How home automation can save you money

I have long stuggled with heating my office. It's a small detached wooden building on pylons, not very well insulated, and it does not have any fireplace. I use an electric oil radiator to heat it.

The struggle with the radiator was that when using its own internal thermostat, I need to change it multiple time a day because the temperature outside changes and my office was always too warm or too cold but never really comfortable. For weekends, when I don't really go to the office, I wanted the temperature to be stable and lower than during my work days and the internal thermostat could not really guarantee that.

First, I bought a power socket with its own thermostat. I could set a temperature and it turned off when the temperature was higher than the threshold and turn on when it was lower, effectively controlling the radiator connected to it. However, it turned out that during extra cold days, the current going through was heating the power socket so much that it did not measure the ambient temperature correctly and was shutting down too soon, leaving the office colder.

I have decided that I need the thermostat to be independent of the power socket. This is where the "home automation" comes in. With a smart power socket and a temperature sensor from Shelly, I could set everything up in the office so the temperature sensor controls the power socket.

I then built a small home assistant app that runs on the local network and based on the time of day and the day of week, it sets and controls the desired temperature. I could have used the free and open source Home Assistant app too if I wanted to, but building my own was a bit more fun.

So now the home (office) automation that I set up heats the office only when I am there and keeps the temperature at the safe level for the building when I am not. This saves me money in the long run as heating at 5 degrees less is estimated to cut the electricity bill by 5 - 15%.

Do you have your own ideas how you could use home automation devices to secure your home or save money and need help designing it or setting it up? Just hit the Contact Us button.