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Save energy and money by installing a programmable thermostat.

Monday Nov 03, 2008.     By Sharon Hoyer

Lifestyle Feed

We were really chillin' at our place last week, and I don't just mean enjoying the usual state of homey relaxation. Each autumn, my roommates and I play chicken with the plummeting temperatures, seeing just how long we can stay warm using intricate clothing layering systems and hot tea. This week, the weather flinched first and temps shot up into record highs—a momentary victory perhaps, but we well understand that though we may have won October, we will ultimately lose the war. It's just a matter of time before November charges through our defensive line of down blankets and hot cocoa, forcing us to turn on the heat.

Ours is a spacious, high-ceilinged, drafty, century-old apartment, so in the most brutal winter months, the gas bill has toed the $300 mark. Last winter—one of the most bitter in recent memory—my roommate and I waged an epic thermostat battle, an escalating cold war that reached a head one frigid February afternoon when I arrived home to an 85-degree apartment and found said roomie blissfully preparing dinner in a pair of breezy linen shorts.

To curtail both my Scrooginess and any future mid-winter kitchen beach parties, I asked my landlord if I could install a programmable thermostat. He applauded the idea and promised to reimburse me. Even if you're not locked in climate-control combat with a co-habitant, a programmable thermostat is an incredibly simple and effective way of saving energy and money. There's no need to keep your digs quite so toasty while you're at work or asleep, and a timed thermostat allows you to pre-set desired temperatures for different blocks of your day. If the members of my household can reach agreement on a reasonable temperature for the hours we're at home, we'll keep the energy bill down without resorting to a trash-can fire in the living room.

I stopped by the local hardware store and picked up a 5/2-day programmable thermostat, which lets you create separate programs for weekdays and weekends, for about $40 (seven-day thermostats were available for about $15 more). After watching a remarkably confidence-building instructional video online, I felt capable of installing the device myself. The whole process was incredibly simple and took about 20 minutes all told, including the requisite head-scratching and serial screw-dropping. My job was made easier by the fact that the folks who first installed the thermostat put it in a good location: on an interior wall away from heat sources and windows. It also had the simplest possible wiring—one red, one white—easily identifiable and attached to the thermostat by clearly labeled screws.

Unfortunately, renters only have so much control over the insulation of their dwellings. Aside from Depression-era solutions like window quilts, caulk and those stuffed fabric sausages you jam under doors, most insulation improvements are made by the homeowner.

Talk to your landlord about energy-efficient windows and checking your place for air leaks around windows and doors. You might even want to recommend an energy audit and let the pros with state-of-the-art draft-seeking technology track down leaks and suggest the best solutions. Granted, investments like these are costlier than plastic window bubbles, but they're also far more effective and really pay off in the long run.

My roommate seemed pretty pleased with the new thermostat on our wall. I look forward to a warm, peaceful winter.

Visit the Energy Star website to measure your pad with the Home Energy Yardstick and mediate the temperature debate with a chart of energy-efficient setpoint times and temps.

It took a move from the regimented lawnscapes of the suburbs to the congestion of a major metropolis for Sharon to look twice at what she puts in the trash, down the sink and into her own body. She reports fortnightly on her endeavors to change "greening" from calculated deviation to a practicable way of life. You can contact her here.