Sometimes I am reminded that my boyfriend is a bit of an obsessive freak.
He definitely gets riled up and consumed with certain topics, and it’s very difficult to pull him back into reality. This has certainly been the case with our recent home renovations. When we were talking about home heating and cooling solutions, though, I never would have guessed that his most recent obsession would become our brand new smart thermostat. The trouble all started when we called a local HVAC agent out to the house to discuss available heating and cooling plans on the market. He recommended some energy star rated furnaces and air conditioning units, and also highly touted their newest smart thermostat option. He said that the new thermostat allowed the user to have complete control over their home heating and cooling system, even from thousands of miles away. We were sold. When the thermostat and ventilation plan was fully installed, my boyfriend got right to work tinkering with the settings. He wanted to optimize the energy usage, set a highly detailed temperature control plan, and set service reminders within moments of powering the thermostat on. The only trouble is, it’s been 3 weeks and he hasn’t stopped tinkering. Everyday he’s hunched over the smart thermostat, diligently checking all of our home energy statistics and tweeking the program by single degrees. I can’t pull him away from the stupid thing! Anytime I can’t find my boyfriend when I need help with something, you’d better believe that he’s poking at the smart thermostat. Yes, I wanted to reduce our energy expenditure, but not at the cost of losing my boyfriend.