How to Optimize Your Smart Home for the Summer

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Here's your guide to making the most of the sunny season, whether that means embarking on epic adventures or enjoying the great indoors.

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Optimizing your living space to seamlessly adapt to changing seasons is one of the best uses for a smart home, and also one of the coolest. A summer-tuned smart home will save you a ton of money and keep you more comfortable; plus, it's freaking awesome. Imagine the sci-fi satisfaction of watching your house independently prepare for a heatwave without you ever having to lift a finger.

Install a smart thermostat

If you are still controlling your home's climate with a dial, it's time for an upgrade. Something like this Ecobee smart thermostat plays nicely with Apple Home, Google Home, and Alexa, and does way more than letting you change the temperature from your phone. It can be the brain of your summer optimization strategy: It actively tracks your habits, watches the local weather report, and learns how long your house takes to cool down. If you're into AI (or not into scheduling things manually), this Google Nest Learning Thermostat (4th Gen) uses artificial intelligence to study your daily routines and automatically builds an energy-saving climate map for your home.

Installing a smart thermostat can seem intimidating, but it's often simpler than you'd think. Modern kits are largely designed for standard homes and come with straightforward guides to help you connect the right wires. Follow the directions closely, use your phone to snap a picture of your original setup before you disconnect anything, and you'll probably be fine, but if you have any doubts, hire a professional to knock it out for you.

Make the sunlight and darkness work for you

Computer controlled smart blinds are not just cool, they can also save you a ton of money. Limiting the amount of sunlight beaming through your windows means air conditioning doesn't have to work as hard, but you'll still be comfortable. Depending on your home setup and how deep you want to go, there are three approaches you can take.

The schedule option. Setting the blinds on the western side of the house to close at 2 pm and open at 6 pm is a blunt instrument, but it gets the job done, and it's easy. These Yoolax motorized blinds, for instance, work with major home automation systems from Amazon, Google, and more, and they come with a 15-channel timing remote, so you can schedule them right out of the package without even getting your smart home involved.

Light-sensing option: Instead of picking a static time, you can tether your blinds to the shifting solar schedule by giving your smart hub a programming rule like: "Close the shades exactly three hours after sunrise." These SmartWings Motorized Roller Shades can do all that through Matter-over-Thread or Homekit.

True-light sensing: Both of the above options work great, until there's a cloudy day. Illuminance sensors, either built directly into a smart blind's solar panel or stuck to a window sill, measure actual light intensity, then you can set a rule to tell your blinds to open when summer rains fall. Even relatively inexpensive products like these SwitchBot Blind Tilt Motorized Blinds have light sensors, plus, they work with your existing blinds.

Control the wind with ceiling fan and AC synchronization

You can keep yourself cool without having to cool all the air in your house with humble ceiling fans. They create a wind-chill effect on your skin, and if paired with a smart thermostat, you can trick your body into feeling comfortable without turning your home into a refrigerator. Here's how to do it:

Make sure your fans are spinning counterclockwise, so a column of air is pushing down.

Set your thermostat a little higher. Maybe go from 70 to 74.

Create a conditional rule in your smart home app, something like "IF the room temperature hits 74, THEN turn on the smart plug connected to your fan."

You'll perceive moving air in a warm room as cooler than still air, and it can be done with just a $15 smart plug.

Cure the open-door AC drain

My mom used to say "what are we, cooling the whole neighborhood?" if anyone left the door open in summer, but I still did, and it sometimes stayed open half the day. You can avoid AC waste and avoid becoming a nag with simple contact sensors. Something like this hooks up to your door and lets you know if it's opened or closed. You can connect them with your smart home software and create a rule that to turn your air conditioner off or to econ mode if a door is left open for three minutes, or just have an alert sent to your phone, so if a door is left open so you can yell about it.

Shift heat-heavy chores to off-peak hours

Anyone in a drought-plagued area is already aware that you shouldn't run power-draining appliances like dishwashers and clothes dryers during peak air conditioning hours; not only does it strain the grid, it heats up your house, so schedule your heavy appliances to run at night. If someone in your household insists on drying their clothing at noon, you can set a rule like "IF time is 11:30 PM THEN turn smart plug ON. IF time is 7 AM THEN turn smart plug OFF." If you're fancy, and you're rocking smart appliances like this GE dryer, you can skip the smart plugs and handle it directly from your smart home hub.

Keep your home safe during summer vacations

Scheduling lights to turn off and on while you're on vacation is burglary-deterrence 101, but a determined thief is going to see through it if they're really casing the place. Instead of a predictable schedule, use built-in algorithms to make your house look convincingly occupied. Philips Hue lights offer a free "Mimic Presence" feature, while Alexa smart speakers have an Away Lighting routine that comes with its Guard Plus service that costs $4.99 a month. When you change your system status to "Away," these programs analyze your historical habits and machine algorithms to randomize your smart bulbs, plugs, and switches. They turn things on and off in unpredictable patterns, periodically shift smart shades, and can even stream audio or ambient TV noise to different rooms until it looks like an invisible family is living in your house while you're partying at Busch Gardens.