How to win the thermostat wars

 What's the optimal temperature for an apartment in a building?

It seems so obvious — there should be one temperature that makes everybody comfortable, right? Well, in reality it's not like that at all. Everybody has their own perception of what temperature should be. This vicious cycle is what we call the thermostat wars.

There's no single temperature that makes every tenant happy

For example, Mrs. Johnson in 5B likes her apartment at 80 degrees. When it's not 80 degrees, she immediately calls the super and complains. The super doesn't know what the temperature is, and doesn't want to get complaints. So he turns up the one knob that controls the entire building's heat, and the result is that everybody else in the building is boiling.

One knob controls the entire building's temperature

The core problem is that in a centrally-heated building, there's one source of heat and it's controlled by a single knob. No matter how hot or cold different people are, there's only one output from the heating system. And without real-time information to know what the actual temperature is, you always end up having to run the building based on the lowest commonly denominator: The person who's the coldest and complaints the most.

The result of the thermostat wars is not only are most of the people living in your buildings not comfortable, but you're wasting a dramatic amount of energy and money overheating your buildings to make them uncomfortable. It's a vicious cycle that's not good for anybody living in buildings or the people that own or manage them.

So how do we end the thermostat wars for good?

The answer is using information to make better decisions. Specifically using a technology called smart controls that put temperature sensors in a fraction of the apartments. Not only can you see what the temperature is across the building, you can dynamically adjust the temperature to make sure it's at the appropriate level to make the most number of people most comfortable, not just on a single day, but throughout the year.

Knowing the indoor temperatures = optimal comfort and optimal savings

It'll never be possible to have every single person in a centrally-heated building have the temperature at the exact number they want. But smart controls and sensors can make sure that the vast majority of people in a building are happy, instead of just the single coldest person.

This is how you not only dramatically cut the energy bills for the building and cut carbon output, it's how you end the thermostat wars for good and make people and buildings across the country drastically more comfortable.