Nest thermostat

Factual Questions
1

Anyone have real world experience with the Nest thermostat? (nest.com)

Sticking with gq because hoping for specific facts, but understand if it’s moved.

What I’d like to know, before I spend the $ on it, is what kind of savings I can expect as far as electricity consumption.

I’ve got a fairly new lennox ac system. Approx 2 years old. 3 floors in my house, and using a harmony Zoning system so each floor has its own thermostat. They aren’t programmed, but I try to ride them as much as possible. Heat obviously needed more downstairs in winter, ac upstairs in summer. Middle floor needs a little of both now and then.

3 nests will cost me approx $1,000 installed. Will I realistically see $1k in savings over 2-3 years? Or is there a way to determine this? (current electric bill is about $300/month in the summer. Los angeles. Gets hot.)

Easy to see energy consumption with nest app – but hard to compare before I have it installed. Looking for any info I can get before spending the cash.

2

They’re claiming you can save $520 over three years in a regular house with one thermostat. I don’t know if the savings will triple or not in your situation with three zones.

Assuming you’re going with the “concierge” service, (Gama Central looks to be one of your nearby HVAC installers) I’d ask them to show you actual data from other people in the area, or even get you in contact with some of their customers.

I’ll be watching this as I’ve been thinking of getting a Nest for my home. They’re pretty easy to install - why not do it youself and save $200?

3

Is your current thermostat not programmed, or is it not programmable? Program it, if you can - instant savings, no new equipment required.

4

Yeah – considered installing myself. I can certainly do the computer aspect. But I’d find a way to screw up the thermostat install. Lol. Not my forte.

So hard to get real data as the device is new, no one has monitoring abilities before the nest, and the 2.0 upgrade that fixed so many issues is 3 weeks old.

Concierge installer at least has experience making it work with my harmony zoning system too. He has a nest at his home, but he said he doesn’t have much data as he just installed it this year.

Guess I’m gonna be leading the 2nd wave of early adopter beta testers. And being in la, I’m more concerned with the a/c versus heating, and don’t think it was readily available last summer.

5

You’ve got an advanced zoning system and programmable thermostats you haven’t programmed, and yet you want to drop $1000 for the Nest?

To begin with, the Nest might not be compatible if you’re using zoning dampers.

I saw their videos and read the site and I do not believe the Nest will create anywhere the savings they’re touting vis a vis someone who already has programmable thermostats.

It certainly has some cool features, like the “auto-away” feature, and the connectivity features. (although some programmables have this already, and in time they all will)

They mention that 90% of programmable thermostats aren’t programmed. That may be true. And maybe thats the baseline for their energy savings claim.

If you were buying a new HVAC system today, the nest is an elegant, cool, little thermostat. But it smells a little over-hyped to say that programmable thermostats are “incredibly complicated” (many of the new ones are not) and the Nest will somehow give you all kinds of savings you weren’t getting before.

My advice? You can begin your savings by keeping that $1000 in your wallet, and program your thermostats.

6

Raindog, yes the zoning is already being heavily utilized. Has absolutely saved us money. I’m one of those guys who adjusts thermostats every am when we get up, again after I come home from work, again when we go to bed. When we go out of town, they are all adjusted for that, too (while keeping the cats alive, heh). That, and a more efficient system, have cut our electic bills by $30+ per month in the summer. (Obviously doesn’t make much of a dent in the price of a new system, but ours was over 20 years old, leaked everywhere, and needed replacing.)

I’m sure I could program the stats to do that for me, though I’m not sure it’d be a huge improvement. Clearly I could be very wrong on that.

Wondering if the nest’s efficiencies can cut another chunk out. $10 a month? Another $30? Will the away mode – when wife is working, kids are out – cut hours of usage out each day? (one kid at school, another too young. Some days he’s home all day, some weeks he’s out at activities every day. The kind of thing that’s hard to program for.)

Haven’t made the purchase yet. But skeptical that programming will much more than what I do now, sans sensors. Not that it’s not the first step to take.

7

Does the Nest have a “cat” mode? How about house plants? You don’t want to cook them based on what the Nest thinks.

Sounds like your manual method has gotten all the low hanging fruit (savings). Unless you install yourself, I don’t see the repayment window at all. All the claimed savings is over some schlub who never adjusts at all or infrequently.

Do the programming. That part is free. You might no see any savings at all. Currently you adjust, “just on time”. With the programming, the temp ramps up and down a set time before you leave/arrive possibly using more power.

8

I have Nest. Four of them actually.

Prior to Nest we had programmable thermostats, but they were flaking on us and we needed to replace them anyway. Cost savings for us are probably next to nothing since we were already using programmables.

Nest touts a “learning” thermostat. While not a lie exactly, in my opinion, what Nest learns is totally useless to me. For example, let’s say I start with a clean slate and I when I wake up at 8AM I realize it is cold in my room so I turn up the Nest. Nest will learn that I like the temperature at 68 when I wake up. Sounds good right?
Wrong. Nest learns to turn on the heat at 8AM meaning the actual temperature is lower than what I want. Nest will not figure out that I want the heat at 68 at 8AM but rather will merely turn ON the heat at 8AM. That’s kind of a big deal. Similarly, by the time I get home from work, I want the house comfortable, not cold. Blah.

I solve this by PROGRAMMING the Nest. In this respect Nest is quite awesome. You can use an iPhone, iPad or Web interface to program the Nest (you can do it on the device itself, but I don’t recommend it). The Web interface is MUCH easier than typical programmable thermostats. Plus you can put dozens of target temps along the week. My old thermostat only allowed 4 per Sat, Sun or Weekday.

The other things I like about Nest is I can check my house over the internet. I can see that right now my Bedroom is 70 degrees. Not always USEFUL but cool. What is useful is when I turn the heat down for vacation, but want to turn it up again before I get home from vacation. For this I can use the iPhone app and turn up the heat so I come home to a comfortable house.

Nest also will show heating patterns for the last 10 days. I find that feature very informative. This is a new feature that came out just a few weeks ago. That’s another promising thing about Nest. Software update will hopefully offer more functions and cool stuff. I’d like for the Nest to record all my data to my computer (or cloud) so I can view it at my leisure. For example, a detailed report of the 2011-2012 heating season would be very useful information. They DON’T have that now, but I’m hoping that in the future they will (or at least open the data up so third parties can write apps and stuff).

Also these updates will hopefully fix the learning algorithm so that they are useful!

*Note all of my examples are for Heat because I live in a cold climate. It should work the same way for cooling.

Nest is expensive, but very very cool. Much prettier than my old thermostats too.

I installed them myself. I found installation to be very easy**.

** though tedious. entering a very long WPA2 key on the Nest (Four times!) is a pain in the butt.

9

If I do this anyway, and I decide to install myself – do I need to cut power off at the circuit breaker level?

Ps – no house plants. Wife kills 'em all. And screw the cats. :wink:

10

It is recommended that you cut the power off. Nest will only take a low voltage source to begin with, so if you have a high voltage system Nest won’t work for you anyway.

Obviously the instructions are going to say turn the circuit breaker since they don’t want a lawsuit. Also, I guess the connection to a live wire might create a disturbance that could - though probably won’t - fry the device. So you probably can install it without cutting the power, but bad things could happen. I flipped the circuit breaker before installing mine. It really wasn’t a big deal so I just did it that way. I also have a multimeter so I could check that the wires were dead.

11

Sacher, just saw your post. Very helpful, thanks!

12

Another thing I don’t like about Nest:

The big bold number on the Nest is the target temperature. NOT the actual temperature of the room. I find this maddening.

13

What you’re currently doing is better than any programmable thermostat, including the Nest.

Among the advantages of a programmable thermostat are:
**

  1. Adaptive intelligence.** When you program it for 6 p.m. it isn’t turning on at 6 p.m. Rather, it has learned from recent experience exactly what time it needs to turn on to be at the setpoint----at 6 p.m. While what you’re doing--------asking for heating or cooling absolutely on demand----will give you the most savings, you actually have to be there while the house is warming up, or cooling down. A programmable essentially “gets home early” so you don’t have to suffer.

2) It doesn’t forget. When you leave for work at 8 am and forgot to turn the stat up/down, your neighbor’s programmable didn’t.

Where a programmable doesn’t excel:
**

  1. An erratic schedule.** If you have a very predictable schedule a programmable stat excels. If you come and go, neither a programmable or a Nest will do very well. The back end----the auto away feature----may be an energy savings for the times you leave earlier than normal. But I didn’t see an “auto I’m home” feature. If so, you could really see some energy savings. But…with the Nest and a programmable if you go to some “on demand” scheme you still have the warm up/ cool down period that you are home for. That might get old for some people.

Where I saw the greatest hype with the Nest ad was the week long learning curve. If you have a 7 day stat (which is better than a 5-1-1, or 5-2) you can account for the fact you get in late on Thursday evenings. IOW, if you jotted down your comings and goings for a week your programmable can do most of what the Nest does.

14

Thanks, everyone. Much food for thought. Final question – Sacher, as silly as it is, does the leaf icon change your habits in the slightest? Just curious.

15

[QUOTE=sachertorte]
I solve this by PROGRAMMING the Nest. In this respect Nest is quite awesome.
[/QUOTE]

That’s good to hear. I was a bit iffy on the whole idea of learning our schedule as it’s often different from one week to another. Just being able to program a stat without needing the instruction book, a flashlight and a magnifying glass is almost worth the price premium for me. I used to have a 5-1-1 stat that was agonizing to set up. This thing did heating, cooling, humidity and could even adapt on the fly depending on the outside weather, but the human interface was crap. One day, I blew out the programming by accident when trying to clear the change filter warning, and I never bothered resetting it.

16

No. Not one bit. We have the thing programmed to turn down at night and when we go to work, so it gives us a leaf every day.

17

FYI There is a cheaper internet/smartphone app accessible option, IIRC available at Home Depot or Lowes for $100 each (perhaps a honneywell product) , a much cheaper option, doesn’t have the learning ability of the nest, but is easy to use and adjust via the app.

One feature I really like about this one is it’s one click to turn all thermostats to a away setting, and one click again to have them resume normal operation. This comes in real handy for me since my schedule is irregular and I can easily set it anytime, and again reset it so the house is warm when I return.