there’s also www.ecobee.com
Don’t worry, as soon as they roll out “Smart Meters” they’ll be able to do that to everyone! (And drive people back to storage heaters as the only way of ensuring they’ll get heat when they’re home!)
Another example, is that our dogs like to hang out near our thermostat. Unless the sensors only detect ~2 feet of the ground and higher, they likely would be constantly triggering the thing when we aren’t home. Not a huge deal cause I like to keep it comfortable for them too, but I do let the thermostat drop (or rise) a little more during normal work day hours.
Anyway, I like the idea of the leaf indicator, but the implementation seems odd. It supposedly takes into account your normal preferences, and when you go one or two degrees up or down from that, the leaf indicator will turn on. That’s nice, but that’s all based on user behavior. If the user changes their behavior permanently, then the leaf will go away.
The numbers geek in me would like to see more. A graph of the inside temperature throughout the day would be neat, sampled every 15 minutes or whenever the HVAC turns on or off. Then, add in integration with an outdoor temperature sensor to compare the graphs. It would be a neat to use that to factor in seasonal changes. As an anecdotal example, I live in a climate that gets over 100F in the summer and freezes in the winter. When the area first turns to winter, I keep the thermostat sort of high. But as my body acclimates to the overall colder temps, I let it drop much lower.
An overall counter of how much time the HVAC is on in a 24 hour period would be cool too. That might be buried in the UI somewhere, but I didn’t see that feature noted in the demos.
Okay, so I went and read their website, and that thing looks totally sweet. Is it ridiculous overkill? Probably. But the fancier conventional thermostats already cost like $99, and that thing is a zillion times better.
And I can totally imagine HVAC companies bundling that with a high-end furnace. You’re going to spand $4,200 on a new variable-speed blower multi-stage furnace? Well, spend $4,350 and get this fucking awesome thermostat with it, and which totally sells the high-end thing in a way that the furnace itself will never be able to (being, as it is, tucked away in the basement).
I have that thermostat - or something just like it. I would pay $500 for a thermostat that I could A) Read clearly B) Get it to behave like I want it C)has a mother fucking off switch. That model has no way to actually turn everything off, just adjustments where it shouldn’t turn on… it does.
It’s hard to see how it’s going to save you any money over a properly-programmed $50 thermostat. Yes, it can handle more than the usual 4 time settings (wake up, leave, return, go to bed), but that’s generally granular enough. The key point being that most people don’t program their thermostats properly, for much the same reasons why DVRs have been so much more successful than VCRs. It’s supposed to be much easier to use, and given how clumsy regular thermostats are, that’s easily believable.
Based on an article I read about this thermostat, it has some pretty cool features that could make it all worthwhile.
The one that jumped out is the fact that over time it learns about the lag between you setting a temperature and the house achieving that temperature. So, if you set the thermostat to 20 degrees Celsius on a morning following a cold night and you set the house to sit at 18 degrees Celsius overnight, it might take an hour for the house to get there (assuming a fairly large house). Once the thermostat learns well enough, it can begin to anticipate your needs and taper the heating to the bare minimum needed to reach the desired temperature for the point that you get out of bed. So, a lot more energy efficient than a standard programmable thermostat, with no user input needed except for turning down the thermostat at night a few times and turning it up in the morning until it learns what you like.
I’m impressed.
That’s a good point. I end up putting in a fair margin into the morning times to account for thermal inertia. A truly smart thermostat could change when it started heating, starting later if the house is warmer or earlier if it’s colder.
EDIT: It appears this is a not a new thing. The behavior we’re talking about is done by all thermostats with a proportional–integral–derivative controller. Including both of the Honeywell units I linked earlier, the Prestige HD ($250) and the RTH8500D ($85).
I installed a digital programmable thermostat last year in my new house, and really… they’re not super complex any more.
You have different time periods for weekdays, with little pictures showing you stuff like a little stickman walking out of the house, walking back to the house, the moon, etc. Same thing for the weekends. You just push one button to pick which period you’re talking about, then set the temperature that you want it to be then.
I think the thing cost me like $20. Has saved me a ton of money in heating/cooling bills already.
Some of the more intelligent aspects which could be included in thermostats, which affect how the thing actually achieves the user’s desired results, are interesting… but the actual device that the original post is about just seems kind of over-engineered without actually adding much value.
Well they’ve done that for quite a while. You may or may not recognize this
Those have been around foreeeeeever.
You can find a modern version of that on amazon for about $40. I don’t know about the modern one but the old one is dead simple. Set the temperature for your AC to come on, set the temperature for your heating to come on. Mechanical interlock so if you try moving the heat past the cooling temp it maintains a 5 degree difference by also moving the cooling up.
Personally I would never pay $250 for a single zone single stage heating cooling thermostat like this.
The one that jumped out is the fact that over time it learns about the lag between you setting a temperature and the house achieving that temperature. So, if you set the thermostat to 20 degrees Celsius on a morning following a cold night and you set the house to sit at 18 degrees Celsius overnight, it might take an hour for the house to get there (assuming a fairly large house). Once the thermostat learns well enough, it can begin to anticipate your needs and taper the heating to the bare minimum needed to reach the desired temperature for the point that you get out of bed. So, a lot more energy efficient than a standard programmable thermostat, with no user input needed except for turning down the thermostat at night a few times and turning it up in the morning until it learns what you like.
Not sure what you’re talking about there with the tapering of the heating… It’s either gonna turn the furnace on full blast or not at all because it’s a single stage heating/cooling thermostat. If you want more than one stage you need a mid/high range efficiency furnace as well that has multiple stages, which then requires an appropriate stat. A high efficiency furnace with multiple stages will only engage the full furnace when there’s a large temp difference, if it’s with so and so degrees from your set temp it keeps it on a low setting.
For a furnace like that you’re going to have either a 2 stage gas valve or a more exotic one that can modulate anywhere between open and closed for best efficiency. To do so it needs a furnace appropriate for it and a thermostat capable of making calls for that. You can also throw in a sensor for the outside temperature so that instead of using AC or heat it can just use the outside air when appropriate or will only engage the lowest level of heating/cooling.
This can’t do any of that. For that price it should, it’s pretty but it’s also pretty utilitarian.
I would consider paying $250 for a thermostat that doesn’t require hunting down the manual every time I want to re-program it. Being able to program it from my phone? Heck yeah.
Thanks for correcting. I just don’t know enough about this stuff to understand what is and isn’t special and what is and isn’t possible.
Is it really single-stage? That’s disappointing. I was looking around for that on their website, couldn’t find anything, so assumed it was fancy.
EDIT: The web says: “Nest is compatible with forced air, radiant, heat pump, oil, gas, and electric systems; one or two stage conventional heating; one stage conventional cooling; one stage heat pumps with auxiliary heat or two stage heat pumps without auxiliary heat; 24-volt systems. Nest doesn’t support conventional two-stage cooling or heat pumps with two-stage heating and auxiliary heat.”
So it sounds to me like it supports two-stage furnaces.
Does this thing work with Celsius?
Bah, it sounds like it does not support my Geothermal unit then, as it is 2 stage heating/cooling+auxiliary heat.
Ah, sorry I thought I had read up-thread that it was single stage. It is a fairly nifty and useful gadget then.
Edit: also the Nest might not technically be rated to run your geo-thermal unit but you could probably get it to work. You just have to see why not, does it need 120 from the stat to run the pump? In that case you could put in a relay where instead of controlling the pump directly you activate the relay which then activates the pump. I’m not sure exactly and I’ve just asked a few people but the consensus is you could probably make it work, we’d just need the wiring diagram for your system and the stat to figure out how to make them talk correctly since judging by what it can do it should be able to do everything geothermal needs.
Hah. I sent them and an email, and apparently the Nest does support ranges rather than only switching manually between heating and cooling, but the learning feature doesn’t work when if you enable this. For some weird-ass reason they think there’s something “wrong” with doing it this way.
Apparently they think there’s something magical about switching modes manually.
I just installed the v.2 Nest in our house and it’s awesome. The customer support is fantastic, too. I mistakenly installed one of the wires into the wrong slot and called for help. They picked up immediately and spent 30 min on the phone with me, walking me through all of the tests and explaining the features in detail. I’ll report back about energy savings.
Is it worth $250? Convince us. :)