Only in the last year did I finally replace my older than dirt mercury switch type thermostat with a programmable model. Although I’ve enjoyed the convenience of having the heat automatically come on in the morning before I wake up and then not come on while no one is home during the day, changing the program times is a big pain in the you-know-what. Doing so consists of pressing and holding a button till the info on the tiny LCD blinks. Then more button pressing is required to cycle through the days of the week, program times, etc. It takes a minute or two just to change the temp for a specific day and time. The Nest Thermostat looks like a much more elegant solution. It has a ring (sort of like an old style thermostat) that you rotate to adjust the temperature. After a few days of adjusting the temp, Nest learns to program itself to keep you at a comfortable temperature while also conserving electricity. At $249, the price is considerably more than other programmable thermostats, but if it works as well as it looks, I’d definitely like to give one a try in my house.
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iWant.
It was apparently developed by ex-iPod staffers from Apple Inc!
$249 seems to be an affordable price for this geeky tech, tho I wouldn’t complain if it went down to $199 😉
hm, i don’t understand – what’s an application for this device? there’s no such term in common life in russia – “thermostat”. may be on factories and so on…
I agree with Julie about the hassle of changing the schedule on current thermostats, but I think this product overdoes it. Many homes would need two or three of these and at $249 each most people will just put up with the clunky interface of a regular programmable thermostat, especially when they can be found for $40.
@Dmitriy A thermostat is the device you use to adjust the heat / air conditioner temperature for your home.
@JT You have 2-3 thermostats in your home? Does that mean you have 2-3 furnaces installed too? Unless you have the ability to control heat and cooling on a per room basis, I believe you would only need one.
@Julie
By home I meant house and I should have been more specific and said multi-level house. I have a two story house with partially finished basement. Each level is a zone that has it’s own thermostat so that, for example, at night only the bedrooms upstairs get heated. Most boilers (used a lot in the northeast) I’ve seen are set up to direct the heat to 3-4 independent zones as needed.
@JT I wish my furnace had that option… My basement is about 5 degrees cooler than the main level. So we have to have a space heater in the winter.
@Julie
I guess it’s easy enough for a boiler to do that since it’s just moving water around. I’ve seen zone systems for forced air heating but that required a lot of space for all the extra ducting near the furnace.
I would love a programmable thermostat that just had a touch screen that made scheduling easier. I really don’t think the extras the Nest offers would end up saving me enough to justify the cost. $150 is probably my cutoff for a smart, geeky thermostat and even that would give me pause since I’d need three of them.