Half the summer we used the smart thermostat and half the summer we used dad’s thermostat expertise
When the term old school was invented, it must have been because someone was trying to describe my dad. That’s my dad in a nutshell. Everything was just so much better back in his day. Now that he’s nearing 80, there aren’t too many holdovers from that day. But dad still drives around in a truck that is 40 years old and has no air conditioning. Thankfully, dad moved down here near me after my mom died. He tried to stick it out up north but it was too much. So my sister and I encouraged him to ditch the gas furnace and all the snow for sunshine and a heat pump. It took us a long time to convince him. And even up to the last minute before he had to upgrade the HVAC in his house and sell it, it was touch and go. But the house did sell and he made a pretty penny. With that, we set him up in a small, two bedroom bungalow just minutes from my wife and I. Of course, my father was vocal about all the modern stuff inside his new place. And he wasn’t at all sure about a heat pump during the winter. Of course, he had never experienced the sort of mild winter that we have in this region. And I assured him that a heat pump was more than enough. But he really lost it when he learned about the smart thermostat. He was sure that he could save more money on air conditioning costs than any HVAC technology. So we put it to a test for a couple of months. Half the summer we used the smart thermostat and half the summer we used dad’s thermostat expertise. When we tallied up the utility bills, the smart thermostat won by nearly 20 percent.