedar Log Homes to help with the answers. Click here to see more.
