Winterizing Your Dallas TX Home with Smart Heating and Cooling

House Warming: What's the Deal with Heating and Cooling the Home?

In the space between discovering fire (the start of humankind) and creating air conditioning (the late 1800s to 1950s), houses were invented. Today, we bring the heat and cold inside with us, and it's much better than being outside all the time.

We've created a suitable temperature range for the indoors, regardless of the season. However, that's trickier as Texas has more than four seasons.

Oh Hail No: Wacky Texas Weather Requires More than Air Conditioning

If you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes? The mortar-strike, baseball, ice hail we saw this year in Texas drove the point home. The climate here is about as ordered and predictable as the contents of a blender thanks to the gulf, the desert, and Wizard-of-Oz-style winds gifted from the Great Planes.

2021 also saw the tie for the second-coldest day on record for DFW (-2 degrees F, Jan 31). This is just ten years after the tie for the seventh-hottest day on record (110 degrees F, Aug 2, 2011). This is going back well over 100 years. (source: https://www.weather.gov/fwd/dgr8mxmn)

But, as with most of this hemisphere, Dallas Fort Worth generally gets colder in the winter months and hotter in the summer.

There are things you can do today to up the energy efficiency of your home. And save cash.

Winterize and Summerize Your Home.

• Professionally-installed heating cooling HVAC and furnace system
• Real-time smart devices with remote access and control from phone, tablet, or desktop
• A quality maintenance program
• Checking and repairing windows, doors including the install of caulking, weather stripping, and seals
• Strategy for some rugged but stylish, smart-controlled, window treatments
  
  

Walkin' on the Sun: Heat, Cold, Doors, Windows . . . and Money

HEET, the Home Energy Efficiency Team out of Boston has been using infra-red imaging on homes for years. The varied coloration shows where to find the biggest pockets of cold air creeping into a building. (source: https://www.wbur.org/news/2013/01/04/heat-efficiency)

But nixing the nibbles jack frost takes from your home can also be easy and low-tech.

Home Heat Loss Breakdown.

• Windows and doors: 25%
• Basement or floors: 15%
• Attic: 25%
• Walls: 35%
• (source: https://www.buildwithrise.com/stories/home-heat-loss)

Step one is to identify where the outdoor temperature is getting indoors. Step two is sealing it up.

Anywhere you think you might have a draft, try these tips. (source: https://www.northshorecommercialdoor.com/creating-an-energy-efficient-garage.html). Get a two-ply tissue and separate the plies. Hold the ply in your thumb and fingertips. Now very slowly run it along the edges of the windows, the doors, the baseboards, and light switches or outlets. Any fluttering of the wispy tissue means there's air getting in.

There are plenty of options for tasteful and discrete ways to invest in simple home energy hacks. Various caulkings come in a panoply of colors. Adhesive back or screw-mounted door and window edge blockings also have surprising variety and taste. There are even hidden/recessed mount kits that tuck away out of sight.

Green Grows the Energy Tax: Energy Efficiency in Hot or Cold

For the rest of 2021, US residences can get a tax rebate for sprucing up their doors, windows, or getting a skylight.

These are smaller installs that can be done in a week or so.

Available Tax Credit Home Upgrades with EnergyStar Certified Products.

• Doors
• WindowsSkylights
• Newly-installed insulation, heat pumps, wood stoves, newer water heaters can also give you a few bucks back
• (source: https://www.energystar.gov/about/federal_tax_credits)

But, we know saving on gas or power bills, being comfortable, and having on-demand home climate access are key for everyone.

Winternet: Smart Home System Demands on Data and How to Prepare for Convenience

Preparing for convenience? Smart homes provide a level of comfort and efficiency that’s truly remarkable and advanced compared to even just ten years ago. It's convenient to adjust the thermostat from under the comforter, with your phone while reading in bed.

Devices communicate with each other and with a router, so there's a lot of data zinging back and forth through the house.

The starter pack router from your WiFi company provider can't properly manage the galaxy of smart appliances and systems in the home. Never mind smartphones, streaming apps, or your son's gaming.

PackEdge Wireless Access Points are smaller than the tower-style routers used for residential WiFi services. Tucked away on a bookshelf or the entertainment center, this sleek data center has Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MIMO) setup. Evolve Technologies generally installs these when we set up equipment in the home.

The multiple antennae create multiple in-and-out data signals, like adding pistons to an engine, it's more latent energy (bandwidth). But the PackEdge Access points have a clocked operating speed (throughput), so they're faster.

This supplies your home with uninterrupted streaming plus seamless smart device and appliance operation.

Smart Thermostats and Smart Home Devices

Control4 provides a suite of smart home devices and controls. They are an early adopter in the smart home field. In 2019 they hired Charlie Kindel, the project lead for Amazon’s ground-breaking Alexa and Echo Smart Home.

A Few of Control4's Compatibilities

• Alexa
• Echo
• Ring
• Chime
• Nest
• Aprilaire

Grappling with a tech-heavy interface to automate the preferred temperature at home is very 2010s.

Have the house dip down to a steady 65 in the winter when you're not at home. You can even have advanced presets for the thermostat schedule: vacation mode; weekdays; Saturdays; Sundays.

The wall-mount screen is one of Control4's big new features in its revamped OS.

One Place for Your Smart Home Systems, Hot or Cold

Use the 10-inch wall mount screen from Control4. The graphical interface with responsive touch means programming the preferred temperature schedule once. And that's it.

Over 10,000 apps, programs, and settings, including most third-parties, work with the Control4 system. Of course, that includes thermostats and HVAC system needs.

The new OS for Control4, along with the 10,000 apps open platform, has a truly user-friendly interface to adjust the thermostat from anywhere, on almost any device.

Climate: Individualized HVAC

Warm or cool air is only one measure of your home's climate. The most advanced HVAC and home-climate options have next-level premium features Evolve Technologies can help you access.

Advanced Premium Home Features with Control4

• Adjust pool temperature or turn on jacuzzi jets
• On/off for gas fireplaces
• Temperature and even humidity control for your workout room/home gym
• Adjust radiant floor heat level
• Smart zone valves and zone dampers to individualize a single room's temperature

And, we're on-call 24/7 for any immediate needs for your smart home package, thermostat, or otherwise. Plus, our new fast-response policy can get you in touch with a specialist as fast as ten minutes.

Evolve Technologies with Whole Home Possibilities Like Door and Window Setups

A well-insulated window can naturally boost temperatures in the home during winter and offset some heating costs by sunlight. But during the hottest parts of summer, and at night, the blinds need to be closed.

Evolve Technologies installs and services motorized smart blinds, curtains, and window treatments. Using the established, major companies like Lutron, there are many brands, styles, textures, colors for everything up to a floor-to-ceiling window (there appear to be a lot more of these lately on Pinterest).

Sturdy wooden-slatted blinds, a pared-down accordion-fold in simple earth tones, Romans. Style counts.

As with all of Evolve's installs, our established professional presence in the greater Dallas area means we can help you individualize window treatments.

Schedule the open-close-adjust of the window treatments with mechanical operation (up to three years on a single battery) blinds throughout the day. Maximize the natural input of the sun in your indoor home climate.

And, we had to say it: Dad’s will love being able to operate and adjust a smart thermostat through the Control4 open platform.

[suggested location photo 2; thermostat]

Two Dads Talking in Daddy’s Home 2:

• “It’s 85 degrees!? Do you have any idea how much even a few degrees can impact the gas bill?!” 
• “Of course I do. It’s unthinkable!”
• (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C05qUz1ukWo)

Winter, and All 50 Other Texas Seasons, Evolve Is Here and On-Call

So yes, winter is almost here. It's getting colder and after 2021, the dice roll that is Texas weather can have some serious effects.

But by winterizing your home, installing some door/window seal you can do a lot to prepare. Creating a specialty, individualized package, Evolve Technologies can help you protect and comfort your family through the Texas rollercoaster of weather that, well, is never boring.

Call today for a consultation.