Nest: initial impressions - BrettTerpstra.com

Mike 12y, 331d ago

I am also having the same problem of the heater turning off after 10 seconds and then back on, and the ac is not blowing cold air only ambient. I was using a Honeywell 4 wire system and also had to install a common wire for some power sharing issue. Nest is sending out a hvac rep on Monday. Will advise on fix. So far customer support has been great,but no easy install for me. Voltages are good and thermo is wired correctly. No error codes.

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Mike 12y, 302d ago

Just a follow up on my last post. Nest sent a rep to my house and discovered that the Thermostat was defective and they replaced it free of charge. I have been using it for a Month now and am extremely satisfied. It works great! Use the wireless features all the time and it's very nice to be able to look at the history of your energy usage and be able to adjust the schedule remotely.

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TGR 13y, 8d ago

I was so looking forward to this thermostat in my house, but...it didn't work. I did do the compatibility for two wires and it said it would work. But it didn't. What happened was, after the easy initial setup, would run for about two minutes then turn off. Then it would make an effort to turn on the furnace( you could hear the furnace trying to start) for about15 seconds then turn off. Well, without going into extensive detail, it just wouldn't work. So I called Nest, they were great and even paid to have a heating guy come out and the heating guy said I had a bad Nest. I called Nest back, they were surprised but sent out another one and provided a postaged paid for the return. Again, the second one didn't work. Really bummed out. I really wanted it to work because it is a cool looking device. Well, they paid for the return again and credited back my account promptly. One of the tech guys at Nest said I needed a common wire besides my red and white one but the heating guy( who seemed pretty smart and was picked by Nest, not me) said it worked without the common. Oh well, this is something I believe most people will have trouble with.

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I was so looking forward to this thermostat in my house, but...it didn't work. I did do the compatibility for two wires and it said it would work. But it didn't. What happened was, after the easy initial setup, would run for about two minutes then turn off. Then it would make an effort to turn on the furnace( you could hear the furnace trying to start) for about15 seconds then turn off. Well, without going into extensive detail, it just wouldn't work. So I called Nest, they were great and even paid to have a heating guy come out and the heating guy said I had a bad Nest. I called Nest back, they were surprised but sent out another one and provided a postaged paid for the return. Again, the second one didn't work. Really bummed out. I really wanted it to work because it is a cool looking device. Well, they paid for the return again and credited back my account promptly. One of the tech guys at Nest said I needed a common wire besides my red and white one but the heating guy( who seemed pretty smart and was picked by Nest, not me) said it worked without the common. Oh well, this is something I believe most people will have trouble with.

hans 13y, 8d ago

Hello TGR, My Nest is not functioning too. But I did not understand quit your problem. Do you mean that in the end the Nest was still not functioning or did you solve the Problem. If you solved it may be I can use the solution too. Otherwise I think I will sell the Nest.

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John 13y, 111d ago

Did you see John Hodgman and the mountain goats? I was there - great show.

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Brett 13y, 111d ago

Yep, see the footnote :). Loved it.

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Brent 13y, 120d ago

Thanks for the write-up, I hope you'll continue giving your impressions as you live with it for a while longer. I thought about getting one when they came out, but didn't pull the trigger (and now they're sold out for a while).

I'm curious about the "auto-away" function where the Nest doesn't detect movement for a while and then assumes you're out of the house. My thermostat isn't mounted in a super-high traffic area (and I live alone), so I wonder if I wouldn't inadvertently trigger this if I'm watching a couple movies in a row or hanging out online for too long or (in the summer) working out in the yard or something. Do you have any thoughts on this function particularly?

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Daniel 12y, 292d ago

Did you end up getting one? I am also concerned about this exact same thing and it is an important feature of the Thermostat for me. Please, le me know!

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Brent 12y, 292d ago

I did, actually, from Lowes a couple weeks ago. From what I can tell, Auto-Away hasn't activated once. I've been pretty diligent about setting it to "away" when I leave the house, whether it's from the Nest itself before I leave or the smartphone app shortly after I'm gone. So I can't say it knows how long to wait before realizing I'm not here. It also doesn't do it at night, so either it uses a timer or light sensor or something to figure "oh, my owner is probably asleep and hasn't really left".

All in all, I'm a pretty big fan. It's beautiful to operate from the Website or mobile apps. I like looking at my energy usage every day to see how long the thing was on. For example I can see that over this past holiday weekend the AC was on for about 10 hours Saturday, Sunday and Monday — I was at home all day and we broke heat records. Tuesday it was on for just 4 hours total, as I was at work and then went out afterward (and it was cooler overall).

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Daniel 12y, 292d ago

Thank you so much for all this great info! It sonds like you're enjoying it a lot.

One last question: Are you actually seeing energy savings because of it?

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Daniel 12y, 292d ago

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond and for doing it it so quickly too!

If I could kindly ask you a few more questions: have you never had auto away turn on because it isn't doing so itself or because you do it instead?

do you think it assumes you're home at night because auto-away isn't on?

Did you program it yourself or let it "learn"?

And lastly, and this is a big one so I understand if you can't, but I feel I would need to do a lot of patching and painting to get the nest directly on the wall itself (although I admit it would look amazing). Can you tell me the dimensions of the plates that come with it so I know if I have enough room with items adjacent to the thermostat?

Many thanks in advance for your help!

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Brent 12y, 292d ago

I think it's not turning on because I set the Nest to "Away" when I leave, so it doesn't get the chance to do it itself. Its settings say "Auto-Away is ready", so I'm assuming if I ever do leave it for long enough it'll kick in. Actually it may have once, but the energy history only goes back so far. I wish you could view your complete history someplace, or download it. But I think you get monthly emails (I just haven't had it for a month).

At first I attempted to set up a schedule (e.g. "77 at 5:30 p.m., 75 at 10:30 p.m" that sort of thing), but then realized that I couldn't set a schedule, then have it modify that schedule as it learned, it always, as far as I understand, will obey the schedule you set first, then set up its learning schedule around that. So I deleted the schedule I'd set and let it learn. Mostly I'm comfortable at one temperature though, so it doesn't have a ton of learning to do.

One note that may or may not apply depending on your climate: You can either set it to heat or cool but not both, if you want it to learn a schedule. If you don't mind setting the schedule up yourself and have it not learn, you can set up a "range", where it'll keep the temperature within any range you specify whether it needs to heat or cool to do it.

Another related note: That function was added in version 2.0 of the software. It updates itself. So they may be working on new features, fixing some annoyances and whatnot. So if it doesn't seem to work for you right now based on features, I'd check back later.

The rectangular plate is about 5-7/8" by 4-3/8". I think you can mount it either horizontally or vertically. I can't find the square plate, but if I remember right it was about the 4-3/8" dimension squared.

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I think it's not turning on because I set the Nest to "Away" when I leave, so it doesn't get the chance to do it itself. Its settings say "Auto-Away is ready", so I'm assuming if I ever do leave it for long enough it'll kick in. Actually it may have once, but the energy history only goes back so far. I wish you could view your complete history someplace, or download it. But I think you get monthly emails (I just haven't had it for a month).At first I attempted to set up a schedule (e.g. "77 at 5:30 p.m., 75 at 10:30 p.m" that sort of thing), but then realized that I couldn't set a schedule, then have it modify that schedule as it learned, it always, as far as I understand, will obey the schedule you set first, then set up its learning schedule around that. So I deleted the schedule I'd set and let it learn. Mostly I'm comfortable at one temperature though, so it doesn't have a ton of learning to do.One note that may or may not apply depending on your climate: You can either set it to heat or cool but not both, if you want it to learn a schedule. If you don't mind setting the schedule up yourself and have it not learn, you can set up a "range", where it'll keep the temperature within any range you specify whether it needs to heat or cool to do it.Another related note: That function was added in version 2.0 of the software. It updates itself. So they may be working on new features, fixing some annoyances and whatnot. So if it doesn't seem to work for you right now based on features, I'd check back later.The rectangular plate is about 5-7/8" by 4-3/8". I think you can mount it either horizontally or vertically. I can't find the square plate, but if I remember right it was about the 4-3/8" dimension squared.

CarterB 13y, 120d ago

Thanks for the early review. One thing I use from our AC is the fan only mode. Does Nest offer this ability just to run the fan and not the HVAC?

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Pete 12y, 360d ago

Yes- it does indeed work this way. I have a Goodman furnace/ac combo unit and we also use the fan on its own quite a lot. I had to make sure of the same thug before I bought mine.

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Robert 12y, 302d ago

Can you tell me how to set it to fan only mode?

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Chris 13y, 120d ago

Re home automation: The detailed specs page lists ZigBee but makes no mention of which application profiles it supports.

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Brett 13y, 120d ago

My setup is all X10/Insteon at this point, but my interest is more in being able to script the actions. For example, I have an action group in Indigo called "leaving" that turns some lights off and sets sets timers. It would be great if that same action group could go ahead and set "away" for me on the Nest, and then notify it upon my motion-sensor-activated return. Of course, it would also be invaluable to be able to receive motion and temperature events from the Nest, but that's probably pie-in-the-sky at this point.

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