Nest Learning Thermostat - Looking At Programmable Thermostat. Nest? Honeywell? Anyone? (updated)

[toyotafan]

Looking at getting a new thermostat for the house, something that's a lot more economical to help save electricity.

Nest programmable thermostat anyone? How about the Honeywell model?

Lowe's was sold out of the Nest model today when I went looking.

 

[toyotafan]

This video walks through the installation process and then it cuts to a month after the installation. The nest website shows they have studies that show the average home / person saves 11%.

I have a cheap 10 year old programmable thermostat, it's a pain to program and it keeps resetting and losing the data when the batteries go out, which seems to happen about every 18 months.

Nest Learning Thermostat Review - A Must Watch!:

 

[toyotafan]

If I saved 5% on my energy bill, for me in north Texas between natural gas and electricity that would be savings up to about $150 per year. Plus I'd be able to check on my energy usage and change the temp from my smart phone.

Nest Learning Thermostat: Unboxing & Review:

 

[tbplus10]

Ive got a White Rogers that TXU istalled a few years ago, does well for our needs.
I ever quite got the savings I was told.

 

[toyotafan]

Bought the Nest today and tried to install without turning off the main breaker. I figured it's low voltage after all. Well, must have brushed the wires together for 1 second, and blew the fuse in the hvac control panel. Took me 3 hours to track that down.

Anyhow, the Nest works great thus far. Pretty cool and there are a lot of extra features like it can stop the heat (gas in my case) or cooling (ac compressor) and just blow the air around with the fan to help maximize efficiency. Plus it can help control moisture levels which is interesting as the wife and maybe one kid have a mold allergy.

 

[toyotafan]

One of the things that I can see is that the thermostat is not in a good area. The temp near this interior hallway is much warmer than the other side of the house. It's reading 72°F right now, but really in the kitchen, which is a very open area, it's probably only 69°F or so.

There is a second hallway near the master bedroom that I'm considering relocating the thermostat to. But I'm not sure if I want to bother.

Here's a screenshot from the Nest app.

This is pretty cool because if we are all away, I can load the app and tell it that we are away.

Also, im not sure, but after this has run for a few days it's going to start to tell us how much energy we are using and not only that but how long it's found to take for the house to reach a certain temp from the current temp.

 

[toyotafan]

Here's what the energy history looks like. I've been told it only goes back 10 days, which is a little bit disappointing but I can live with that. Would be nice to store this for good and compare year over year even.

 

[purplestuff]

I have a Honeywell it works luke it should its prgrammable for day night home or away but its mostly for routine schedule or u have to turn it up or down as needed itwas really just a digital upgrade in my house

 

[TDave]

I have had the Nest for about a year now. Was tired of wasting a lot of heating and A/C, so I bit the bullet on it. It really doesn't do much more than similar thermostats at the time, but it was expensive as hell.

I got mine at Lowe's too, but now, Lowe's is peddling the Honeywell thermostats, which do about the same thing, and don't look all iPad-like. I think Honeywell even tried to sue Nest for some of their technology, but I think the case(s) were thrown out.

The only problem we've had with it is sometimes the kids will be playing and put something in front of it, so the sensor can't "sense" anybody, and then it can't tell if anybody is home, so it goes to "away" mode, and shuts everything down, lol

 

[toyotafan]

Still loving this thermostat. It cost $249, but I'm pretty sure that it will save us $250 per year in energy costs! Seriously!

 

[MuddyTacoma]

That's a good unit, a bit pricey but if it delivers, then it's worth every penny I guess.

 

[geezala]

I've heard stories that those Nest thermostats don't have an accurate temp, it can be off a couple of degrees for some reason. Maybe it generates a little heat itself or something.

 

[TDave]

You should get monthly emails telling you how well you did compared to the average across the country. Those were interesting at first, but they grew pretty tiresome after a while.

 

[toyotafan]

Update on this. We love it. Being able to raise the temp to 80 or 85 during the day and then have the house cooled down just in time for us to get home is wonderful! The auto-away is set for 80 degrees and we can log into the nest app and set it for a comfortable temp when we get home.

Here's their newest promotion we just got. This is not a promo or affiliate deal, I just thought people would like to see this and check it out.

************************************

The brighter way to save energy.
The new Nest Learning Thermostat.
BUY NOW

The 3rd generation Nest Learning Thermostat is thinner and sleeker. It has a bigger, sharper display. With Farsight, it can now show you the time or the temperature you’ve set from across the room. And it saves energy.
A lot of energy. Over 4 billion kilowatt hours of energy* so far in millions of homes around the world. In independent studies, the Nest Thermostat saved an average of 10‑12% on heating bills and 15% on cooling bills. So in under two years, it can pay for itself. That’s the most beautiful part. Watch the video

$249
BUY NOW

Get a Nest for less
Find rebates in your area >

 

[toyotafan]

I've had this now for a winter, spring and summer season. I'm ready to call this one of the best investments we've every made for our house!

First off, while in bed at night and hot, I can pick-up my smartphone and turn the a/c on. Also I can easily schedule for the house to be a certain temperature by a certain time, so it can essentially go to 85F inside and just be 74F by the time we get home at 8:00 PM for example.

Looks like we've seeing 20% decrease in electricity usage over the summer. Since we had a early mild-summer and a hot late summer, that might just be a function of being slightly less warm this year on average?

However, the savings are worth the price ... BUT looking at this system it really shouldn't be $249. I think that we're looking at maybe something that should be $80 +/- in the next few years.

 

[toyotafan]

So it's been a year and a half since I installed. They did some updates to their software, this is what the desktop login looks like. They also added a function where if you start driving to your house (and you have the app installed and turned on) it will notice that you're on the way home and will turn on to reach the comfort level that you want when you get home. In the summer that's difficult to do, but it's a nice thought. We've come home from a day at the pool only to have an 82F house (which is really hot when you come in from outside being 107F and you need to cool off. Going from 82F to something like 72F will take HOURS.

Also, the temp setting on the nest is about 2 degrees off from actual temp. So when it's reading the temp is at 75, the actual temp is really 77 in the house. That's annoying and you'll say that I've got the thermostat set too low in the photos, but that's really 2 degrees warmer than that and it's very humid inside and outside so I'm running the AC to take the humidity out of the house.

One of the most noticeable features of the nest is the fact that it learns your personal and will create a comfort schedule automatically. Plus it has an auto-away feature so that if it detects that no one is in the house it will drop the schedule and default to the max-temp for AC and/or the min-temp for Heat.

Here's what the schedule system looks like on the desktop. It's pretty cool, you can click on any point and click up/down to set the temp or drag left/right to change the start time that you want the temp to kick in.

There is also a feature when you can have the nest reach the temperature you have listed by that time, so in the winter you want it to be 70 degree when you wake up at 7 am, but you want it set at 64 degrees when you're sleeping to save energy ... the nest will over time learn how long it takes to go from 64 to 70 and it will turn on early so you pop out of bed at 7 am with a comfortable house.

 

[toyotafan]

One of the neat features that is totally inadequate IMHO is the Energy History page.

It only goes back 10 days. Really? Only 10 days of history can be seen? I've had this for 18 months but can't use the data that i'm sure is there to see my own energy trends.

They've got to be storing this data somewhere, are they selling it to big data firms like Google (I think Nest is now owned by Google actually)? Why not give me the option to store it forever? I'd like to look back to see what I used for energy a year ago this month, for example.

One of the problems though is that the thermostat appears to be off by at least 2 (and maybe 3) degrees. We noticed this in the first day of operation, thought it would correct itself. It's a bit annoying to remember that you have to calculate a couple of extra degrees to get the temp that you're looking for. Might be a tactic of nest to trick people into thinking they're saving money when they're not?

 

[tbplus10]

The white Rogers we have has a site on TXU where I can review my useage back to day one.

 

[toyotafan]

My nest is off by 3 degrees, we've known this since we installed it, but it's really annoying to have to remember. The nest support told me to live with it at some point but it's not ideal.

 

[toyotafan]

I've heard stories that those Nest thermostats don't have an accurate temp, it can be off a couple of degrees for some reason. Maybe it generates a little heat itself or something.

This might be true, it's off 3 degrees for me.