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I Wish Nest Did More Than Thermostats

jorgecastro.org

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Re: I Wish Nest Did More Than Thermostats

#21

Post by maxerickson »

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.

Huge swaths of the U.S. simply don't have natural gas. The township that I used to live in explicitly stated in their planning that they did not intend to run gas lines.

My current place doesn't have gas either...

Re: I Wish Nest Did More Than Thermostats

#22

Post by briancurtin »

spingu wrote: post #11

Agreed. But specifically for lawns, I actually wish someone makes much cheaper artificial turfs. Good for aesthetics, better for the environment.. saves hassle time money and water.

This can't be all that far away. At the size of a baseball field, I'm told it's a no-brainer to go turf at this point.

I don't actually know the prices, I'm trusting the college coaches who have mentioned this to me over the last several years (I umpire on the side). One has been on artificial turf for three years, another put turf in this year, and the rest want them.

Re: I Wish Nest Did More Than Thermostats

#23

Post by notatoad »

igul222 wrote: post #17
notatoad wrote: post #3

This seems like kind of a silly. The Ubuntu panel he shows there is simple because programmers have hidden all the complexity. Whoever installed the sprinkler system hid the complexity too - they closed the door on the sprinkler control panel. If you wanted it to be simple, you should have left the door closed. You don't need to adjust it. It should have been programmed by the installer to account for seasonal rainfa…

The problem is that poking around under the hood shouldn't be necessary. If the sprinkler system worked well enough without ever needing to open the hood, then everything's fine. But it looks like that's not the case.

Not only is it unnecessary to poke around under the hood, it's bad. If you're changing your sprinkler configuration, you're doing it wrong. You're supposed to set the schedule and never touch it again. Changing the schedule (because of rain or weather) is not as good for your lawn as just leaving everything alone. The only control you should ever be touching is the master shutoff valve. Your sprinkler isn't supposed to care about daily rainfall, because that doesn't matter in lawn care.

The only problem with the sprinkler in the article is that the internal clock is set wrong, and you can be pretty sure that the reason the internal clock is wrong is because the author tried to tweak things. Don't do that, and the problems go away.

Re: I Wish Nest Did More Than Thermostats

#24

Post by dfc »

_delirium wrote: post #12
dfc wrote: post #5

Nest folks, once you are happy with your thermostat product please pivot to water heaters. There is no reason why I heat the water in the tank up throughout the night. I think that my household demand for hot water is fairly predictable with spikes in the morning for showering and in the evening for dishes and laundry.

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?

Re: I Wish Nest Did More Than Thermostats

#25

Post by sopooneo »

notatoad wrote: post #23
igul222 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that poking around under the hood shouldn't be necessary. If the sprinkler system worked well enough without ever needing to open the hood, then everything's fine. But it looks like that's not the case.

Not only is it unnecessary to poke around under the hood, it's bad. If you're changing your sprinkler configuration, you're doing it wrong. You're supposed to set the schedule and never touch it again. Changing the schedule (because of rain or weather) is not as good for your lawn as just leaving everything alone. The only control you should ever be touching is the master shutoff valve. Your sprinkler isn't supposed…

But completely apart from the health of your lawn, wouldn't you save water if you had the sprinkler cancel a regularly scheduled watering if it fell during a rain storm?

Re: I Wish Nest Did More Than Thermostats

#27

Post by dfc »

chad_oliver wrote: post #9
dfc wrote: post #5

Nest folks, once you are happy with your thermostat product please pivot to water heaters. There is no reason why I heat the water in the tank up throughout the night. I think that my household demand for hot water is fairly predictable with spikes in the morning for showering and in the evening for dishes and laundry.

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.

Electricity is cheaper at night (from some utilities) because the demand is a lot lower at night. But why is it a good idea to heat water at night when I'm not going to use it?

And as others have pointed out I have a natural gas heater.

Re: I Wish Nest Did More Than Thermostats

#29

Post by mrb »

tzs wrote: post #28

This appears to be the manual for that sprinkler controller: http://www.rainbird.com/documents/turf/man_ESPModular.pdf Setting the time doesn't appear to be too painful.

His point stands: if you need a manual to set the time, then the UI is poorly designed. Period.
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