4 ms·

I have a single story, three bedroom home. Currently I have a cheap programmable thermostat, and it does next to nothing for me. Some weekends I'm away, some

by Zikes 12y ago

I have a single story, three bedroom home. Currently I have a cheap programmable thermostat, and it does next to nothing for me. Some weekends I'm away, some weekends I'm at home. Most days I'm gone between specific times because of work, but sometimes I'll fire up the laptop and work from home. That lack of awareness in my cheap programmable thermostat means any schedule I program into it would be wrong almost as often as it is right, which makes it only as good as any other simple thermostat with an up and a down button. Since it is wrong so much, that means I'm often wasting money heating or cooling a house that I'm not in. Or I could just install a Nest, which not only would know whether or not I'm at home but which I could remotely control with my phone to let it know when I'm headed home or when I'll be gone all weekend. Edit: The downvotes are most likely because you took something which is an obvious step up from conventional home heating and air controlling systems and has provable benefits, then called it a marketing scam based on vague anecdotal evidence, with a rather hostile "if you disagree then you're an idiot that believes in magic and fairies" tone, to boot.

robomartin 12y ago
And yours might be a perfect use case for it. Small home, highly irregular schedule. No issues there. My problem is that these things are being sold at my local Home Depot as some kind of magical device. This is a bedroom community of probably 100,000 to 200,000 homes. A huge number of them are two story homes of 2,000 square feet and above with three to five bedrooms. Nest is a waste of time for these people. I actually have data on this. I know six people with homes virtually equal to mine (planned community) who bought Nest to save money and could not tell you if they've saved a penny. If there's an impact it's that small. Las summer I convinced one of those neighbors to buy a $200 fan and use it as I suggested. He immediately reported a savings of over $300 PER MONTH on his cooling bill. He saved over $1,000 last summer and expects to save over $2,000 this summer. That's why I say it's a scam.
- mrfusion 12y ago
  What kind of fan does that? Is it something I can install myself?
  - robomartin 12y ago
    I use one similar to this one: http://www.homedepot.com/p/MaxxAir-30-in-Industrial-Heavy-Duty-2-Speed-PRO-Drum-Fan-BF30DDORGPRO/204627482 http://www.homedepot.com/p/MaxxAir-30-in-Industrial-Heavy-Du... I've also used one like this: http://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-30-in-Pedestal-Fan-SFSC1-750S/202757018 http://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-30-in-Pedestal-Fan-SFSC1-750S... My neighbor bought a smaller one: http://www.homedepot.com/p/MaxxAir-30-in-Industrial-Heavy-Duty-2-Speed-PRO-Drum-Fan-BF30DDORGPRO/204627482 http://www.homedepot.com/p/MaxxAir-30-in-Industrial-Heavy-Du... The idea is really simple. In our case these are two story homes with balconies. The fan goes on the balcony right outside the sliding glass door. You set it up to exhaust hot air from the house. Open all the windows. That will be your incoming cool air. The windows downstairs are fully open and the upstairs windows only four to six inches. Turn this on as soon as the temperature outside is significantly cooler than inside. There have been days when I've been able to get the house down to 65 degrees in a couple of hours. I've also used the standing fan placed outside a ground level floor window blowing cold air in. Now you open the upstairs windows to push the hot air out. So, you either pressurize your home with cool air or reduce the pressure (by sucking air out) in order to have cool air enter. Not that hard to do. It takes all of five minutes a day to go through the open-windows-turn-on-fans dance and you save hundreds. My next move is to automate this by integrating it into the ducting system as well as providing for a filtered cool air intake path. The best part is that I saved the money I'll need by using this method during the last three summers. That money is going into system that should save me $1,000 to $2,000 per summer when compared to every house in my neighborhood. Nest can't even begin to compare to this performance.
- Domenic_S 12y ago
  > $300 PER MONTH Wow, and I thought my energy bills were high in California. Where in the world do you live where there's room to save $300/month?
  - robomartin 12y ago
    I'm in So. Cal. The A/C units the builder installed in my neighborhood are, well, crap. Not unusual to have bills in the $500 per month range.

by Zikes 12y ago

robomartin 12y ago

And yours might be a perfect use case for it. Small home, highly irregular schedule. No issues there. My problem is that these things are being sold at my local Home Depot as some kind of magical device. This is a bedroom community of probably 100,000 to 200,000 homes. A huge number of them are two story homes of 2,000 square feet and above with three to five bedrooms. Nest is a waste of time for these people. I actually have data on this. I know six people with homes virtually equal to mine (planned community) who bought Nest to save money and could not tell you if they've saved a penny. If there's an impact it's that small. Las summer I convinced one of those neighbors to buy a $200 fan and use it as I suggested. He immediately reported a savings of over $300 PER MONTH on his cooling bill. He saved over $1,000 last summer and expects to save over $2,000 this summer. That's why I say it's a scam.

mrfusion 12y ago
What kind of fan does that? Is it something I can install myself?
- robomartin 12y ago
  I use one similar to this one: http://www.homedepot.com/p/MaxxAir-30-in-Industrial-Heavy-Duty-2-Speed-PRO-Drum-Fan-BF30DDORGPRO/204627482 http://www.homedepot.com/p/MaxxAir-30-in-Industrial-Heavy-Du... I've also used one like this: http://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-30-in-Pedestal-Fan-SFSC1-750S/202757018 http://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-30-in-Pedestal-Fan-SFSC1-750S... My neighbor bought a smaller one: http://www.homedepot.com/p/MaxxAir-30-in-Industrial-Heavy-Duty-2-Speed-PRO-Drum-Fan-BF30DDORGPRO/204627482 http://www.homedepot.com/p/MaxxAir-30-in-Industrial-Heavy-Du... The idea is really simple. In our case these are two story homes with balconies. The fan goes on the balcony right outside the sliding glass door. You set it up to exhaust hot air from the house. Open all the windows. That will be your incoming cool air. The windows downstairs are fully open and the upstairs windows only four to six inches. Turn this on as soon as the temperature outside is significantly cooler than inside. There have been days when I've been able to get the house down to 65 degrees in a couple of hours. I've also used the standing fan placed outside a ground level floor window blowing cold air in. Now you open the upstairs windows to push the hot air out. So, you either pressurize your home with cool air or reduce the pressure (by sucking air out) in order to have cool air enter. Not that hard to do. It takes all of five minutes a day to go through the open-windows-turn-on-fans dance and you save hundreds. My next move is to automate this by integrating it into the ducting system as well as providing for a filtered cool air intake path. The best part is that I saved the money I'll need by using this method during the last three summers. That money is going into system that should save me $1,000 to $2,000 per summer when compared to every house in my neighborhood. Nest can't even begin to compare to this performance.
Domenic_S 12y ago
> $300 PER MONTH Wow, and I thought my energy bills were high in California. Where in the world do you live where there's room to save $300/month?
- robomartin 12y ago
  I'm in So. Cal. The A/C units the builder installed in my neighborhood are, well, crap. Not unusual to have bills in the $500 per month range.