Warming up to Nest thermostat
One of its benefits is supposedly saving money on energy bill; that test will come during Houston’s brutal summers
Lessons learned by installing the device are touted to save money on energy bills.
Immediately after the Nest Learning Thermostat, the creation of a pair of former Apple engineers, debuted eight years ago, I wanted one. I was intrigued by the prospect of having a thermostat that learned the comings and goings of a household to build a heating and cooling schedule.
But early Nests were expensive and had issues with some heating and cooling systems (they still do). I may love tech, but I was, frankly, a little intimidated by the notion of installing one. And until recently, I was not living in a home where I could do that.
But when Black Friday 2019 rolled around, the stars aligned — and the price dropped — so I made the leap. It helped that both my wife and I loathed the programmable thermostat that came with the condo we bought in 2018. We were motivated.
I installed the Nest and have been living with it for more than a week now.
Here are some early thoughts:
• I was worried that I’d screw up some aspect of the installation and create problems with my AC system — which, when you live in Houston, is a critical part of one’s residential infrastructure. But the process was fairly straightforward. The Nest smartphone app walks you through it, and the Nest comes with labels that let you designate which wires go where before you disconnect your old thermostat’s mount. There’s also a compatibility checker on the Nest website.
The only hitch involved the junction box where the thermostat wires terminated in the wall. It was taller than the holes for the Nest’s mounting plate, so I had to get creative with attaching it to the wall. But overall, the process was smooth, and my AC system is running like a champ.
• I really love the ability to control the Nest in different ways. Yes, you can use the smartphone app, but you can also link it to an Amazon Echo or a Google Home smart speaker. Being able to say “Alexa, set the thermostat to 74” is a pleasure.
• The Nest does indeed learn your patterns, and after a few days, it begins to do automatically what you have been doing manually. We like it very cold when we sleep; I then turn the AC back up to sensible levels when we awake. Within a few days, the Nest was automatically making these changes. There are separate schedules for heating and cooling, which is handy in Houston’s frequently bipolar weather.
• As you’d expect, there are some annoyances. There’s no way to set the temperature manually and then hold it, what’s known on other thermostats as a
“temporary hold.” The next time a scheduled change comes up, it overrides the manual setting. You can, however, delete the upcoming scheduled item but if you want the hold to last a while, you have to delete ALL the upcoming items until you want the hold to end. Another workaround involves changing several settings - either way, these are kludges for a simple feature that should be built into the Nest.
• If you want to have more than one person in the family control the Nest from a smartphone, you have to download and install a second app. Google bought Nest a few years ago, and now you must use the Google Home app to add a family member. If you’ve already got Google smartphone devices, you probably already have this app. If not, having to snag a second piece of software just for that seems unnecessary.
One of the Nest’s benefits is that it supposedly can save money on your energy bill. It’s too early to say if that’s happening, but the Eco feature that auto-sets the unit not to run when it senses you are away seems to be working. We’ll see what our electric bill looks like when Houston’s brutal summer temperatures roll around. I’ll report back at midyear.
This story originally appeared in Dwight Silverman’s Release Notes newsletter. Sign up at https://houston chronicle.com/releasenotes.