Home automation has been popular lately, with app and voice control of lighting, ceiling fans and thermostats topping the list of home automation goodies. Automating other areas of your home (garage doors and patio heaters for example) are the next logical extension of home automation. Smart patio heaters make it super-easy to incorporate patio comfort into your home automation plans.
What are Smart Patio Heaters?
Smart patio heaters allow you to control your heater with an app on your phone/tablet or through smart home systems. Smart home systems allow multiple settings for different devices to be combined (either through a one-button push or through voice control) to do things like turn on your patio heater 80%, turn on the garden landscape lighting, and play soft music through your patio speakers.
The Types of Smart Heaters
Electric smart heaters are less expensive to purchase and install than other gas-powered heaters but allow you full control of your patio comfort through your home automation system. Infrared smart heaters don’t heat the air (like a fire pit does), but rather creates efficient infrared radiant waves to warm things in the heater’s path (you know, like the furniture, concrete and people) … the same way that the sun does. The warmth is instantaneous, providing clean, efficient heating exactly where you need it. As the sunlight grows sparse and cooler temps begin to surround you, there’s no need to get out of your ridiculously comfy patio seat to turn on your electric heater – a simple phone tap or two or a shout to your favorite automated home assistant will have you warm in no time.
Homeowners who have selected either propane or natural gas to fuel their patio heating needs find that scheduling their heater to turn on 5-10 minutes before they step outside for their morning coffee is a godsend. They help you start off your morning relaxed and comfortable – ready to take on the day. Scheduling plays a part on the other end of the day as well… sending a discrete code to turn off your patio heater at a specific time will ensure your system is off for the night.
What could be better than integrating your smart heater into your home controls? Selecting a smart heater that is also portable. When you choose a freestanding smart compatible patio heater, it becomes a portable heating option, and you can heat a conversation area early in the evening and move it to your dining area when dinner’s ready.
In our opinion, the best place to install your patio heating solution is on the ceiling. Out of reach of pets and children, this is the safest installation option for active families. Adding a smart heater to your patio’s ceiling not is not only for safety… precise placement (usually of multiple heating systems) means your heat is directed exactly where you want it. Infrared patio heaters (which heat objects not the air) benefit the most from perfectly precise placement, taking advantage of multiple heaters strategically placed to provide the even, reliable heat distribution that your family will love.
The Benefits of a Smart Patio Heater
- Convenience: When you’re relaxing on the outdoor furniture on your patio and you realize that a chill has set in, there’s no need to get up and run to the controls to kick on the heat… just a tap of your smart phone or home automation controller will make things right with the world without having to move. Getting a little too warm? You can ask your voice controlled smart home to lower the heat level of your patio heater just the right amount.
- Energy Efficiency: Perhaps you need a little bit of heat on your patio (which your kids treat as their own personal play space) but need want to cycle the heat on and off to save energy… scheduling a 10-minute heating time every half hour may be perfect (and easily done with a home automation system). More importantly, schedule a shut off for 10:00pm to ensure that nobody left the heater on inadvertently. Perhaps the most energy efficiency can be found by installing a smart patio heater with a motion sensor (like the highly rated Heat Storm HS-6000-OTR).
- Customization: One of the joys of using an automated home solution is that you don’t have a binary mentality anymore – it’s not turning everything on or off, but you can have shades of gray in there as well. Hit one button and your heat is as its maximum, trying to ward off a winter chill. Select another option on your home automation system and your heat will cycle on and off every 30 minutes to keep cold air at bay.
- Safety: In addition to being able to schedule an automated shut off at a specific time, smart patio heaters often include advanced safety functions to give you just a little more peace of mind. Units built with an automatic shut-off will power down after a pre-set time, giving you a little different kind of comfort than you may have expected. Some of our favorite smart patio heaters monitor the temperature of their systems and have included overheating protection to keep your family safe. Look for advanced safety features because when it comes to safety, there’s no such thing as having too much.
- Integration: Smart patio heaters are designed to keep your family warm as your kids play the day away, but they also play nice with others! Smartphone apps allow you to verify that you turned the heater off when you went upstairs (you DID turn the heater off, didn’t you?). Home Automation System integration means that as you set a scene for your evening’s activities, your patio heater will work in tandem with lighting and other automated devices to get the mood just right.
A Note on Home Automation
There are many options when it comes to home automation systems, and one of our patio heating manufacturers, Bromic Heating, provides home automation to all of their patio heaters by the use of an ingenious Smart Heat Link Plugin. To use this plugin, you must have a home automation system that accepts a wired RS232 connection (like Control 4, Crestron, Lutron, and Nomad… but any home automation system that accepts an RS232 connection will work).
Conclusion
One of the best comfort investments you can make is to select a high-quality patio heater to keep your family toasty. Stepping up to a smart patio heater heaps extra benefits on top of your family’s comfort – the convenience that smartphone or home automation system access simplifies your life, while benefiting from added energy savings.
Not sure which smart patio heater option is right for you? Don’t fret – we’ve got the best patio experts in the business ready to help you out… just give us a call and we promise to treat you like family.