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Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

nytimes.com

141–150 of 234 posts

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#141
post #114
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, what's not a joke is what happens when the internet goes down. So does our heat. As a couple of other folks have noted, that's not normal. You might want to get on tech support with them. My Nest just keeps running its last program when it looses internet.

Hilarious. A residential thermostat that needs tech support. Only in the Silicon Valley echo chamber can that seem like a good idea. It reminds me of the old engineering saying: "If it's not broken it doesn't have enough features yet."

https://yourhome.honeywell.com/en/contact-us

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nest could fix this easily by including two fixed-temperature safety thermostats, devices which cost about $0.25 each. One is hard-wired to turn on heat below 55F. One is hard-wired to turn off heat above 80F. With that, no matter how badly they botch the software, the temperature will stay in a safe, if not totally comfortable, range.

my a/c bill in AZ would be about $400-500 / mo higher in the summer if they made that move! Most people in AZ put their A/C to 87 or so if they aren't home and actually keep it in the high 70s even when home. Otherwise you're looking at $1K/mo energy bills in the summer

Turn off heat != turn on AC.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#144
post #37

I have a manual thermostat, no batteries required. It has worked flawlessly for over 30 years. It has a simple intuitive interface: a switch for "heat" or "cool" and a dial with a pointer to set the desired temperature. Why make things more complicated than they need to be?

Because unless the house is occupied 24/7, there are substantial savings to be had. While I don't have a Nest, I put a similar timer on my water heater and saved a lot of money ($20/mo).

When I was a child in, my parents had a mechanical thermostat with a timer. So did my grandma, and her system was even older.

You could set two pairs of heating times, and control which (or both/none) were used. There was an override until the next set point.

This was 1980s stuff, or maybe even earlier.

The interface was far easier to use than any digital one I've seen.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#145
post #97
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment said "off", which I took to mean that he measured his heartrate manually and compared to the device readout.

This is what I meant. The ecg monitors built into the precor bikes and counting my wrist pulse for 30 seconds and doubling are generally within 2-4 bpm of each other. My fitbit consistently measures 130-ish when the truth is 175-ish per the above two methods (my cardio hr target).

Same here with Precor. Fitbit hr says 110 while treadmill says 130. Oddly when I got up to 145 on the treadmill the Fitbit read the same. I'm not sure which one to believe. probably not the Fitbit as I've heard about the lawsuit.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because unless the house is occupied 24/7, there are substantial savings to be had. While I don't have a Nest, I put a similar timer on my water heater and saved a lot of money ($20/mo).

When I was a child in, my parents had a mechanical thermostat with a timer. So did my grandma, and her system was even older. You could set two pairs of heating times, and control which (or both/none) were used. There was an override until the next set point. This was 1980s stuff, or maybe even earlier. The interface was far easier to use than any digital one I've seen.

Yeah, even my mid 90s built house had that. It was easy to see how it worked, too—a big spinning wheel that represented the 24 hours in a day. There were little plastic arrows you'd snap onto the outside of the ring at the appropriate time. Red ones and blue ones. Each color had an indentation in a slightly different place so as the wheel spun past the "now" marker, it would flip one of two switches. The switches controlled energy saving mode.

It actually wasn't super intuitive (in cooling mode it inverted the sense of energy saving mode, if I recall correctly), but it was easy and never failed me once I set it up.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#147
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilarious. A residential thermostat that needs tech support. Only in the Silicon Valley echo chamber can that seem like a good idea. It reminds me of the old engineering saying: "If it's not broken it doesn't have enough features yet."

https://yourhome.honeywell.com/en/contact-us

I'm at a complete loss of words at why you think that's even in the same class of support...

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#148
> Although I had set the thermostat to 70 degrees overnight, my wife and I were woken by a crying baby at 4 a.m. The thermometer in his room read 64 degrees, and the Nest was off.

This seems quite strange to me. Here in Germany it's extremely common to (automatically) turn of heating all together in the night (called Nachtabsenkung). One reason is to save energy, but lower temperatures also help sleep:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/health/04real.html

The article says between 60°F (15.5°C) to 68°F (20°) is best.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#149
post #37

I have a manual thermostat, no batteries required. It has worked flawlessly for over 30 years. It has a simple intuitive interface: a switch for "heat" or "cool" and a dial with a pointer to set the desired temperature. Why make things more complicated than they need to be?

It costs quite a bit to maintain an empty house at a comfortable temperature. It also takes a good while (order of hours) to converge on that comfortable temperature if you haven't run the HVAC in a long time and the weather is extreme.

The ubiquitous programmable thermostats do different things at night, in the morning, during the workday, and in the evening. The idea being that the temperature is allowed to drift when no one's home, but is brought back in line by the time someone is in the house again.

However they are a PITA to program (tiny cryptic LCD, 4 buttons) and basically useless if you don't follow a consistent daily routine on the weekdays. Nest's value proposition is to be smarter about when the house is actually occupied/going to be occupied. Also when you're traveling (or if you have it in a rarely-used property) you can remotely start the heat/AC when you're several hours away so that it's comfortable by the time you get there. I have none of these problems, so I don't have one, but they do solve a problem that some people really have.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#150
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't matter. It says it can read your heart rate. That's what it advertises as. It should be able to do so. I'm curious if there are legal precedents on how accurate a thing must be to advertise as a being a measurement device.

This is a bullshit argument. They do read your heart rate. But they explicitly say that it isn't up to a medical or diagnostic level of reliability. Everything has some level of quality or tolerance expected. Car parts break all the time, it is just a normal part of owning a car. You don't get to sue a car company when your battery dies and you need a jump. You only get to do it when there is a significant or dangero…

This is not a bullshit argument. It is similar to labor laws in some states. You can claim someone as a indy contractor but if they are working with your tools or at your job site or under your instruction ... guess what? some states don't care what you call them ... they will be processed as employees not contractors.

Not bullshit.

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