If you've ever thought about getting started with home automation 5 Smart Home Appliances You Should Buy 5 Smart Home Appliances You Should Buy The "smart home" concept is taking off and you should keep up, otherwise you'll end up losing out in the future Read Plus, buying a Nest Thermostat is the perfect way to start. This is why I decided to buy one, and once you see what the Nest is capable of, you'll want one too.
The nest is not cheap. Most people balk at the idea of paying more than $200 for a single-zone thermostat, but the Nest is a little more than a thermostat:It's an energy-saving home automation system. In Your Smart Home, the trick to saving electricity is to know where most of your energy is consumed. Additional readout unit that you can use to run more than just your home temperature.
We'll get to the creative automation side of things later in this article, but first let's take a look at how incredibly easy it is to install a new Nest thermostat in your home.
Before you buy a Nest either for yourself or as a gift for a friend 7 Techy Gifts for the Homeowner 7 Techy Gifts for the Homeowner Do you know someone who likes technology and has recently moved home? ? With the holiday season fast approaching, you may be wondering what to get that person. Read More You will need to remove your old thermostat and look at the labels where your current wiring goes.
If it's too messy and you're not comfortable doing this yourself, then by all means hire an HVAC professional to hook up your thermostat for you. However, if you have wiring that looks more like this:
You're probably all set. The image above is the sample. “before” Wiring image provided on the Nest website:Shows the typical three-color system that comes from most home heating boilers.
When the Nest arrives, it will come in a simple, compact box with everything you need to install the unit yourself.
It's all:a wall plate, an adapter plate if you need one, the Nest base, the Nest unit, a convertible screwdriver with a heavy brand handle, the necessary screws, the manual and installation instructions.
Before you begin, turn off all power to your furnace or any other unit controlled by your thermostat and turn off that circuit at your circuit breaker box.
I must admit I was wary of installing the unit, but after seeing the simplicity of the wiring behind my original thermostat, I simply mounted the white wall plate and Nest base using the two wood screws that came with the unit. Luckily, the original screw holes were right in the wall stud, so the new screws were handy.
If you're making new holes, a cordless screwdriver might come in handy.
Wiring was incredibly simple. I have a forced hot water boiler with no fan, so the green wire was no longer in use. I just had the red and white wires to deal with. The fact that the Nest base had identical labels to my original thermostats made sliding the wires into the correct terminals a breeze (just press the button on the edge down to open the clip to slide the wire).
Once that was done, I placed the Nest in place on the base, turned all the power back on, and just like that, the thermostat came to life, displaying an image of a house on the screen.
It took me a few moments to figure out how to navigate the screens. You must rotate the metal edge of the Nest to make selections and press the bottom edge of the unit to make your selection.
The first thing you'll need to do is select your Wi-Fi network and enter your security password for the network.
Your next order of business is to set your location to city and state.
You will then need to tell the Nest what your heating fuel is. The Nest is capable of optimizing your gas, electric, oil or propane or even geothermal heating system.
Finally, you will need to set the energy saving temperature that you would like the Nest to use when it determines that you are currently not home.
Finally, the main screen appears, with the current temperature setpoint in the center of the screen, and the current temperature in your home is shown in the graph above. Turn the dial to adjust the temperature and you will see the difference between the two appear in light blue.
That's all about it! Now that your new Nest Thermostat is set up and communicating with the Internet, it's time to have some real fun.
Once you set up your account with Nest, you can go to the Nest website to get access to your thermostat. Please note that you can access this dashboard from anywhere in the world.
You will see the device as a small icon. If you own other Nest devices, you'll also see them listed on this panel. Click the icon to see the Unity main screen, with the control menu on the right.
The control menu on this web page is identical to the mobile app, showing you the current temperature and humidity in your home, as well as options to adjust the thermostat's heating schedule, check the current setting on the unit, or see how much energy you've been using over time.
The heating schedule was what excited me the most from day one. I was eventually able to set my thermostat to turn down late at night when everyone was asleep, and then back up to room temp about an hour before everyone started getting out of bed.
The interesting thing here is that you can configure this program both from the web page and from the mobile application.
You can download the Nest Home app on Google Play or the iTunes Store.
Honestly, there's something a little surreal about being able to look at your phone and see the current temperature inside your home, and be able to adjust that temperature every time.
The mobile app is almost as functional as the web page, you can even review your energy usage history to make sure you're on track with the energy savings you wanted to achieve with Nest.
One thing the energy history showed me is how much less energy was used when the unit was adjusted, either through “away” mode or manually from my phone – while no one was home during the day. In many cases, we use almost half as much energy as we used to, which is sure to add up to some very big dollars over time.
It's cool enough to set a schedule for your thermostat, and smart enough to learn your patterns and start automatically adjusting your home's temperature when you're away, but what's even cooler is what you can achieve with the third-party automation service known as IFTTT.
The Nest thermostat is available on IFTTT, with triggers and actions. For example, using IFTTT, I was able to tell it that if the outside temperature (supplied by the IFTTT channel) is below 10 degrees F, it should turn the heat up slightly above room temperature to make sure the house doesn't get dangerous. cold.
At the same time, when spring rolls around and we start having days where temperatures hit 60 degrees, I don't want to have to remember to keep turning the thermostat down. Instead, you can have IFTTT remember it.
You can also use Nest's measurement of your current home temperature to trigger another IFTTT automation, which is automation limited only by your imagination.
For example, why not send yourself an SMS when the temperature in the house drops below a dangerous level, indicating that there is something wrong with your boiler or that you have run out of fuel?
And just imagine all the cool things you could do with Home and Away triggers, using your Nest as a trigger for some really fun automation that has nothing to do with temperature. You could even use it to control other smart devices. Jump Start Your Smart Home With 4 Easy Projects Jump Start Your Smart Home With 4 Easy Projects Creating a smart home can seem like a huge undertaking, and it can be hard to know where to start. But it is not as difficult as you may think! Read More
We'll get to a bit more home automation you can do with your Nest thermostat in later articles, but by now you should have enough information to make the smart decision to buy yourself or someone else a smart thermostat (which is why it was featured in our blog). smart home gift guide 2014 7 Gifts for the smart home enthusiast in your life 7 Gifts for the smart home enthusiast in your life Whether you know a smart home enthusiast, or just think one of your friends or knowledgeable relatives would appreciate A little more connection in your life, these seven gifts will be appreciated! Read More). In just one week of use, we cut our power consumption in half. At that rate, the unit will pay for itself in no time.
Do you have a Nest thermostat? What has been your experience with this? Thinking of getting one but have some concerns? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below!
