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Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

nytimes.com

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Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#221

Post by superuser2 »

alextgordon wrote: post #208
superuser2 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

We are talking about a manual dial here, not a programmable thermostat. "Hey it's too cold right now, better turn it up." In fact you will save money & energy with manual control because the heating will not turn on when it's cold but you are wearing enough layers.

I know, and I'm explaining why programmability is desirable for some people.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#222

Post by kale »

stephencanon wrote: post #172
jacalata wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's 60 degrees then it isn't freezing now, but it could have been lower overnight.

Heat loss is proportional to the temperature difference across the boundary (walls and windows and roof). Even when it's quite cold outside, heat loss slows down as the house gets colder, and then you still have all the phase change energy to dump before pipes freeze. This will not happen overnight except in the most extreme cases, and it certainly will not then warm back up to 60. Anecdotally, I was once without cen…

A lot of that depends on where your house is built. I have a house in an area that can go an entire winter without getting much below 40F. No one builds with "freeze-proof" faucet design, which recesses the valve to the outside water faucets within the wall.

I had two pipes freeze and burst after 3 days of freezing temperatures (first time anyone can remember being more than 24 hours below freezing). One was an outside faucet, properly protected and insulated. The other was frozen inside the slab, near the wall.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#223

Post by rrauenza »

After seeing this article, I noticed my Nest hadn't been "online" since December 26th.

It could not see any wifi ssid's: not mine, not my neighbors', nor my iPhone's hotspot held right next to it. It was fully charged, not sluggish -- none of the problems listed as 'typical problems'.

I went through the menu system and did a reset. I think that was a soft reboot. Still no success.

Then I found you could reset it by pushing it in for 10 seconds until it turns off. It seemed more like a hard reset, and voila -- network back up.

It's anecdotal, but this firmware update doesn't seem to be just about the charging. They seem to have messed up the wireless capabilities until a hard reset is performed.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#224

Post by stephencanon »

kale wrote: post #222
stephencanon wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heat loss is proportional to the temperature difference across the boundary (walls and windows and roof). Even when it's quite cold outside, heat loss slows down as the house gets colder, and then you still have all the phase change energy to dump before pipes freeze. This will not happen overnight except in the most extreme cases, and it certainly will not then warm back up to 60. Anecdotally, I was once without cen…

A lot of that depends on where your house is built. I have a house in an area that can go an entire winter without getting much below 40F. No one builds with "freeze-proof" faucet design, which recesses the valve to the outside water faucets within the wall. I had two pipes freeze and burst after 3 days of freezing temperatures (first time anyone can remember being more than 24 hours below freezing). One was an outsi…

When you live somewhere with actual weather, outdoor faucets are closed and drained for the winter and most of spring. There's no such thing as "freeze-proof" faucets at -30.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#225

Post by CurtHagenlocher »

Interesting. This happened to me on the fifth and I assumed it had been an isolated glitch. The steps I had to take to make the thermostat work again were quite nonintuitive, and it was frustrating at how little help there was to be found in the available documentation.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#226

Post by thrownaway2424 »

greenyoda wrote: post #117
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but we've had that level of automation for decades. My Honeywell programmable thermostat has time/day scheduling with several phases per day, and different phases for the weekend. It runs off a 9V battery and I can't tell you how long the battery lasts but I _can_ tell you that it's at least 15 years.

It would be pretty rare for a 9V battery to last for 15 years of continuous operation. In my thermostat, which has features similar to yours, the battery is just for backup in case the power goes out, and the thermostat normally runs off the 24V power from the furnace circuit (it works fine if you remove the battery). It's possible that your thermostat works the same way and your battery has been dead for many years.

That could be, but even if the battery is dead or leaking the thing trucks along and works fine.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#227

Post by toomanybeersies »

legulere wrote: post #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.nyt…

Never understood how people sleep in warm rooms. 15 C is ideal for me, hell, I usually leave my window open at night to keep the room nice and cool.

I guess it doesn't get too cold where I am (high of 9 C, low of -1 usually in winter), but my place doesn't have any insulation at all, or double glazed windows, and I use the heater for only 30 minutes a day usually in winter, because I just put on more clothes.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#228

Post by tomkinstinch »

revelation wrote: post #173
tomkinstinch wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, at least for traditional two-wire thermostats that turn on when the circuit is closed: connect them in parallel. The Nest is so obviously a product designed in warm California—not anywhere that sees truly hard winter. If it were designed well, it would fail safe (furnace on). I'd rather have a hefty heating bill from my furnace running 24/7 than have all of the pipes in my house freeze and break. If I ever inst…

I'm pretty sure the fail safe for a furnace should not be on and blasting. In a well insulated house (well, not CA either) you could easily get the temperature into dangerous areas with a constantly on furnace, and you don't want that happening when asleep.

The risk is the boiler remaining off when you are not around; that's the condition where massive property damage would occur (pipes freezing). If you're present, presumably you would notice a failed-safe boiler running often and address the issue. The boiler controller would preserve the safety of the system itself even if the thermostat calls for heat constantly.

In the event the house is too hot, you could open windows, leave, or if it is above freezing outside simply turn off the boiler directly. If it gets too hot while you're asleep, it's not "dangerous": you would wake up sweating. Granted, infants or the infirm may have issues, but in general they face a multitude of dangers that need special consideration or supervision.

What Nest should have really done is include an old-school analog control mechanism as the fail safe (reed switch, magnet, and a bimetallic strip?) that would maintain a safe baseline (say, 50ºF) if the "smart" controller fails.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#229

Post by simoncion »

darkr wrote: post #160
simoncion wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this also allows you to finally get around to rolling out eap * WPA2-Enterprise is not universally supported. (Ferinstance, no Chromecast can connect via WPA2-Enterpise. :( ) * Which EAP? EAP-TLS? EAP-MD5? [0] EAP-MSCHAPv2? Or perhaps EAP-GTC? [1][2] > this also allows you to finally get around to rolling out eap so the scourge of shared wifi keys can die out Unrelated to the issue at hand... I really wish OS X and…

> * Which EAP? EAP-TLS? EAP-MD5? [0] EAP-MSCHAPv2? Or perhaps EAP-GTC? EAP-TLS ideally. You need a CA infrastructure, a radius server, and a way of doing automated enrolment, revocation and install of client certificates. A lot of work if you haven't already got those parts (though many places already do), but it's fairly hassle free and secure once up and running. For bonus points you can extend 802.11x goodness to…

So, I'm fairly new to this... how would you do automated installation of client certs on:

* OS X machines

* Android devices

* A Nest Thermostat

> For bonus points you can extend 802.11x goodness to your wired desktop ports as well.

Though, that only works if you have either a Smart or a Managed switch that understands that it needs to tag frames from that port with RADIUS-dictated VLAN tags, right?

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#230

Post by gduffy »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #205

I've had the Nest for 2 years. To be honest I've had zero problems. The only problem I have is that once Google bought them, there has been little to no improvements in anything. They only give 10 days worth of data which is functionally useless. Why should I care about last week for energy use? I want to compare against last year. They haven't made any significant improvements so it's just another case of an innovat…

Believe it or not, it wasn't really Google's fault. Agreed that it is sad and infuriating, though.
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