Summertime for most of us in the U.S. means fun in the sun and lots of warm weather. You either enjoy it outdoors or you enjoy the sunny view, through the window, while you sit inside with the nice cold AC running. I happen to be the latter. In my house, we turned on our home’s central air unit in early May on the first day the temps went close to 80 - and it hasn’t turned off since. We’re the type of household that doesn’t mind footing a larger electricity bill if it means being able to sleep and enjoy our time indoors in comfort. But when I recently was given a chance to put modern technology to use and test out a Mistbox, I was very excited to give it a whirl. Anything to pinch a few cents here and there and let me save for a new outdoor patio – I’m all for it.
Electricity rates have been soaring and here in Connecticut fees and taxes seem to be increasing constantly. If you can cut down some of the power used to run these systems – then the MistBox is doing its job.
This is the same goal of many other smart products for the home that can do everything from have a hot cup of coffee brewed and ready for when you wake up to reducing the temperature in the house when you’re not home.
In fact, according to recent research from Berg Insight, North America is the world’s most advanced smart home market and had an installed base of 12.7 million smart homes at the end of the year - a 56 percent year-on-year growth. And there’s no sign of slowing as the number of smart homes in North America are expected to hit 46.2 million by 2020 – which translates to 35 percent of all households. Of those items topping the list in smart homes are: smart thermostats, security systems, smart light bulbs, network cameras and multi-room audio systems.
The Mistbox gadget gets attached to your AC unit outside and has a solar-powered temperature gauge that kicks on when the temperature threshold setting is met- the factory setting is 80 but this can be changed based on user needs. It then emits a mist to cool down the air around the air conditioner – so it works less and wastes less energy.
This isn’t just technology at work to make our lives easier and help us to save money – but there are green benefits too. By reducing the footprint of the AC unit, the Mistbox is also helping to reduce non-renewable energy consumption and promote a greener world.
What makes the Mistbox able to accurately emit the mist are the sensors and automatic algorithms that can detect the best time to spray based on things like temperature, sound and electromagnetic field.
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etting the unit up didn’t take much work. It was as easy as hooking up the outdoor water spigot to the device and snapping the water misters to the unit. It was literally less than 10 minutes. Reportedly, the maintenance is low too – something like five minutes a year to get back up and running.
I’m still waiting to see how much I saved by the end of this summer and will surely report those numbers back when I do. I like that having the device set-up gives you peace of mind that you can keep the AC on a cool setting and still save some money and that you’re doing something good for the environment. But I did have some hiccups along the way. Since I have hard water and well as my water source, I was a bit anxious to leave the water on and worried about issues associated with that. There are also some water pressure and dripping issues I ran into along the way with testing that I am still working the kinks out with, but am continuing my testing with high hopes.
As a companion to the gadget, the company also offers a compatible app that lets you do thing like see the battery level of the box, if a filter change is needed, and more.
Mistbox is available for purchase at Mistbox.com, Amazon.com, Lowes.com and in select Lowe’s stores and product retails for $399 and homeowners can receive 30 percent Federal Green Tax Credit.
Edited by
Ken Briodagh
