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How Smart Thermostats Can Benefit Apartment Living

If you’re a landlord, condo owner, or real estate agent in New York City, it’s time to get on the smart thermostat bandwagon. These clever devices offer many benefits for occupants and can save everyone money, including the property owner.

No Worry About Steam Radiators

Compatible with radiator valves

When programmable thermostats first hit the market, many New York City property owners had to forego their convenience and efficiency because they didn’t work with steam radiators, which are ubiquitous in most NYC buildings. Because a standard programmable thermostat typically controls a furnace or boiler, it is impossible to use one in each unit of a large building. The problem is, every tenant would be trying to control one heat source simultaneously.

Now, however, programmable thermostats have been engineered to work with steam radiators through a simple but elegant mechanism: they communicate with thermostatic radiator valves that are inexpensive and easy to install. These valves control how much heat or hot water enters the radiator to make the room warmer or cooler as the user desires.

You can set your thermostat to turn the heat up before you rise in the morning and turn it down after you go to bed at night. You can also program it to lower the heat while you’re away from home and raise it just before you return. Need to stay late at work? No problem–the thermostat can be adjusted remotely using your smartphone or tablet.

Attractive to Apartment and Condo Occupants

Multiple benefits

As you are probably starting to learn, there are a number of benefits to using a smart thermostat as a landlord or condominium owner. First, there’s the simplified programmability of the new smart thermostats. A study published in 2015 by the Energy Research and Social Science journal discovered that a large portion of people with programmable thermostats didn’t know how to use them, rendering their most important features useless. That’s all changed with thermostats like Nest, which have eliminated many of the more confusing elements of programmable thermostats and replaced them with simple commands. The device also learns users’ preferences.

Other advantages include:

• Remote capability from anywhere with a wifi signal
• Temperature, weather, and time displays whenever you enter the room
• Mobile device alert if the temperature drops too low, which could result in frozen and burst pipes
• Option to connect your thermostat to your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors
• Integration with central hubs, such as Google Home, for even easier control of the interior environment
• Being able to use programmable thermostats for air conditioning as well as heating
• Relatively low cost, including the installation of thermostatic radiator valves for steam heat systems
• Smart home technology attracts new tenants or condo buyers who want the latest trends so they can create the perfect refuge from the outside

Energy Conservation for Green Initiatives

Save money and the environment

The ability to lower one’s heat when not at home or while sleeping is key to reducing energy use, which, in turn, lowers utility bills. Tenants or condo owners who pay their own heat appreciate both the cost savings and the ability to control their home environment more precisely (no more radiator covers or throwing open windows in the middle of winter!).

And, landlords who foot the bill for heat enjoy the savings too. Not only are they using less gas to fuel their boilers, but they are also running their boilers less often, which saves on wear and tear. The same holds true for air conditioning use.

Heating and cooling usually account for about half of everyone’s energy use in the Northeast, so the savings realized with smart thermostats can be significant. Of course, this also has a positive environmental impact. The fewer fossil fuels used for energy and the less New York City emits combustion byproducts, the better it is for the environment.

Adding smart thermostats is the ideal complement to making other high-tech and environmentally-friendly changes to your property. You can even receive rebates and tax breaks from the city for making upgrades like switching to LED light bulbs and for installing energy-efficient appliances. You can get even more cost savings by:

• Insulating pipes in cold and windy areas of the property
• Making sure radiators and boilers are in optimal running condition
• Using photocells, automatic light switches, and dimmers for lighting
• Submetering the property so every tenant pays their own electric bill
• Inspecting roof exhaust fans and cooling tower pumps seasonally
• Using window treatments and new windows to cut down on heat and cooling losses to the outside

If you would like to learn more about how smart thermostats would work in your condo or apartment building, or if you would like a quote for adding smart home technology, we’d love to speak with you. You can call Bolt Electric at 212-434-0098, or use our easy online form to schedule an appointment.