31–40 of 91 posts
We've had a nest thermostat for five years. For the past four and a half years it's been on a shelf in the basement, in its box. Gonna throw it out someday. What crappy tech. Its problem: its backing plate heats up. Causing the house to be perpetually cold. Three Nest backing-plate replacements later, we gave up. We presently have a much dumber thermostat that can be remotely controlled. We're happy now, but we'll ne…
We have a Nest thermostat, we have now turned off every single smart feature and just use it for a schedule and turning it on/off remotely when away (we gave up with the automatic away detection). I should also point out we are in the UK. I’m completely unconvinced that “smart” thermostats achieve anything for the majority of homes in the UK, despite most energy suppliers pushing customers to purchase them for years.…
Agreed on the "smart" features. When I moved into my current house we had painters working on one floor. They cranked the newly programmed Nest that was in learning mode to 90 degrees for one night to keep the paint warm while it dried. I, of course, had no idea they had done something that silly, but for weeks afterwards this smart thermostat will crank the heat to 90 and I have to manually turn it down. I'm convinc…
My heating/cooling desires are straightforward: unless I'm gone, stay in this range. I am not gone on a predictable schedule, any pattern it picks up will be incorrect.
The only thing the "ugly beige box" doesn't do that I want is remote access, and that would only have been handy a couple of times in the last 11 years I've been in this place. And that is not worth the surveillance or the freakishly buggy behavior some people report.
I'm increasingly convinced the major effect of "AI" will be to ensure that instead of bugs not being fixed because ultimately they aren't considered worth fixing, bugs will not be fixed because nobody understands them.
"Every time my wife and I drove up to our Lake Tahoe ski cabin on Friday nights after work, we’d have to keep our snow jackets on until the next day. The house took all night to heat up." That is first world problems hall of fame material right there! But a great origin story for the Nest regardless.
I never understood what problem smart thermostats were supposed to solve, now I do: ski home pre-heating. Cool, makes sense, but no use to me.
1) The thermostat drives most home energy usage. It's probably above $1000/yr for most households.
2) The existing programmable thermostats were awful and no one used them effectively. There's a ton of waste as a result.
3) The smart thermostat can easily pay for itself in a year or two just by having a better UX that you'll actually use. That's an amazing value proposition.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never understood what problem smart thermostats were supposed to solve, now I do: ski home pre-heating. Cool, makes sense, but no use to me.
Ours is helpful for turning the air up or down when we leave/come home or turning it up in the morning (we cool the house off at night so it holds it longer in the day before needing to fire up). Granted our thermostat isn't really "smart" it just has an API exposed that integrates into Home Assistant. I wouldn't put in one of those cloud based ones like Nest or Ecobee
When I read the headline, I assumed that this was going to be a negative review from a user. We got a Nest thermostat for free as part of a SolarCity solar panel installation, and I spent months fighting with it to try and make it do what I told it. The Nest has a motion sensor on it, which is how it determines whether to turn on the energy saving mode - if it senses that you're home it will run at the set temperatur…
And it works just like a normal thermostat, which makes me happy. I’d never buy a smart thermostat now, I keep using Nest because previous owner of the house installed it, and after lobotomizing it, it works good enough.
We have a Nest thermostat, we have now turned off every single smart feature and just use it for a schedule and turning it on/off remotely when away (we gave up with the automatic away detection). I should also point out we are in the UK. I’m completely unconvinced that “smart” thermostats achieve anything for the majority of homes in the UK, despite most energy suppliers pushing customers to purchase them for years.…
Then to edit it you have the worst possible UI and end up, like you said, turning all off the smart features.
"Every time my wife and I drove up to our Lake Tahoe ski cabin on Friday nights after work, we’d have to keep our snow jackets on until the next day. The house took all night to heat up." That is first world problems hall of fame material right there! But a great origin story for the Nest regardless.
It's not just a problem for rich people. It's also nice to have if you are coming back home (to your normal home where you live) from a trip and the weather has been very cold or hot while you were gone.
"Every time my wife and I drove up to our Lake Tahoe ski cabin on Friday nights after work, we’d have to keep our snow jackets on until the next day. The house took all night to heat up." That is first world problems hall of fame material right there! But a great origin story for the Nest regardless.
I never understood what problem smart thermostats were supposed to solve, now I do: ski home pre-heating. Cool, makes sense, but no use to me.
- it didn't look crap;
- I could figure out how to work it
I'm not so bothered about it being smart, least of all for it's 'learning', it just looks so much better on the wall (visually prominent when you walk in) than the white plastic sharp cornered box the developers put up.
If I spent more time/energy on it I'd do away with a wall-mounted thermostat entirely, and just have a HomeAssistant-connected relay right at the boiler.
I love my honeywell thermostat. It has wifi, a touch screen, schedules, and that's it. I can control it from my phone, google home, and no smarts. It gives me energy reports from the same month of last year. The single pane to double pane window showed just how much energy I was saving. I wouldn't touch a "smart" thermostat with a stick, but this dumb wifi thing is incredible.