I Wish Nest Did More Than Thermostats • Hacker News Board

Re: I Wish Nest Did More Than Thermostats

#51

Post by chad_oliver » Sat, May 04, 2013, 8:25 AM UTC

fancyketchup wrote: post #13

chad_oliver wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, there's a good reason for heating the water overnight: electricity is often cheaper at night, and (on a national level) it means that electricity demand is spread more evenly over the whole 24 hours.

This is a good idea, but are you by chance located outside the US? Every water heater I've personally encountered in North America has been powered by natural gas. Even so, it only takes an hour or so to fully replenish the hot water, so it still makes sense to allow the water to cool down between, say, midnight and 5am.

Yeah, I'm in New Zealand.

Re: I Wish Nest Did More Than Thermostats

#52

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 04, 2013, 2:49 PM UTC

dfc wrote: post #24

_delirium wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've considered doing this manually, but when I ran the numbers, it barely saved anything, at least if your water heater is insulated to modern Energy Star standards. In the past decade or two, standby losses have been brought down so low that they're almost negligible compared to actual hot-water usage, e.g. one shower will take more energy than a whole month of standby heating. When I looked into it in my own case,…

Nice. How did you estimate the standby costs? I wonder if gas v. electric makes a difference? Any chance you live in a colder (40 degree basement in winter) climate?

[deleted]

Re: I Wish Nest Did More Than Thermostats

#53

Post by corresation » Sat, May 04, 2013, 8:06 PM UTC

dfc wrote: post #44

corresation wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason why I heat the water in the tank up throughout the night Aside from the fact that you need the water to remain above a certain level or the water can become dangerous (e.g. legionella), what happens the night you play glow in the dark flag football and decide to take a shower? Or do a load of dishes? Etc. The Nest "works" (in the absolutely marginal way that it does so) because it makes a middling…

What happens the night i stay up late with the nest and want the heat turned up? My dishwasher contains a heating element and so does the clothes washer.

What happens the night i stay up late with the nest and want the heat turned up?

Put on a sweater? But yes, what you describe is exactly how many people with Nest thermostats end up disabling the "intelligent" functions.

Re: I Wish Nest Did More Than Thermostats

#54

Post by CamperBob2 » Mon, May 06, 2013, 5:27 PM UTC

jmomo wrote: post #36

I have an Ecobee thermostat in my condo, which I am currently in the process of selling. Young people are usually pretty excited about seeing it in action, but older people are actually turned off. My guess is they see it as another complicated VCR that they can't program, and so, it's actually a negative. Even the Nest, with it's simple dial would probably scare them, because smart things scare stupid people. When I…

Even the Nest, with it's simple dial would probably scare them, because smart things scare stupid people.

Sigh. Yes, that's it. They must be "stupid."

Re: I Wish Nest Did More Than Thermostats

#55

Post by CamperBob2 » Mon, May 06, 2013, 5:29 PM UTC

rentzsch wrote: post #30

This is where Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) with web tech (ideally) and/or Apps (practically) could shine: the sprinkler system could vend a much better software UI to our smartphones than the hardware UI it's currently offering.

Did Android ever get their act together on BLE? Last I checked there are a lot of phones out there with perfectly good BLE chipsets that the OS doesn't acknowledge.