I am going to swap out the thermostats in my house, and wonder if anybody has the smart thermostats like Nest or the Honeywell one...I like the fact that it can "learn," and dial the temp back some during the day and then have the house cranked back up for when the fam comes home. Any feedback, positive or negative (especially the negatives!) are appreciated!
I went with a Honeywell over the nest. The nest is great if you want to remain hands off with your settings. I don't so I went with a Honeywell. I forget the model but it's 3 years old now. Since it's connected to Wi-Fi I can control it thru an app or thru my Amazon echo (app or thru voice). Mine learns how long it takes to heat up the house and adjusts accordingly. If you want it 70 by 530 it will do it. It takes a few days or so to figure out the exact times to start adjusting itself. I went with it because I tweak the heat due to the wood stove. I'm not constantly adjusting it but I like to have a little more control. If the gf stays over or comes over I can adjust it thru my phone. Programming it is much easier with the phone as well. I've got a few things hooked up thru the Amazon Alexa app and I'm starting to like it a lot. I never thought it would be that useful but I was about to go out the door the other day and my hands were full. I had forgotten to turn the heat down so I just told Alexa to turn the thermostat down 4 degrees. Didn't have to put all my crap down to do it. It's still sometimes easier to just adjust it while you are walking past but that was the first time it was very useful to have it connected thru Alexa even though it wasn't a big deal. I could have put all the stuff down and walked over and done it. In fact I almost did it out of habit. Theres some really cool stuff out there that can be hooked up thru Google home or Amazon Alexa. I plan on integrating a few lights and few more plugs thru it in the near future.
Well, I'm not a techie so I can't give all the information about the different options of the Nest. Installation was easy and it was up and running in minutes. It has outside temp feature through some weather service based on zip code entered. It has a sensor when you walk by that lights the t-stat up so you see the set temp. It also has an indoor humidity sensor which has us at 11%. There is an energy usage history and so far, my boiler did not run for this zone from 5pm - to 4am Tues into Wed. So it shows the oak gave good heat overnight. Last night the heat kicked on around 2am and I had loaded maple in the stove. Outside temp was 2 degrees colder. The heating schedule was easy to set up. The app is simple to adjust the temp. I believe there is an "away" feature using your phone app if you use location on your phone. I don't see us using this feature. Biggest reason we got it is when we go out, we don't normally turn the t-stat down. Now it is simple to do when we head out. Upon return, we can bump it up a through the app a few minutes before getting home. That's where we will see the savings.
I went with the Honeywell. Needed a thermostat, so I figured I might as well get a wifi one. Lowes had it on sale at the time. My main use is to kick the AC up or down and keep check on hown the temperature is doing in the winter time. Since I don't basically use the house heater, except for usually once a year just to make sure it works. The App works really well and its at the tap of the finger.
Been looking at these too. On Amazon one of the complaints of the Honeywell was if there is power outage it has to be re-set manually. There are frequent outages were I live so that would be a problem. I don't know about the others. ksks
Now THAT's a big one- I could see that being an annoyance. Does anyone have any negatives about the Nest?
