HomeKeepr Blog

Now that the winter months are upon us, do you once again dread another season of sky-high heating and electric bills? Although you may blame this on inflation and other factors that are out of your control, as a homeowner, you have control over how efficiently your home uses energy. To use power more efficiently to save yourself a bundle on your bills, you must be aware of your level of energy consumption. You have to examine your habits and the function of your appliances to figure out where and why the loss is happening. Whether you do it yourself, seek professional help, or a little of both, the following tips can significantly reduce your energy costs while making your home more comfortable and environmentally friendly.

Smart home devices give homeowners a lot of control over the way that their homes function, allowing things like lighting control, home security, and even home automation to be as simple as interacting with an app or using voice controls. Depending on the devices used, you can save money and gain greater peace of mind while also having a bit of fun with your home. One thing that isn’t fun, though, is all the work that is sometimes required to set everything up and get it all working together on the same network.

Smart homes are increasingly popular these days, with an estimated 175 million smart homes in operation around the world as of 2022. In this year alone, it’s estimated that smart home devices have generated nearly $91 billion in revenue, and it’s projected that this amount is going to grow significantly over the next few years. In fact, the projected compound annual growth rate of the smart home industry’s revenue between 2020 and 2025 is an astonishing 25 percent.

As smart homes become more common, some homeowners are going beyond basics like smart bulbs and assistant hubs like Google Home and Amazon Echo. This can take a number of forms, from the addition of smart electronics and security systems to sensors throughout the house that can recognize when people walk into rooms and adjust the lighting and other resources accordingly. One increasingly popular option is the installation of smart switches in lieu of simply relying on individual smart bulbs to control lighting.

Once upon a time, smart home devices required dedicated hubs and a unique kind of wireless network to operate their various lights, sensors, and switches. With the popularity of digital assistants such as Alexa, Siri, and the Google Assistant, though, it was only a matter of time before they became a dominant force in smart home technology. While dedicated device hubs still exist, a significant portion of smart home devices are now designed and marketed to work with popular digital assistants and devices such as the Google Home and Amazon Echo.

As we get older, some things that used to come easy start to get a little harder. In some cases, this isn’t that big of a deal, as some of the slow-downs and other problems associated with aging may just be little inconveniences. In other cases, though, the problems that occur as we get older can make it more difficult to maintain an independent lifestyle. This can be a big problem for people who are used to doing everything themselves, as it creates a greater dependence on other people, and in some cases may even make it difficult to live at home alone.

In the early days of home automation, getting your home set up typically required buying a central hub that your devices could connect to and coordinating everything from there. In some cases, you might have even needed multiple hubs, since not all devices worked on the same network. While automation hubs and alternate networks still exist, these days most automation is done using your home’s Wi-Fi network and digital assistants such as Alexa or Google Assistant.

Chances are, you use the internet for a number of different things during the course of your day. The internet plays a key role in everything from gaming and entertainment to social interaction and even work these days, so it’s important that you have a reliable internet connection. Depending on the layout and even the materials used in your house, though, it isn’t always easy to stay connected everywhere within the home.

When it comes to improving the energy efficiency of your home, your garage might not be the first place that you think of. If you have an attached garage, though, you may be leaking warm (or cool) air from your home without even realizing it. While there are a few different ways that you can combat this, one of the most effective is by installing new garage doors.