Today we’re continuing our series on the “Internet of Things” with a discussion of one of the most popular elements of a smart home today: the Nest thermostat by Google. The only way to avoid the Nest is to live in a cave or under a rock, but you may not know that the price has come down a bit since it was first introduced. After a quick survey of shopping results, you can pick up a 2nd generation Nest for between $180 and $200, which still ranks considerably higher than a standard programmable thermostat (about $50). The 3rd generation Nest is running $249.99 on Amazon. There are also smart thermostats by Honeywell out there—though their Lyric is even more expensive than the Nest.
Should You Go for the Second Generation or Third?
We have the second generation Nest installed and are very pleased with it. Version 3.0 of the Nest offers mostly cosmetic upgrades. The profile is slimmer, and it’s been redesigned to allow its motion sensor to work from farther away (they call it “Farsight”). If you have a larger house, you may want to spring for the 3rd generation Nest. The older Nest wakes up when you are within 3 feet of it, but the 3rd gen Nest will sense your presence from 20 feet away. This is important because the Nest uses motion detection to know when you are away from home and adjust its settings accordingly.
The 3rd gen Nest also offers a new feature called “Furnace Heads-Up,” which helps keep track of the times your forced-air furnace turns off to prevent it from overheating. If it senses there’s an issue with your furnace overheating, it will alert you in the app. Don’t worry: this feature is coming to 2nd gen Nests too later this year.
Purchase and Installation of the Nest
Nest does provide elegant support for the product, though admittedly our installation didn’t go smoothly, as we have a number of custom configurations in our network. Before making a purchase, you can check if your current HVAC system is compatible by pulling the cover plate off your current thermostat and checking the configuration of your wires. If you do decide to pull the trigger and buy a Nest, definitely check with your electricity provider to see if they offer a rebate of some kind linked to the Nest. We received a $50 rebate from our provider, Champion Energy, for installing a Nest thermostat, and of course if you live in the DFW area you have probably heard the dulcet tones of Matthew McConaughey extolling the virtues of Reliant Energy, and among those virtues is a free Nest thermostat to all new signups.
When you open the box, you’ll find that the designers have thought of everything. There’s a sheet of stickers to put on your wires so you don’t lose track of them, and a specially designed screwdriver to help you in the install. There’s even a level embedded into the back plate of the thermostat to help you ensure it’s installed properly. You can watch videos to help you with the installation, or if you have purchased your Nest on Amazon, you can even pay for installation through them. Here in Dallas, it’s quoted at about $70, which seems fairly reasonable.
One thing to note shortly after installation that we didn’t find noted on a lot of support boards. When we tried to connect to the Nest via the app after we first set it up, we often found that it was offline. We were concerned we had a defective device. It turns out, it just needed time to charge up, and that charging took a while for it to be reliably online all the time. (We seem to recall about a week.) In short, don’t panic if your Nest doesn’t show up online all the time when you first get it. That issue should iron itself out after a week or so.
Features Exclusive to the Nest
One of our favorite features of the Nest is “Airwave.” Traditional thermostats run the furnace fan while the AC is running. When the AC stops, the fan stops. The Airwave feature enabled by the Nest continues to run the fan after the AC unit is no longer active to help distribute cooler air throughout your home—a cooling technique that’s a lot less expensive than running the AC and the fan in concert. (You can also drill down on the fan settings in your Nest app, if you like; this is just a built-in feature that works nicely.)
Another feature we love is “Cool to Dry.” Cool to Dry uses your home’s air conditioner as a dehumidifier to render it more comfortable in hot and humid weather. Instead of just running the AC to cool the room, it factors in the internal humidity level of the home via a sensor in the Nest so it will run even if the room is cooled to the appropriate level but the humidity is high. (Obviously this is not a cost-saving measure, but it certainly can be a life-improvement one.) If you do have a whole house humidifier, the Nest doubles as a humidistat and will use local interior readings combined with the average outdoor humidity for your ZIP code to automatically adjust your indoor humidity.
The Leaf system is another Nest exclusive, and it helps you make money-saving choices. When you’re saving energy, a little green leaf will appear on your Nest screen and on the app, and it dims when you aare not. You can receive a Leaf report on a regular basis to know where you stand and make better decisions… although really, the beauty of this system is that you rarely do have to adjust it once it learns your habits.
In general, one of the great things about devices like this is that they CAN be improved via their software settings. We talked about the “Furnace Heads-Up” feature being rolled out with the 3rd gen Nest, and that it will be coming to 2nd gen Nests soon. It used to be that if you bought a coffeemaker or a record player, you got a coffeemaker and a record player that would function the same way for the rest of their lives. Now with smart devices, you can very well expect them to function better down the line.
Downsides to the Nest
Some other Internet of Things thermostats determine if you’re home based on geofencing, i.e., your mobile device’s location. The Nest uses motion detection to determine if you’re at home. So if you do something unusual like taking a long nap in the middle of a 103-degree day, it might turn off because it thinks you’re away from home… not that this has happened to us or anything. Apparently there IS a way to add geofencing to the Nest by using a third-party app, but we haven’t tried this ourselves yet. For iOS, Skylark has a free 7-day trial and then it’s a $4.99 in-app purchase. On Android, @home for Nest is one solution, but there are a few more apps in the Google Play store.
The other thing: if you’re going to be away for an extended period of time, like a week, and the weather is extreme, don’t rely on the Auto Away feature. Set it on Away, or you might find your Nest has been cooling/heating your house to a bearable but still expensive temperature.
One thing we wish the Nest had that the Ecobee smart thermostat does: individual room sensors. But who knows? It may be on the horizon!
Want to talk more about the Internet of Things? Or do you have a question about smart homes that’s been bugging you? Leave us a comment or contact us for a consultation.
