Anyone have a Nest?

[Rockhead261]

I'm intrigued but still shellshocked from a bad experience with a Filtrete WiFi thermostat that crapped out in NY while I was in Florida.

I work the clock, rotate every 6 days/recycle every 19 days, so a programmable thermostat is a waste of time. I'd get the Nest solely for it's "intuitiveness" and smartphone accessibility.

So? What says the GJ owners?

 

[compaddict]

I have one and it seems a bit crippled. It thinks for itself.. But lets you delete stuff when it makes a mistake. Probably will replace it when Google comes out with a better version.

 

[yfzjim]

go with the honeywell wifi stat...

 

[shoot summ]

I have 2, really like them, the learning is pretty good, but I don't think it would work with your schedule.

You can see from the previous thread on them, there are either those that have them and like them, or those that don't have them and hate them...

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=187526&highlight=nest

 

[Moving Chicane]

Just bought and installed a Nest; a single downstairs unit for a 2-story SoCal house (hotter upstairs year-round than downstairs with the "as built" external fan/compressor too small and the interior thermo/Nest hardwired in a sub-optimal place). And to be specific, I put in the "v2" model (perhaps the only one sold right now anyway).

I understand that the "v1" model had some issues, most notably a "loop" it would get itself into between heating and cooling when right on the margin of a target temperature; this model (v2) doesn't seem to do it. To be safe, we set only to Cool, Heat or Away; not "Heat & Cool".

I don't know if it is revolutionary in any way, but the ability to see what it is doing via graphs and reports is more valuable than anything I ever had/got before, so in this way it is totally worth it. Thumbs up.

 

[shoot summ]

Just bought and installed a Nest; a single downstairs unit for a 2-story SoCal house (hotter upstairs year-round than downstairs with the "as built" external fan/compressor too small and the interior thermo/Nest hardwired in a sub-optimal place). And to be specific, I put in the "v2" model (perhaps the only one sold right now anyway).

I understand that the "v1" model had some issues, most notably a "loop" it would get itself into between heating and cooling when right on the margin of a target temperature; this model (v2) doesn't seem to do it. To be safe, we set only to Cool, Heat or Away; not "Heat & Cool".

I don't know if it is revolutionary in any way, but the ability to see what it is doing via graphs and reports is more valuable than anything I ever had/got before, so in this way it is totally worth it. Thumbs up.

Mine are V1 and I run Heat and Cool, no issues, and a really nice feature in OK where it can be 40 one day and 70 the next...

 

[Angelfire]

I have 3 of them. Generally happy with them but you need to understand some things before you decide.

1. In their install instructions, they indicate the common wire is not needed. Don't buy into this and be sure to hook up a common. Reason being is the thermostat has a built in battery that needs charging. If there's no common wire, it tries to do this by very quickly sending signal to the furnace/AC to turn on, then quickly turns the signal off. It then takes whatever power the furnace/AC briefly send down the RH line and uses that for it's battery. If you check the thermostat online fairly regularly, this method doesn't seem to keep the battery charged enough and it loses wifi connectivity. Further loss of voltage to the battery causes the entire unit to shut down...there is no "manual" backup. DAMHIKT! You can remove the unit from the wall and plug it into the computer to recharge if the voltage on the battery is getting low, but considering I'm 6000 miles from my thermostats, that was a bit difficult to do. So just plan to install a common and make sure it's keeping the battery charged up.
2. Firmware updates are automatically pushed to the thermostats. They pushed a new update in November (I think) that caused the battery to deplete faster than normal and many folks without commons, lost the nest connectivity. For those of us 6000 miles away, we lost the entire thermostat as we had no way of seeing the fact that the voltage got to the point that the entire thermostat just shut down. This caused a huge problem for a lot of people during December and the company ended up rolling the upgrade back for a significant number of people. Some of the issues were related to wifi routers that didn't meet the specs of the Nest but others were related to the battery being depleted. They have a list of routers that cause this intermittent connectivity on their website.

I've now got commons on all three of my units (yes, from 6000 miles away!) and they are showing good voltage. They've pushed a new FW upgrade out just in the last week or so that supposedly fixes the issues found in their 4.0 version (new version is 4.0.1) but I think it's still very early to tell. Their CS seems to be good however in December the wait time to speak to one of them was well over an hour for many (1.5 hours for me). I still have faith that they'll get it right and after installing the commons, I haven't had an issue but nonetheless, you may want to keep this in mind. I believe Honeywell's Wifi TStats operate similarly in this "stealing power" mode if they don't have commons (not verified).

The interface on my phone/computer/ipad is intuitive and easy to figure out. The learning aspect really didn't help me much as we had a programmable TStats that we had programmed pretty well to begin with. The feature of shutting off the heat/AC while you are away has been nice but honestly, I installed these just before leaving the continent so can't say whether I'd like it if I were there 7x24. It has been nice however, before I lost connectivity to them (pre common wires installed), to bump the temps up a bit on very cold days and even turn the heat on in a vacation cabin for friends that were due to arrive.

All in all I like them but they are experiencing some "learnings" with their device and the market.

 

[Rockhead261]

I have 2, really like them, the learning is pretty good, but I don't think it would work with your schedule.

That about sums it up for me with any programmable stat. Perhaps Google will break a hole in the stratosphere and develop a thermostat or app that interfaces with Google Calendar. THAT would be spank-worthy.


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[wdrumheller]

I have one of these from BayWeb.

http://www.smarthome.com/3370BG/Bay-Controls-BW-WT1-BG-BAYweb-Internet-Thermostat-Beige/p.aspx

The install was easy, wired it to the heater in the garage (using it to control my 80,000BTU Mr. Heater Big Maxx. It also can control just the fan, which is a nice feature to keep the air moving when you're heating the place up.

Their phone interface is pretty good, but logging in requires a trick that they don't tell you in the user manual. You have to log in with two user names in the user name field like this. primaryusername/otherusername

The reason for this, is you can control many thermostats in many locations from this system. The primary account is the "bosses" account and then the other user name is for the "service guys" account. So, the capabilities are a lot more than I need, but it's pretty cool to think that I could add other locations and control them all from my primary account.

The web interface is ok, and has lots of options, and after a few hours of tinkering around I found out how to set my default temperature to 35 degrees.

So, overall for the price, I would say I'm very pleased with the BayWeb thing. Their customer service is pretty responsive, and I'm generally happy with the unit.

 

[compaddict]

That was quick! Google just bought Nest. They will fix it.

 

[Todd.Brock]

Now Google will make sure that ads start popping up on your Nest!!!


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[MDSPHOTO]

I have the Control 4 system thermostats and lighting controls in the house. They work great, but the dealer failed to tell me that everytime I add or delete a piece they are the only ones that can program the system at $100/hour.

 

[Rockhead261]

I just sent Google feedback from the calendar page asking that they develop a Google Thermostat feature so Nest thermostats can be controlled from the Calendar page just like setting an appointment. With infinitely adjustable recurrance/repeat features (like appointments/meetings) it would be 100% adaptable to any work/vacation schedule, and could be overridden manually/remotely.

I wasn't going to be greedy about it, so I asked for compensation of just 1/10 of $0.01 for each setting made in Google Thermostat for a period of 10 years. If 100,000 thermostat users make just 2 setting changes per day I'll rake in $200 per day. Fair compensation for such a swell idea, no?

So, GJ users, support a contributing member and go out and buy a Nest!

 

[RKA]

I have one and have been pretty happy with it...until last December. I upgraded the router to an 802.11n router from Verizon (FIOS). That's when the battery issues surfaced. The unit would constantly go offline (so I no longer had a wi fi enabled thermostat). Angelfire added a lot more detail above that Verizon failed to share with me, so maybe it was a coincidence that I upgraded the router at a time when Nest was pushing out crappy firmware? I tried to call them and sat on hold for an hour before giving up. Support through email yielded nothing but the same resolutions they had on their site. And they suggested if nothing fixed it, then my router was incompatible. Yes they have a list of incompatible routers on their site, no it's not meant to be comprehensive. So say I was pissed that I had a $250 thermostat that could no longer be accessed via the internet was an understatement. To hear that the company wasn't interested in solving the problem was utterly disappointing. So take that as a caution if you proceed. In my case, after several weeks I made one change to the router settings and suddenly it started working. But the change shouldn't have any effect (it was a hail mary on my part after nothing else solved the issue). I suspect they pushed out a firmware update to fix the issue, but I didn't record what was there before and after I made that change.

I may end up buying one more thermostat, since I'm already invested, but that's it. As my aging smoke and CO detectors have started expiring, I've decided this extra technology is a bigger liability than it's worth. The added expense is huge, but on top of that, when something fails to work, I lose hours and days dealing with the problem and fighting with their tech support to get to the bottom of the issue. I've got better things to do with my time and those old school units work for a decade without fail.

 

[Dustball]

I bought a first generation Nest in Dec of 2012 and had a new furnace/AC installed in Jan 2013. The Nest thermostat failed in May and took out the AC compressor contactor with it due to frequent cycling. Nest warrantied it no problem and sent another one. The second one worked fine all summer and fall then failed again last Dec and tried to turn on my AC compressor while it was in the teens outside. No matter what I did, it would not stop trying to turn on the AC compressor. The thermostat base plate was reading in the mid-80 degree range when using an IR thermometer when the rest of the house was in the mid 60's. I had enough so I returned it to Lowes and got a full refund. Now I have to wait until spring to find out if the compressor is damaged or not.

 

[jerseywild]

I went with the Honeywell WIFI programmable thermostat. I work shift work so I set the program for when the wife gets up the temp is up and when my son leaves it drops down. It will go back up before he gets home from school and drops back down at night. When I am home I simply log in with my phone or Ipad and set the temperature. The WIFI makes it easy to program. I had a programmable thermostat before but you had to program from the small screen which was a pain.
Sometime when I am working night shift I plan to turn it down to fifty then set it back to normal before I get home, I wonder if she will notice.