Product Spotlight: Nest is in the House! Install Smart Home Thermostat Technology For an Affordable Price w/ California Energy Services
Our homes are split between us that work at the company that wants to fiddle with our homes, automate our lives, and analyze all the data; and our significant others that just want to be comfortable, and things to work when they need them to.
I am here to say that the Nest has been serving all spectrum of thermostat users in our homes.
Some users want a large read display and a simple ability to adjust the temperature.
Our largest service call at California Energy Services is regarding thermostats and their usability. Without even getting into the headache of programming most of today’s setback thermostats, there is a large portion of our customers that have a hard time operating their systems manually.
One of my favorite features of the Nest is its manual ability. It gives you all the information you need, and none of the information you don’t want.
The screen turns on automatically when you walk up to your thermostat and adjusts the brightness with its an ambiant light sensor. It tells you the current temp, and the temperature the system is set at. It’s large and takes up the display, not relegated to a small corner of a dim screen like most thermostats.
Turn the outer ring to adjust the temperature up and down. There is no hold button, or key combination to set the thermostat manually.
How Do You Program & Integrate the Nest Thermostat?
The next type of user is the one that may be interested in programming their thermostat and wants to control it remotely. I didn’t know the impact that a remote thermostat would have since I’m a self admitted geek, and try to control as many things in my life over WiFi.
The first morning after our Nest install, I got a text message from my wife, “This is awesome, I just turned the heater on from the bed!”
You start to think differently about how you interact with your home and energy features. Not only did it get the house toasty before I was ready to hop out from the cozy covers, it saved me energy when I forgot to turn the heater off when I went out for a meeting mid-day.
The learning portion of the thermostat has been stellar so far. After the first week, it already knows me well. On Monday mornings, the heater turns on early because I like to get a head start on my work week. It turns on later than usual on Wednesdays because that’s when I head to the comic book shop. All of this was programmed without a single piece of human input.
Lastly is energy monitoring. With Nest, I’m able to get more information about my system than with any thermostat I’ve had installed in my home. I can see how long my run time was daily, how long it takes for my house to get up to temperature, and control energy-saving features like Airwave.
With Nest, I can let it do all the heavy lifting, or be in full control.