Heating second homes efficiently

Protecting the climate via remote control

Second homes in Switzerland lie empty for an average of 300 days per year. Despite this, they are often heated constantly during the colder months of the year so that they are warm and cosy, ready for the next spur-of-the-moment holiday. This can be achieved in a more climate-friendly way – with Cadec AG’s TeleButler.

Res Witschi, Delegate for Sustainable Digitalization
15 October 2020

Second homes in Switzerland lie empty most of the time – but are frequently still heated. Why? Quite often, purely for comfort. Who wants to be greeted by a cold apartment? Sometimes there is an underlying worry too – if the walls of an older holiday apartment get too cold, water can condense on them and mould can spread. But this only happens if water has got in or there are internal sources of damp. Otherwise, EnergieSchweiz recommends reducing the room temperature to between 6 and 15 degrees.

Huge potential for savings

Constant heating not only pushes up heating bills, but also consumes energy needlessly. A study conducted by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy shows that improved temperature management can result in savings of up to 145 million litres of heating oil, 39 million cubic metres of natural gas and 2,200 gigawatt-hours of electricity. This equates to 608,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂), or over one percent of CO₂ emissions across the whole of Switzerland.

Users of the Cadec AG web app not only always have an overview of all important parameters (temperature, heating status, etc.), they also have access to other useful features such as, for example, planning when to switch the heating on and off again in the calendar and hence enabling the automation thereof.

TeleButler to the rescue

With Cadec AG’s remote heating control system TeleButler, owners can reduce the energy consumption of their second home or holiday home by up to 50 percent a year. How is this done? It’s simple: the temperature in the second home is displayed and controlled by app, phone or text message. Owners can reduce the temperature to less than 15 degrees during their absence, without having to worry about returning to an unpleasantly cold apartment. You simply tell the TeleButler how warm you want it to be when you arrive, and your wish is its command.

To transmit this wish, Swisscom uses either the 4G mobile phone network or the energy-saving LoRaWan network. So second-home owners are helping to protect the climate without compromising on comfort.