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3282868

macrumors 603
Jan 8, 2009
5,281
0
Specifically if your trane furnace is a modulating system which I think it is with that price tag, then it will not work as a modulating furnace. It will operate it as a two stage system. Nest does not have a modulating thermostat yet. Does your old thermostat run a humidifier or just report humidity level in your home? If your old thermostat runs your humidifier then nest will not run it as of yet. You'll have to install a humidistat in your cold air return duct until nest releases one if you choose to go with the nest. I think you would be better off waiting.

Curiously how long will it take to get your $10,000 back in savings on your upgraded system? I guessing a real long time.

Modulating and controls humidifier, so no go at the moment. I assume updates to the firmware/OS would/may add those features?

Calculated savings, $8,500 with the $1500 rebate, about 3 years (had a York system before when we built the house 8 years ago, was terrible). We have some of the highest G&E prices in the northeast, we've already seen ~25-30% drop in overall monthly costs. The SEER was calculated at 18-19, A/C uses R-410a as R-22 is (of course) illegal since 2010.

(watched the video and learned it is a full thermostat replacement, would be interesting as an addition to your home for use in other rooms but I suppose an iDevice would be utilized as a remote controller)
 
Last edited by a moderator:

stomachdoc

macrumors member
Jul 28, 2004
54
0
Outside of Boston
Just to set the record straight, the Nest is the only WiFi enabled thermostat that DOES NOT require a common "C" wire to operate. All of the other WiFi enabled thermostats on the market (Insteon, Honeywell) require this extra wire. I am using the Nest in my house in ski country with circulating hot water heating and only two thermostat wires--incredibly easy install. By the way, if you don't want to install it yourself, Nest provides "Concierge" installation for an extra fee; but it's a really easy DIY project.
 

Chupa Chupa

macrumors G5
Jul 16, 2002
14,835
7,396
I don't think tony would go for that. It would harm nest in the long run. I think nest will expand its product line for sure. The controls industry is huge and run only by a few companies. Honeywell, white-Rogers, etc.

I see Nest as Apple back in 2000 entering the mp3 market with the iPod. I think nest will dominate the residential market. Commercial and industrial, not so much.

You kind of contradict yourself here. HON and W-R do own this market and distribution to 99% of home builders and HVAC service cos. The DIY market is tiny in comparison. For Nest to really break out it needs a distributor to get into the HVAC service and builder market. Even then HVAC manufacturers like Carrier and Trane are starting to match their products with proprietary thermostats. It's a tough market to crack.

But the main thing is that HON will kill Nest by bleeding it to death with the patent suit. Nest has no "long run" if the suit drags on. Getting HON to distribute Nest exclusively in exchange for dropping the suit would be a win for both parties.
 

G4R2

macrumors 6502a
Nov 29, 2006
547
4
I may be reading into the timing of this but it seems to me that one might speculate that this dovetails really well with the expansion of Siris abilities that Tim Cook hinted at during his interview yesterday.

If Apple were to extend Siri control to 3td party products it wouldn't be difficult to imagine controlling your thermostat through Siri from anywhere.

Other possibilities to complement Nests presence sensors would be using the iPhones gps to let it know whether you're home or not or on your way home, or just telling Siri.
 

RobNYC

macrumors 6502a
May 28, 2008
562
103
New York, NY
Just to set the record straight, the Nest is the only WiFi enabled thermostat that DOES NOT require a common "C" wire to operate. All of the other WiFi enabled thermostats on the market (Insteon, Honeywell) require this extra wire. I am using the Nest in my house in ski country with circulating hot water heating and only two thermostat wires--incredibly easy install. By the way, if you don't want to install it yourself, Nest provides "Concierge" installation for an extra fee; but it's a really easy DIY project.

So, do you have a baseboard hot water heating system then for your house? I ask because that's the system my parents have and this might be a good gift for them for xmas. I wasn't sure if it would be compatible since they're still using mercury style thermostats.
 

falkirk18

macrumors newbie
Jul 13, 2010
12
0
Am I missing something?

I can't even begin to tell you how dissapointed I am that I can't use this product, due to multi-stage cooling. But, I'm even more dissapointed that I think this is a miss by them... Let me explain.

$250 is a lot for a thermostat for your A/C, and most that have the disposable income to spend on it, will probably also have a upgraded/newer a/c unit, which most come with multi-stage cooling now, due to energy efficiency requirements. So, I would have thought they would have targeted individuals that would be more likely to spend $250 on a thermostat, which would probably be more likely to have an A/C system with multi-stage cooling, or heating. Am I making any sense???
 

diamond.g

macrumors G4
Mar 20, 2007
11,068
2,421
OBX
I can't even begin to tell you how dissapointed I am that I can't use this product, due to multi-stage cooling. But, I'm even more dissapointed that I think this is a miss by them... Let me explain.

$250 is a lot for a thermostat for your A/C, and most that have the disposable income to spend on it, will probably also have a upgraded/newer a/c unit, which most come with multi-stage cooling now, due to energy efficiency requirements. So, I would have thought they would have targeted individuals that would be more likely to spend $250 on a thermostat, which would probably be more likely to have an A/C system with multi-stage cooling, or heating. Am I making any sense???

The problem so far seems to be unit size. They can hit most systems with the amount of connections they currently have. To do multistage cooling (because they do support two stage heat) they need more Y wires, or a way to tell the system you have more than one stage of cooling and not have it think otherwise (it tries to auto guess what kind of heating and cooling system you have based on the wires you plug in).
 

iHateMacs

macrumors 6502a
Aug 13, 2008
654
24
Coventry, UK
Why would you want to do that instead of having the thermostat control a relay like the rest of the world? You have a very strange system.

Not strange at all. I don't have central heating, just several individually controlled heaters.

I am in the UK and it's rare to have heating AND cooling. We just control the heat here. Cooling is provided by the blasts of icy wind outside :)

I think the Nest looks very pretty, but no use to me :(
 

wacky4alanis

macrumors 6502a
Mar 18, 2009
555
79
Bought one last night at Lowe's and installed it. It's pretty cool! Installation was very simple. I love that I can set it from my iPhone - no more coming back from vacation to a cold/hot house. And the ergonomics are great. Hopefully it will last forever like the Honeywell thermostat it replaced. We've had that one for ~22 years.
 

drober30

macrumors 6502a
Jul 5, 2007
839
95
As cool as the product sounds, I don't think it would work for me and my situation. I live alone in a two story townhouse. I can be upstairs for hours and never pass by the thermostat downstairs. Am I wrong in this?

Yes, you can set a manual schedule and it will still learn. You do not have to walk by it to work. Also, still controllable remotely from an iPhone or Internet!
 

rdowns

macrumors Penryn
Jul 11, 2003
27,397
12,520
Yes, you can set a manual schedule and it will still learn. You do not have to walk by it to work. Also, still controllable remotely from an iPhone or Internet!

Yeah, someone else said that. Thanks for the reply.

I'll probably end up caving and get one on one of my many visits to Lowes and the Apple Store.
 

seecoolguy

macrumors 6502
Nov 28, 2007
256
34
Own one. Love it. Comes with three different mounting applications. I prefer the clean look with no back plate.

Could you give us a more detailed review? I'm in love with how it looks but don't want to deal with re-programming it if the power shorts out at the home.
 

jmpage2

macrumors 68040
Sep 14, 2007
3,223
548
Could you give us a more detailed review? I'm in love with how it looks but don't want to deal with re-programming it if the power shorts out at the home.

It has an internal sealed lithium ion battery (like the one in a smart phone) so that would not be a problem.

As long as you have a heating/cooling configuration that's supported (most from the last 30 years are) then it's pretty simple. In fact, it's really really simple. Even my wife could have installed it and set it up. They even give you a little screwdriver and little color labels to help you move the wires from your old thermostat to the Nest.

For us, this is what was involved;

1. Shut off power from the heating/AC (use switch at furnace).
2. remove old thermostat.
3. photograph old thermostat back plate and wire locations.
4. label the wires with the little wire labels included with Nest.
5. remove the old thermostat backplate.
6. if necessary, repair/paint the wall (we did this since the Nest was much smaller than our large touch panel Honeywell).
7. Install new Nest backplate (easy)
8. Attach wires.
9. Attach nest
10. Power furnace/AC back up.
11. Attach Nest to your home wi-fi network.

At that point you are pretty much done. You create a Nest account, link it to your thermostat and you are good to go. The Nest battery gets recharged by trickle charging from the AC/Fan/Heat wires off of the furnace, so it might turn your furnace fan on for a little while every day to top the battery off (assuming heat/ac aren't running).
 

flanamac

macrumors 6502
Feb 3, 2009
326
0
Interesting payback schedule

Per their own website, the $300 cost takes 18 months to pay back with approx. $175 in savings in the first year.

Frankly, these all sound great and wonderful for the world and energy savings, but really, I see it as a way for those that want to control the world to simply override (just like the smart meters for measuring electricity usage) and run your house.

Beware...
 

jmpage2

macrumors 68040
Sep 14, 2007
3,223
548
Per their own website, the $300 cost takes 18 months to pay back with approx. $175 in savings in the first year.

Frankly, these all sound great and wonderful for the world and energy savings, but really, I see it as a way for those that want to control the world to simply override (just like the smart meters for measuring electricity usage) and run your house.

Beware...

Yeah, that's what's going to happen, those evil libocrats are going to take over my thermostat, because, you know, it's not like I couldn't rip the Nest off the wall and hook up my old "dumb" thermostat.

facepalm.jpg
 

drober30

macrumors 6502a
Jul 5, 2007
839
95
Whoa whoa whoa...what right do you have to say I don't care for my pets? I have three cats and a dog, and I love them all. I take them to the vet, give them love and attention, keep them safely in the house or yard so they don't get injured. And my home is never at a temperature that would cause them harm. It's not like the temperature in the house goes up to 100 degrees or down to freezing when I'm away from the house.

Do you honestly think the pets care if kept right at 72 degrees? If you keep your house heated or cooled to the temperatures you prefer because you think it matters to your pets, you're wasting some serious money on your heating and cooling bills. That's fine for you, but not for me. The house can be 50 degrees and the pets are fine. The house can be 85 degrees and they're fine. In the summer, they have a nice cool basement to go into if they're too hot. In the winter, there's a sunroom that's always warmer than the rest of the house if they're too cold. And don't forget...they have fur to keep them warm. The point in my previous statement was that the animals aren't going to be bothered by the usual fluctuations in temperature throughout the day.

In the future, you really should try to avoid making assumptions about people when you have no idea what you're talking about.

I always worried about giving my dog fresh water, you know, changing the water in his bowl every day so its nice and fresh, until I realized the same dog drinks out of the toilet and mud puddles!:D

----------

Yeah, someone else said that. Thanks for the reply.

I'll probably end up caving and get one on one of my many visits to Lowes and the Apple Store.

I'm going to pick one up at Lowes because if I use my Lowes card I get 5% off purchases. That applies to everyone with a Lowes card. Savings of $16 after tax!
 

Mad-B-One

macrumors 6502a
Jun 24, 2011
789
5
San Antonio, Texas
Nie Sensors, but...

Our Thermostat is in the hallway. As long as no one goes to the restroom or to my son's room, the thermostat would "think" that no one isn't home. Having two living rooms with no thermostat in it makes this thing rather "dumb" than "smart" in our house. I didn't see any additional sensors or inerfaces for that either. Or does it work with an iPhone App that determines that the resident's cell phones are out of the house (that means all of them) and therefore it is okay to go into energy save mode?
 

sweetbrat

macrumors 65816
Jun 17, 2009
1,443
1
Redford, MI
Our Thermostat is in the hallway. As long as no one goes to the restroom or to my son's room, the thermostat would "think" that no one isn't home. Having two living rooms with no thermostat in it makes this thing rather "dumb" than "smart" in our house. I didn't see any additional sensors or inerfaces for that either. Or does it work with an iPhone App that determines that the resident's cell phones are out of the house (that means all of them) and therefore it is okay to go into energy save mode?

It takes a couple hours before it would set it to away mode. You can also change the settings so that it doesn't go into away mode by itself. That way, you would just set it to away yourself when you leave (or do it from your iPhone or the Nest website if you forget).
 

Mad-B-One

macrumors 6502a
Jun 24, 2011
789
5
San Antonio, Texas
It takes a couple hours before it would set it to away mode. You can also change the settings so that it doesn't go into away mode by itself. That way, you would just set it to away yourself when you leave (or do it from your iPhone or the Nest website if you forget).

Thanks for the info! Now, the other question would be if the app could check if both my wife's and my iPhone left the house and then activate saving function. That would be awesome. I wouldn't mind the GPS function running for that.
 

diamond.g

macrumors G4
Mar 20, 2007
11,068
2,421
OBX
Thanks for the info! Now, the other question would be if the app could check if both my wife's and my iPhone left the house and then activate saving function. That would be awesome. I wouldn't mind the GPS function running for that.

That would be sweet. Sadly it doesn't do that. What would be cool is for the thermostat to know where you are. I wonder if there is a way to tap into the Find My iPhone API (if it exist) to do that.
 

rfrankl

macrumors 6502a
Apr 15, 2006
506
12
I bought one just the other day. I used the 10% off coupon and the Lowes card to save another 5%. It is very impressive. I am diligent about switching off the a/c when going out, etc but I am sure it will pay for itself over time. It is very easy to install. I had to use one of the included covers as the existing hole was too big to just mount the unit itself. It still looks sharp and setup is a breeze.

My wife likes Apple products too and she wanted it more because she is tired of having to walk up stairs just to adjust the thermostat.
 
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