Technology has changed the way we live in so many convenient and time-saving ways. One of the greatest, and often overlooked, conveniences today is the ability to live in a comfortably heated home year-round.
Smart thermostats enhance home heating significantly by intelligently warming your home to your absolute perfect temperature, on your schedule, automatically. With the launch of Mysa's In-Floor smart thermostat, you can now take advantage of the same level of comfort with your in-floor heating system!
What is In-floor Heating?
In-floor heating, or radiant floor heating, is aptly named for exactly how it's installed and run. Rather than installing heating systems in your walls, the heating system is installed underneath your flooring to heat your home from the ground up.
In addition to being incredibly energy efficient, radiant floor heating is safer than exposed heaters because the user is never exposed to the heating element. Forced air and baseboard heaters require ducts, which can leak heat. This consumes more energy than necessary and, oftentimes, causes homeowners to turn up their heat. Because radiant floor heating is installed in a system of wires beneath your floor, ducts are eliminated.
With in-floor heating, you also have the freedom to decorate and place furniture as you please without worrying about blocking heaters or hanging curtains too close to exposed baseboard heat.
How Does a Smart Thermostat Work with Radiant Floor Heating?
In-floor smart thermostats empower homeowners with radiant floor heating to set, schedule, and automate home temperatures with the effortless ease of modern smart technology.
Home temperature automation is perhaps the most beneficial of smart home technology; conveniently keep each room heated to your exact preferred temperature, all on a schedule you set. If you have a routine work schedule, it's easy to automate your radiant floor heating system to warm in time for you to return to a comfortable and inviting home. Similarly, you could set your smart thermostat to automatically warm your bedrooms and bathrooms in preparation for your alarm clock's inevitable buzz, making it easier to get out of bed and begin your day.
Since radiant floor heating warms the floor and the furniture touching it, rooms feel warm longer than they do with more traditional forced air and baseboard heating. You can use that to your benefit by setting your radiant floor smart thermostat to automatically shut off at night when you're tucked into bed and during times when you're regularly away from home.
Of course, smart thermostats can also be adjusted manually on the wall-mounted thermostat, via your smartphone app, or by voice commands dictated to a smart assistant like Amazon's Alexa or Google Home. Manual temperature adjustment is especially helpful if your schedule changes last minute or if the day is unseasonably cold. If you choose to sync your in-floor smart thermostat to a voice assistant or app, you can even make manual temperature adjustments from work or on the road.
Heat Smarter with Zoning and Automation
In-floor smart thermostats empower homeowners with absolute control over the temperature of individual rooms, or groups of rooms, and can coordinate with other smart home automation tools to produce a truly smart modern home.
Smart thermostats empower homeowners to set and automate different temperatures for each room in their home. For example, each family member can set their bedroom to stay at their individually preferred temperature, all through the same smartphone app. This feature can also be used to keep colder rooms like bathrooms and basements just as warm as the rest of your house, and to turn off heating in rooms that are not in use, like guest bedrooms.
Get Even Smarter with Multiple-Zones
Mysa's In-Floor thermostat takes things one step further allowing you to intelligently group rooms in your home to create grouped heating zones. For example, commonly used rooms like your bedroom, bathroom, and living room may be grouped into one zone that can be controlled with a single action or voice command. Similarly, you may set an entertainment zone that simultaneously turns on radiant floor heating in the parlor, kitchen, living room, and downstairs bathroom.
Combining multi-zone thermostat settings with automation will significantly improve your home automation set up. Consider that entertainment zone you set above. Connecting your in-floor smart thermostat, lighting, and security system to a smart assistant will allow you to set a “party theme.” In the future, when you decide to throw a party, simply say “Hey Alexa, It's my husband's birthday, set my party zone.” Your smart assistant, be it Alexa, Google Home or another, will already know that theme and automatically turn on radiant floor heating in your entertaining spaces, dim the lighting, turn on your party playlist, and unlock the front door so guests can walk right in.
The options of customized themes are as endless as the array of smart devices that can be connected to your smart home and are designed to make your life effortless. For example, think about the last time your little one stayed homesick. Because these things never come planned or on opportune days, you probably took the day off work and went about turning up the heat, adjusting lighting, and getting his favorite movie queued up. If you had a theme set ahead of time, you could have simply commanded Alexa or Google Home to run your usual evening automation to quickly warm their bedroom and bathroom, or run a custom “sick day” theme that warms their room, turns on their humidifier, and starts playing their favorite movie automatically.
Automations and themes can also be set by seasons to routinely keep your house warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. Or they can be set by day of the week to keep your house warmer on the weekends when you're home relaxing, and automatically save on heating during the week while you're at work.
Reduce Your Energy Consumption
Radiant floor heating systems are incredibly energy-efficient, heating the entire floor evenly. Unlike forced air and baseboard heating, in-floor heat stays low to the floor and closer to you, providing heat directly at your feet and giving the illusion of a much warmer room. In fact, most homeowners with radiant floor heating are able to keep their homes just as comfortable at up to five degrees Fahrenheit cooler than with their previous forced air and baseboard heating systems. Studies by the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) show that you could comfortably push that number to 6-8 degrees lower. That alone saves a great deal of electricity (and money).
Conventional heating tends to warm and then cool, blowing blasts of hot air that may cause a room to feel stuffy, and then quickly dissipates to hang out near your ceilings. In-floor heating systems are overall more efficient in their heating properties. In fact, STEP by Warmfloor, advertises that its radiant floor heating consumes 40-60% less electricity to achieve the exact same heat output as forced air heating systems.
Also, because radiant floor heating is installed beneath your floors, there's no ductwork that could potentially leak hot air, so all that heat stays right in your home. Solid double-pane windows and quality insulation are all you need to ensure your home stays toasty warm. Your smart thermostat can be set to automatically warm your home at just the right times of day and night to keep your home comfortable while simultaneously and systematically reducing your energy consumption. Use the Mysa Energy Charting feature to track your overall energy consumption and get suggestions to save even more.
You can further reduce your electricity consumption by sourcing energy from renewable sources like sun and wind power. If you have solar panels on your home, you may even be able to store all the energy your radiant floor heating system will need from free, nature-provided energy.
Decrease Your Electricity Bill
These days, everyone is looking to reduce regular costs, and utilities are among the top ways to save. The energy consumption of radiant floor heating is directly transferable to a lower electricity bill, and a connected smart thermostat can make those savings a monthly occurrence.
The greatest heat loss in most homes is seen in the top half of rooms, especially in homes with high ceilings. Because forced air and baseboard heating systems push heat, that hot air tends to settle in the top half of the room quickly, sending you back to the thermostat to push even more heat. Comparatively, radiant floor heating keeps that heat closer to your body and furniture, where it will actually keep you warm. On average, most homes with radiant floor heating save 10-30% on their electricity bills just by switching heating systems.
You can save even more electricity by taking advantage of lower energy rates during times outside of peak electricity hours (usually between 9pm and 6am). Most homes are built on a concrete foundation and concrete has excellent heat retention properties. Experienced radiant floor heating homeowners often boast of “charging” their concrete foundations at night and letting that warmed concrete keep their house at a comfortable temperature throughout the day without using additional electricity. An in-floor smart thermostat makes it easy to set your floors to automatically heat outside of peak hours without even having to think about it.
In-floor heating will work with all flooring options, but ceramic tile does the best job of conducting heat and adding to thermal storage. If you're installing new floors with your in-floor heating, talk to your contractor about your foundation and flooring options to save the most on electricity.
A Smart In Floor Thermostat Will Improve Your Life, Save Energy, and Reduce Your Electricity Bill
There are many options in home heating, but few come with as many benefits as radiant floor heating. Homes with in-floor heating often save considerably in energy consumption and electricity bills and stay comfortably and evenly warm longer than those with forced air and baseboard heating systems.
A smart thermostat makes it super simple to manage home heating by setting automation that will keep your home warm, while also saving energy and reducing your electricity bill with ease. But before you go out and buy just any smart thermostat, be sure to choose one that's designed to manage in-floor heating. The new Mysa In-Floor Thermostat will do it all, and then some!