Nest thermostat

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So, if I get this right...as long as you walk in front of it, it thinks your home. As soon as you don't have any foot traffic in front of it, it assumes your gone. Then it defaults to your preset low temp or vice versa.
 
Sort of. You spend a week manually turning the temps up and down. The week you're doing that it "learns" when you turn it up and down and then continues doing that same thing automatically the following weeks. the question I had is what happens if you have a week that's unseasonably warm or cold and you monkey with the temps that week - does that screw up the learning?

It's def. a toy and appeals to the Apple crowd. We recently replaced our t-stat and went with a Venstar touchscreen with wifi. Lots of similar features, lots of bells we'll never use (sending a text to the thermostat?). But, it is fun to turn the heat off on your wife from your phone.
 
Also tracks your energy use and can be controlled remotely.

I looked into it, but since I work from home my schedule is very erratic. I'll be home for days and then away for a couple days, morning meetings, evening meetings, weekend meetings, etc. I think I'd give it a nervous breakdown.

I do have a programmable thermostat and have day/night and weekday/weekend schedules in it.
 
PAToyota said:
I looked into it, but since I work from home my schedule is very erratic. I'll be home for days and then away for a couple days, morning meetings, evening meetings, weekend meetings, etc. I think I'd give it a nervous breakdown.
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That's my concern. I haven't looked into the other options yet, I just know that we both dislike our current programmable thermostat and the wife has been hounding me for a new one. I like the "report" that it can give you.

--john
 
We have one and love it. It's much easier to use than the older programmable thermostat we had. We have saved a few bucks on our power bill too. I have heard the 2nd generation one is better and worth the extra $50.
 
I think of it as a toy. I think it best for the tech toy lover who is home on an irregular schedule. Plus you'll need one for each zone. And if you only have one zone, first spend the money on zoning the home.
There are some systems that the geothermal guys like a lot to micromanage their system.
 
I finally pulled the trigger last month. The first unit worked fine for 6 days then it just blew air. I called them at 1130pm EST and they had me move a few wires around to diagnose a fix. She said my issue was a common problem that would require a replacement unit. She had me reconfigure a few wires to fool it into working then told me it'd be fine that way for a week or so. Within 3 hours I needed to futz with it again, then every 3 hours until I was able to reinstall the old 'stat. The nice thing was that I could do it via smartphone.

The second unit has been installed now for about 10 - 12 days and seems to be working just fine. I'm still waiting to see how our erratic schedules mess with it, but it's nice to have it automatically revert to a max away temp and be able to use the phone or computer to have it kick back on once I have a heads up on an arrival time. It even gives you an estimated time to reach the temperature you set.

I'll post back after a month or so.

--john
 
Before you put in any smart tech, I'd look at putting in a whole house surge protector as well as checking the low voltage line feeding the tstat.
Your furnace could be blowing them up.
I helped someone repair their furnace that was not reliable. 3 different techs failed to fix it the last time it broke. I replace the logic module and upon diagnostics it told me the transformer A/C power was bad. I revered the wiring and it has been solid for 8 years. I am trained electronics and never heard of that myself. both sides of the transformer output are the same, but not this case.
 
se2000,
I thought maybe I might have blown it after the first one went but Nest actually told me that my error code was a well known problem on their end, so that was reassuring and why I exchanged for a new one. Now that the second has blown, I'm paranoid again and will most likely follow your lead. A WHSP was on my list when we moved in 4 years ago but just kind of drifted down the list for some reason. Aluminum wiring is in 3/4 of the house so it's a good idea for sure. Thanks for the input.

--john
 
The Venstar module I mentioned in my post earlier was just ranked #1 by Consumer Reports, for what that's worth. My only beef has been, loose the power, loose all your programming. Nice thing is that you can save your profile online and re-upload it.
 
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