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Xaqtly
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2012-05-25, 13:06

Quote:
Originally Posted by Yontsey View Post
Xaqtly, how are you liking that Nest thermostat?
I really like it a lot. I don't interact with it much these days, but that's because I don't need to. It totally learned my schedules and now it starts cooling the house down when I get home, when I go to bed, it puts itself in away mode when I leave the house, it's awesome. Because my dog is in the house when I'm gone I set it to not let the house go over 75 degrees in away mode, and that's been working great.

I can get pretty detailed reports of the energy usage per day via the iPhone app, the web site or right on the Nest. For example, yesterday it ran the AC for a total of 4 3/4 hours, and I have a detailed breakdown of exactly when it was running and for how long. It looks like it ran a few times during the day, like at 10 AM it ran for about 10 minutes. I just got that info from the iPhone app. It's also smarter than my old thermostat in a number of other ways, like it can control the fan independently of the AC condenser, so while it's cooling the house down it runs both but then it will turn the condenser off but keep the fans running to maintain the cooler temp for a while without needing to run the AC. Smart.

And it uses local weather conditions via my wifi network to determine how and when it needs to turn things on and off, in addition to the built in sensors. One thing that surprised me is how much better a job it does at getting the house to a comfortable temperature than my old one did. It's not just cool from a nerd perspective, it is seriously better at keeping the house where you want it. Whatever sensors and software it's using to determine how to cool and when are obviously a lot better than most default thermostat units. With this one you get the sense that when you set it to 70, the house is *exactly* 70.

It's obviously kind of expensive for a thermostat but I can't recommend it enough. It does so much, and does it so much better than normal thermostats.
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