Nest Thermostat thoughts
So, I'm about a day and a half into Nest Thermostat ownership. Thought I would chime in on my thoughts.
Firstly, while things went totally smoothly for me regardless. I recommend checking the Nest Compatibility tool before buying and watching some videos if you're not sure. I set mine up myself, but I've never changed a thermostat before and I know there where points where I was making bad assumptions.
Disclaimer done.
Do I like it? Yes. Do I recommend it? Probably.
My use case is odd, as it is with most tech. I work from home. Most people seem to get the most savings out of the fact that the Nest automatically detects that they aren't home and goes with much more relaxed settings until it thinks you'll be coming home. When I don't leave my home I lose a lot of ROI.
Where my use case starts getting more normal though is that I just bought a new house and changing the settings on the crappy programmable one was a pain in the ass. Also, I never once updated the scheduled on the one in my old house. Traditional programmable tstats are giant pains in the ass. As a result, I would spend chunks of time with the temp just overridden to some arbitrary value. I also hated spring and fall in Canada where you might need to switch between heating and cooling overnight, which the thermostats tend to either not handle at all or not handle gracefully.
Nest handles these things very well. Setting up a schedule online is easy and intuitive. Not fun. But oodles easier and quicker than either of my past 2 programmables. If we were the sort who were regularly out of the house I wouldn't even need to bother. I'd just rely on the auto scheduling.
Also, since we're nowhere near retired or rich, we don't take extended trips from the house often. Being able to switch it into away mode when we remember long after we left (or have it detect automatically) makes it more likely that we will at least get the energy savings when we can.
Furthermore, this is a software company, not a hardware one. New updates improve efficiency and add features. The airwave feature for instance can help save money on air conditioning costs regardless of what your temperature settings are.
I'm looking forward to the energy reports. This home seems quite efficient insofar as heating and cooling is concerned.
And here we hit the crux of it. What eliminated any fear of buyer's remorse was an article I read championing the device for making us conscious of our energy usage. With the prior thermostat, I had never really even thought to try and guess at how often it actually kicked in. And, even if I were so inclined, it didn't provide me the data, so I would be burdened to try and gather the information on my own. When I read that article I realized that even though I had owned the device less than a day at the time, that it had indeed had that effect on me as well.
So, all that said, based on articles and whatnot, it still seems like the Nest will save me enough money to pay for itself over time. And while my ROI on the device is probably a lot longer than other people's due to my lack of leaving the house. The ability to know how my decisions impact my energy usage, the better look of the device and the ability to control it remotely likely would have won me over anyway.
For more regular users, it seems to estimate a little over 2 years to pay for itself. Which might seem like a lot. But given the price tag, that is more than reasonable. Add that the many utilities offering some sort of additional incentive and it can pay off sooner for some.
In other words, yes, I recommend it and am enjoying it.
Firstly, while things went totally smoothly for me regardless. I recommend checking the Nest Compatibility tool before buying and watching some videos if you're not sure. I set mine up myself, but I've never changed a thermostat before and I know there where points where I was making bad assumptions.
Disclaimer done.
Do I like it? Yes. Do I recommend it? Probably.
My use case is odd, as it is with most tech. I work from home. Most people seem to get the most savings out of the fact that the Nest automatically detects that they aren't home and goes with much more relaxed settings until it thinks you'll be coming home. When I don't leave my home I lose a lot of ROI.
Where my use case starts getting more normal though is that I just bought a new house and changing the settings on the crappy programmable one was a pain in the ass. Also, I never once updated the scheduled on the one in my old house. Traditional programmable tstats are giant pains in the ass. As a result, I would spend chunks of time with the temp just overridden to some arbitrary value. I also hated spring and fall in Canada where you might need to switch between heating and cooling overnight, which the thermostats tend to either not handle at all or not handle gracefully.
Nest handles these things very well. Setting up a schedule online is easy and intuitive. Not fun. But oodles easier and quicker than either of my past 2 programmables. If we were the sort who were regularly out of the house I wouldn't even need to bother. I'd just rely on the auto scheduling.
Also, since we're nowhere near retired or rich, we don't take extended trips from the house often. Being able to switch it into away mode when we remember long after we left (or have it detect automatically) makes it more likely that we will at least get the energy savings when we can.
Furthermore, this is a software company, not a hardware one. New updates improve efficiency and add features. The airwave feature for instance can help save money on air conditioning costs regardless of what your temperature settings are.
I'm looking forward to the energy reports. This home seems quite efficient insofar as heating and cooling is concerned.
And here we hit the crux of it. What eliminated any fear of buyer's remorse was an article I read championing the device for making us conscious of our energy usage. With the prior thermostat, I had never really even thought to try and guess at how often it actually kicked in. And, even if I were so inclined, it didn't provide me the data, so I would be burdened to try and gather the information on my own. When I read that article I realized that even though I had owned the device less than a day at the time, that it had indeed had that effect on me as well.
So, all that said, based on articles and whatnot, it still seems like the Nest will save me enough money to pay for itself over time. And while my ROI on the device is probably a lot longer than other people's due to my lack of leaving the house. The ability to know how my decisions impact my energy usage, the better look of the device and the ability to control it remotely likely would have won me over anyway.
For more regular users, it seems to estimate a little over 2 years to pay for itself. Which might seem like a lot. But given the price tag, that is more than reasonable. Add that the many utilities offering some sort of additional incentive and it can pay off sooner for some.
In other words, yes, I recommend it and am enjoying it.
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