I’ve got an old-school round mercury switch thermostat which probably pre-dates the Apollo program, and it is going buggy (temperature in the house never matches temperature set), so I should probably replace it. Being kind of a geek, I’m really tempted to get one of those smart ones (Nest, etc.) but I’m not sure they are worth the price. What experiences have the rest of you had? Does the “learning” behavior work, and is it worth it? Do you find the WiFi connectivity useful? Will it know I’m home even if I’m downstairs for hours while it is attached upstairs? Will it know my fifteen pound dog is home if he’s the only one?
Stuff like that. Or other questions that I don’t know I should be asking. Thanks!
Oh, I should add, I have a gas forced air furnace and central air, with the furnace on the second floor and the AC on the roof.
I love my Nest. It’s super easy to install and program. I don’t use the learning function.
I really like that I can control it with my smart phone. If it’s too cold in the morning, I can turn up the heat without leaving the cozy bed. Or if I’m heading home on a cold night, I can turn it on and arrive at a warm house. There is no need for an air conditioner where I live so I can’t speak to that part.
I specifically avoid one because I’m on a time-of-use program. I need my AC to come on at 6PM (metro Phoenix) and not one minute sooner (cost) or later (comfort).
I do use a programmable, though, and for just that reason.
You don’t say if it applies to you, and I’d guess it doesn’t.
No, I’m not on a time-of-use program, although I think I could sign up for one if I wanted. And I could never wait for 6pm to turn on the AC. The female and the canine I live with would both tear out my throat during these Chicago summers.
Um, not sure that’s true. I mean, it’s true that you can disable the learning function and set a schedule directly. That’s what I do with mine, too. But it attempts to already be at the target temperature at the scheduled time. If you set 72 for 6pm and your house is at 85, it uses cooling history to estimate the time it will take to cool 13 degrees and turns on the AC that much before 6.
I have a thermostat that was set up that way and it drove me crazy. I don’t need my thermostat to outguess me. I finally looked up in the owner’s manual and there was a soft-key adjustment that allowed me to change things so it turned on the heater at the time I asked it to. I think a wifi feature would be cool, though.
I only have a heater. It’s set to go on at 6:30am if the temp is below a certain number and it goes on at 6:30 on the dot. It will go on before then if it’s below a different, lower, number. I understand what you’re saying but mine doesn’t operate that way or I didn’t set it up that way somehow when I first got it.
All the schedule features are useful if and only if your family lives a highly scheduled life.
For years I’ve owned residences that came with thermostats that section each day into 4 segments, and have one 4-part program for Mon-Fri, another for Sat, and another for Sun. You can choose the start time and the temp to maintain for each of the 4 segments on each of the three types of day. So a total of 12 time+temperature settings for heat and another 12 for cool.
They’re almost completely useless for the life I lead which has almost no consistency from day to day. So all 12 heat settings are 74 and all 12 cooling settings are 78. The start times are whatever random crap the previous owner had set up.
The OP may or may not find this relevant to his world.
The thing that *I *would like out of a new thermostat that might be available in a Nest or other “smart” thermostat is the ability to carry the thermostat sensor from room to room. The goal of a thermostat is to create comfort for me right now in the part of the house I’m in right now. Not to maintain some arbitrary bit of hallway on some other floor at some arbitrary number.
So *I *think it’d be useful to have the thermostat sitting on the dinner table while eating, on the coffee table while watching TV after dinner, and sitting on a dresser while sleeping. And sitting on my desk while working in the office. That’s the gizmo I want.
Modulo of course the problem the OP will have that wife upstairs in her craft space wants it cool there while OP downstairs in the basement mancave wants it warm there. One thermostat connected to one HVAC unit isn’t going to repeal the laws of physics in 2 places at once.
I’m doing a little research on my own. Apparently the Ecobee thermostat comes with remote temperature/occupancy sensors, so they can achieve the desired setpoint in whatever room you happen to settle down in. I don’t know what it does if there are people in multiple rooms with different temperature preferences. In control theory language, you can’t boost the controllability of a system just by boosting the observability.
Years ago the furnace/AC had one of those mercury type thermostats. It was nice in the sense that one would set the desired temp and it would do the rest, either turn the AC on, or turn the heat on, as required. Seems simple to me. The later iteration requires one to turn a switch to either “heat” or “cool”. It’s my understanding that more modern thermostats need an internal battery. Not a big deal, but don’t let it go flat, or the furnace may fail to turn on at an inopportune time. Frozen pipes would be a bad deal over a 9 volt battery. Sometimes things should not be more complex than they need to be.
It’s just stupid to lose the entire central air because of a thermostat that needs a .20c battery.
Why wouldn’t you want to use “auto-switchover”? “Set it and forget it” seems to make more sense. If it gets cold, the heat comes on. If it gets hot, the AC comes on. No user input required.
The biggest issue will be if you can get the power it wants without ripping walls out. My 1987 condo is no go due to no power. I make a point of changing the batteries every fall to avoid a very cold wake up one morning.
We don’t have a ‘smart’ thermostat, but we do have a programmable one, and it has saved us money over the time we’ve had it. I think that would be my determination, were I you, on whether a smart thermostat is worth the extra cash.
We have a Nest. I like it, and being able to set it from my phone and the automatic scheduling do work well for us (we have a relatively scheduled life thanks to young kids). I also like the day’s weather on the display that turns on as we walk down the corridor.
That said, the standard retail price appears to be $250, and its not worth $250 to me. We paid about $75 after Puget Sound Energy rebates and additional discounts through my wife’s employer. That made it worth while.
They do require more power than a traditional thermostat if I recall correctly, and I thought I read the Nest might have some weird quirks if you don’t connect it to constant power through the ‘C’ wire. I don’t think you can conveniently rely on battery power for it, and it might either die on you or turn on your furnace just for its own power needs. We re-purposed the fan wire for this (so we can’t manually switch the fan on anymore) because it was too much trouble to pull the additional required wire. That hasn’t been an issue for us, but ideally you’d just wire it right.