Nest Thermostats

Dave_132

It would seem that every company out there that makes a smart thermostat is trying to take a swipe at Nest. Either overtly or covertly the bashing goes on. I had had nothing but success with the product and my customers are very pleased with the ease of operation and performance. Forty five years in this trade has taught me to not overstate claims regarding energy savings. I do not believe Nest ever misled anyone in their claims. Similar claims were made by Honeywell when they first introduced the chronotherm thermostat. I happen to think that Nest is the victim of a lot of professional envy. Many companies were late getting their product to market and suffered as a result. It is men like Tony Fadell that built this country. There contribution is immeasurable. Finally if the product did not live up to the minimum claims made, why would so many utility company's be offering a rebate to its customers.

GreenGene

because utility companies have very little experience in HVAC but are in charge of rebates?

GreenGene

I've read a lot of pros and complaints about the Nest, some are that everytime it gets an auto update it loses all of the knowns it learned.

Another is the read out displays the set point not the actual room temp, I dunno, it has some pluses but the way they went about going to market was wrong.In HVACR you go through us not the customer direct, it just left a bad taste on some people's mouths because they ignored HVAC contractors and suppliers and went to DIY stores, maybe that is good sales strategy but in our trade it's suspect so they have to over come that stereotype.

I've also read that the auto learn can become confused, if people are turning the setting at different times it can think that's your lifestyle, but I don't have much experience with it so I can't say if that is accurate.

SWEI

It seems to work OK on older and low spec forced air systems.

Jamie Hall

SWEI said:

It seems to work OK on older and low spec forced air systems.

Now that is what I call a recommendation...

In many situations -- such as those @SWEI mentions -- it does work well. In other situations -- radiant, steam, most hot water -- it doesn't, nor was it really meant to. It would be nice if the Kalifornia crowd would stop making promises (and regulations) which don't apply to the rest of world...

GreenGene

That could be part of the problem with the Nest, it wasn't designed by HVAC people, it was designed by IT techs with exposure to west coast air systems.

It's very limited, it's more show than go and the efficiency claims are somewhat bogus.

Best thing is a communicating system with wifi and apps that comes with a unit made by an HVACR manufacturer, like the Carrier Infinity, blows Nest off the planet.

GreenGene

I used to work for Carrier and trained people on the Infinity, it's really a good system, incredibly smart, easy to troubleshoot, one of the few things they did right.

Hilly

With the Nest design and logic what hot water system would it be suited for? And where is it a bad idea to install? (I assume high mass radiants are bad for comfort because of the Nest setbacks.)

Some customers have too much money and like the flashy look of the Nest if nothing else. So are there system where you would flat out say to them this is a bad idea.

SWEI

Like all conventional thermostats (no matter how smart) the Nest has to interface with the HVAC system using just a relay. Think of it as a one-bit, 0.01 baud communication channel.

ClimateTalk has the potential to change this, but it will be least a couple of years before we can do much with it.

GreenGene

What is sad is people do not understand how limited these thermostats are, yeah they're "smart" but they don't make the system any smarter, it's still relays.

I was putting a system together for a school that was donated by a supply house, sort of a conjunction between the school and them so they could use the lab for training.

They gave us a York 90+ communicating warm air and condenser but no communicating user interfaces, instead a Honeywell Zone board, 2 HW dampers and Ecobee thermostats.

I mean it ran but it didn't communicate. Ok for training and showcasing but not for efficiency, plus we couldn't show or train on the communicating system.

Dave_132

I will concede the point about there approach to marketing there product to the end user, however the business that I have received following an installation or correcting a mistake made by the homeowner has more than offset whatever I would of made on margin from sale. Many of these people have become very good customers and I have replaced equipment and made repairs which has been beneficial to all parties. The referrels have been good as well. I have found that the control authority meets the requirements of most applications if installed properly. We are in a new age as far as our industry is concerned. We need to change with it or risk the possibility of becoming irrelevant .

John Mills_5

In the last few days, we found 2 bad Nests. 1 at the owner's home and one at the owner's office. How many Honeywells did we change in the same time frame????? 0

hot_rod

Rumor has it they hired some engineers from Honeywell I've also heard some of them have left

It took them some time to admit that they are, may not be compatible with two wire systems

A lack of qualified tech support was also a sore spot. Was it ever tested or intended to be hydronic compatible?

Jamie Hall

Realistically, the fundamental -- very fundamental -- problem with the Nest is that it was and is intended to work with heating or cooling systems which have very low thermal inertia: forced air. With such systems, it is possible -- even reasonable -- to have moderate to large variations between occupied and unoccupied conditions (set backs in the case of heat; what do you call them for cooling???). As the thermal inertia of the system goes up, the benefit of the set back goes down -- this has been discussed here on the Wall at length, for years -- until you finally get to radiant as the extreme, with very high thermal inertias (recovery can be on the order of days!).

Can they be programmed to work with higher thermal inertias? I dare say they can. But for such systems, will they work any better than a more conventional programmable? I doubt it. Will the average home owner, installing one, do the necessary programming? I very much doubt it -- we have enough trouble with conventional programmables getting folks to set the correct type of heating system (cycles per hour!) and being reasonable about set backs.

Are there better control strategies available? Oh yes indeed there are, depending on the type of heating system installed and the amount of intelligence and connectivity to additional information one wants to plug in. On most hydronic and radiant systems, for instance, a simple outdoor reset can work wonders. One does want to balance system complexity, cost, and reliability against efficiency, however.

ChrisJ

I'm not a professional, therefore I don't think there can be any "professional envy" from me, correct?

Here's my experience with the Nest.

Back when the second version of the Nest came out I had a few coworkers that had them. One of the coworkers, that has a PhD in electrical engineering had his lock up for no apparent reason. He continued to use it, and during this I decided to buy one as well. During the first hour of use, mine locked up and had to be manually reset. I took it back at that point as I considered it highly unreliable.

A few months later, the same coworker as before had his lockup again. Not sure what came of it as he switched jobs.

The other few coworkers have not complained much, but did say they had some issues after updates or if wifi dropped out.

I went back to my Honeywell VP 8000 series which, even though it lies to me about the temperature in the room, has never locked up or had any issues.

Chances of me trying a Nest again are slim to none. When it comes to controlling my HVAC equipment I need rock solid reliability, not pretty lights.

Perhaps the current Nest delivers this and more, I honestly do not know.

ChrisJ

And I'm sorry but, did you just say "It is men like Tony Fadell that built this country. There contribution is immeasurable. "


Seriously?


Yeah, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Henry Ford and Tony Fadell, the man who helped design the first ipod...............

Never thought I'd see those names in the same sentence, but there it is.

Mind you, the ipod wasn't even close to being the first portable mp3 player, so I personally don't think that even counts as an invention.

GreenGene

Most of those men were jerks, except Tesla, Edison was a serious you know what, he stole all of his employees inventions claiming he did it, he welched on a 50k bet with Tesla and when Tesla went with Westinghouse and his AC system was proven to blow Edison's DC system, Edison went around publicly electrocuting large animals, dogs, horses and an elephant to scare people from using AC.

Edison was an arrogant jerk to say the least and everything concerning him needs to be rewritten in school's history books.

WE built this country with our blood while those men took all the money and the credit.

ChrisJ

GreenGene said:

Most of those men were jerks, except Tesla, Edison was a serious you know what, he stole all of his employees inventions claiming he did it, he welched on a 50k bet with Tesla and when Tesla went with Westinghouse and his AC system was proven to blow Edison's DC system, Edison went around publicly electrocuting large animals, dogs, horses and an elephant to scare people from using AC.

Edison was an arrogant jerk to say the least and everything concerning him needs to be rewritten in school's history books.

WE built this country with our blood while those men took all the money and the credit.

Well aware of Edison's history, as well as many of the rumors going around about him.

Surprised you didn't go into a rant about Ford and his "service department" as that was worse than anything Edison did in my book.

Either way, most would regard these people as having a huge impact on our country.

Not Tony Fadell, at least not at this time.

GreenGene

That's the way our slanted history books state it, whatever they did they did not have to enslave the American people which is what the Robber Barons did eventually forcing many riots where they hired the police, army and national guard to shoot us, our wives and children.

These are not great men, they are excrement portals.

But in America we tend to focus on wealth instead of class.

and the price of oil is set by the futures market and traders, Exxon/Mobil has a pretty big stake since CFMA of 2000 and the deregulation of our commodities, they had a pretty huge control before.

GreenGene

This is a pretty good overview of Ford's "service department"

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/henry_fords_reign_of_terror_greed_and_murder_in_depression_era_detroit/

AMservices

My experience with nest has gone both ways. I've installed too many to remember, but I haven't run across a residential system that it doesn't work for.
I don't buy them and only install if the customer has one to be installed, that way I can explain there's no warranty (on my time) when they fail.
A few years ago I was having problems with the nest energizing the AC compressor without a call. I explained what was happening to the owner and told him that he needed a new thermostat. He didn't really understand but he went ahead and order a new nest.
The next year at the same house, I had a similar problem with the nest on the second floor.
Only this time instead of completely closing the contactor, it was giving a constant 15 volts, that caused the relay to chatter and burn out.
Again I had to explain my troubleshooting findings to the owner and told him to get it warrantied through nest.
This time the owner didn't believe me and said
"No! This is B.S. There's nothing wrong with the nest. admit it, you don't know what the problem is and the only thing you will blame is the one thing you didn't buy"
This A.H. is yelling this at me, on the street in front of his house, after I just fixed his AC, fix his AC the year before experiencing a similar problem and explained (in detail) my troubleshooting.
I take my job to Hart and have never been so insulted by a customer.
I told him " if you would like I can put the nest back on the wall and show you exactly how it burned out the contactor. I can explain to you how every single part in your system works and the roles they play, but I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO MY JOB! YOU DON'T KNOW S**T ABOUT HOW YOUR SYSTEM WORKS OTHER THEN HOW TO CHANGE THE TEMPERATURE ON YOUR PRECIOUS NEST THERMOSTAT!!"
You believe this guy? Telling me I don't know what I'm doing standing in front of a now working air conditioning system.

So before he would agree to pay me I had to talk with nest tech support. after 10 minutes of explaining how everything was wired, what system I was using, all my voltage readings, how I tested and broke down all the individual elements of the low voltage controls, the support had know problem refunding the money.
The first year on the nest for the 1st floor I found the problem in the control. Removing the nest from the base ended the call for cooling.
The secondsecond time around I found the short-circuit to be in the base of the nest. I had to remove the wire from the base to end the call to the compressor.

If you look at the back of the nest and the base on the wall, notice that there's all these little pins that have to line up perfectly and how small the connections to there boards are and how tight it all needs to be packed in there to be that small.

The nest to me is a prime example of over engineering something that can be simple in the efforts to give the consumer another way to hide the fact they have a heating system and sell them something that will need to have updated every few years.

Nest isn't all bad as I said my experiences have gone both ways, but I'd still pick a different thermostat if I wanted another smart piece of technology on my wall controlling my heat to show off how much money I can blow on unnecessary luxuries that I benefit less from then having a plain old simple thermostat with a great track record.
I'd much rather be confident that what I'm installing is not going to fail and my house freeze.

Honeywell makes a nice touch screen thermostat that you can upload pictures to and have a digital photo album on the wall.
I would still leave it on the home owner to buy.

As for the A.H.
I never talked with him again, but I must have proven my point because his wife hired me to install a ERV for their basement renovation this year

Dave_132

I just had a call on Friday where someone had installed two Honeywell touch screens with duct sensors and interface module. The customer was extremely unhappy as well as uncomfortable in both the heating and the cooling modes. After replacing with two Nest thermostats he called me to say that finally the systems are working correctly. The Homeowner will most likely not want a Honeywell product again after a cold winter and a hot summer inside there home.

ChrisJ

Dave said:

I just had a call on Friday where someone had installed two Honeywell touch screens with duct sensors and interface module. The customer was extremely unhappy as well as uncomfortable in both the heating and the cooling modes. After replacing with two Nest thermostats he called me to say that finally the systems are working correctly. The Homeowner will most likely not want a Honeywell product again after a cold winter and a hot summer inside there home.

What was wrong with the Honeywell units?
What were they doing incorrectly and why?

AMservices

Dave
9:24AM
I just had a call on Friday where someone had installed two Honeywell touch screens with duct sensors and interface module. The customer was extremely unhappy as well as uncomfortable in both the heating and the cooling modes. After replacing with two Nest thermostats he called me to say that finally the systems are working correctly. The Homeowner will most likely not want a Honeywell product again after a cold winter and a hot summer inside there home.

Was the honeywell to complicated or out of calibration or defective?
The nest is easier to use and set up then the honeywell, but as far as reliability, in my eyes all smart thermostats can be problematic.
Main reason why I leave it to the home owner to research what there buying.

Dave_132

It appeared that the Honeywell controls had multiple issues with regard to damage by the contractor who installed them and erratic operation following. Another contractor removed and replaced the defective ones with new identical thermostats. There problems continued. It was at that point the customer purchased the nests and called me. He stated the difference is like night and day.
Once again I feel confident that when the time comes for service or replacement of there equipment I will get the job. And finally it's not that the Honeywell system is to complicated, rather there are better products out there nest being one of them.

GreenGene

that makes no sense

if - Honeywell controls had multiple issues with regard to damage by the contractor who installed them and erratic operation following. Another contractor removed and replaced the defective ones with new identical thermostats. There problems continued.

just installing Nest wouldn't solve that problem, undoing whatever the contractor did would

Nest is not better than anything

easier for a customer to use maybe

Jamie Hall

As a general rule... if you have a problem with a piece of equipment, and you replace it with an identical piece of equipment, and the problem remains, the problem wasn't in the piece of equipment. The problem was somewhere else. Sometimes, when one then replaces the piece of equipment with another different device, and the problem disappears, one is inclined to say "ah ha! That type of widget is at fault". Wrong answer. During the change from widget A to widget B, something else was also changed, and that something was the problem.

And if you don't know what was changed in that circumstance, you don't know what the problem was. Sorry about that.

ChrisJ

@Dave
Why is the Nest a better product than anything Honeywell sells?

Dave_132

I want to be clear about Honeywell , they are and always will be a great company. As far as burner management, flame safeguard any many of there other controls are concerned. They have provided safety and reliability for the thousands of jobs I have completed over the span of my career. I have enormous respect for them as I have for my fellow tradesmen . Just as we have the freedom to purchase our preference in service vehicles or tools , there is room for disagreement . Have a safe and happy Fourth of July!

ChrisJ

Dave said:

I want to be clear about Honeywell , they are and always will be a great company. As far as burner management, flame safeguard any many of there other controls are concerned. They have provided safety and reliability for the thousands of jobs I have completed over the span of my career. I have enormous respect for them as I have for my fellow tradesmen . Just as we have the freedom to purchase our preference in service vehicles or tools , there is room for disagreement . Have a safe and happy Fourth of July!

Oh I don't know if I have enormous respect for them, in fact I have very little. My VisionPro intentionally lies to me about the room temperature so I think it's a steady temp at my set temp.

I was hoping you could tell us why the Nest is better than Honeywell's product. If you like the Nest, and feel it's a better product that's fine but why? What's better about it?


One of my biggest hatreds about my Honeywell thermostat is the fact it will fire my system up 2 minutes before doing a setback at which point it shuts it down without ever even producing heat. There's absolutely no reason, the software couldn't look ahead to see if it's doing a setback in the next 10-15 minutes and either never start in the first place, or, let it continue to run past the setback time a certain amount to extend a "normal cycle".

But no, it fires it up, runs for a few minutes and shuts down for absolutely no reason. I hate this out of principle more than I do for fuel usage. It's beyond retarded.

Dave_132

My reason for my preference of nest over Honeywell is not just with my customers, but my personal bias as well. I installed a first generation nest when they were first launched . It has worked flawlessly without exception. I enjoy the reliability and performance . Having installed close to every thermostat made over four decades, I have come to the conclusion that it is a great product. One observation that Dan Holohan made years ago about people in our industry is that once we become convinced of the quality and reliability we become loyal to that product. I have to admit that I have my favorites and it would most likely take an earthquake to make a change.

Jamie Hall

I suppose I should make clear (where's my tin hat?) that my problem with the Nest is not, actually, with the Nest -- but with the whole proliferation of wirelessly connected to the internet gadgetry which do things that a 60 year old Chronotherm could do very nearly as well -- while exposing the building to some rather serious intrusion and meddling potential. Granted, if the administrator of the gadget is conscientious and changes the passwords on his or her wi-fi, computers, home or business network, and all associated gadgetry at frequent intervals, and does not fall victim to some clever malware, they are fine.

But why?

Gordy

I agree with you Jamie. I have no idea why the obsession with being able to control your thermostat via wifi. Especially with programmable thermostats.

A boiler link like Con X us is a great feature for installers to be able to remotely tune, and monitor boiler installs. However to remotely control your temperature is pretty anal......

GreenGene

Nest is just a marketing scheme, the entire efficiency claim is bogus, it can't save anymore than any other thermostat.

It's just EASIER to set up because you don't have to per se', the catch is in auto learn YOU have to turn it up or down at the moment you want it to repeat that.

The issue is X customer wants Nest, Y doesn't, you service X & Y and whatever they want they get.

The real issues are going to be Comcast, ADT and others are now getting into our equipment and offering to control it.

Here comes the "it's your equipment", "it's your equipment", arguments.

AMservices

Here comes the "it's your equipment", "it's your equipment", arguments.

That sounds like the argument is had with A.H. over his nest.
He wanted new ones and for me to buy them.
I said "it's not my fault they failed. they both worked after I wired them, I wired the new thermostats that i would have originally installed the same way the nest was wired and its working, the voltage is perfect, I didn't buy them, I installed them at your request, so There!"

And if an earthquake did happen, I bet that nest would have falling off those 2 little dimples it's hanging on and smashed on the floor.

I don't warranty my work after earthquakes. It's in the fine print.

GreenGene

That's another issue when a homeowner picks out or buys equipment for you to install.

Make it clear in writing that the warranty is on them or break it up as to labor vs part, still they will blame us because they do not understand what is involved.

Gordy

Ya know I wonder how many times a buddy thought it would be a neat trick to play on another to turn his heat up to 85, or AC down to 60 via their cell phone.......

Jean-David Beyer

I have two reasons why I do not need a Nest thermostat, but they are the same two reasons why I do not need my Honeywell thermostats either.

1.) My downstairs is a slab at grade radiant systems. Hence, there is no point doing setback there. Even though I have 7 separate days on that one, with four different temperatures for each day, they are all set to 69F indoors all the time. Because any temperature change takes a day or two to stabilize.

2.) My upstairs has fin-tube baseboard. Both my upstairs and downstairs are connected to my mod-con with outdoor reset. The reset curve for upstairs and for downstairs are different. But both are set so tight, that even when I had only a 2F reset upstairs, it could take 4 to 6 hours to recover, and that when the boiler was set to boost the supply by 10F if it did not recover in 2 hours and another 10F if it had not recovered after 4 hours. So both my thermostats are now set to be simple on-off thermostats running at a constant temperature. Those reset curves are now, after much fiddling over the first couple of years, so that it heats just fine from 4F outside (coldest I ever saw here) to 70F outside (where the warm weather shutdown takes effect).

ratio

Nice! Are you going to replace the thermostat with a switch? I'd do that, just a single pole toggle switch & a placard that says something like "Don't turn this off". But then, I'd find that funny as you-know-what & giggle every time I saw it.

Wellness

I'm not a big Nest fan for the reasons I outlined in this thread . But I'm curious why "GreenGene" thinks themostat makers should come through HVAC contractors? Thermostat installation is a pretty standardized and in my opinion, has contributed to this recent round of innovation we are seeing among thermostat makers. God forbid that manufacturers have to get approval from a significant segment of contractors before rolling out a new thermostat. We'd still be wrestling with those ones that had the Mercury bubble in them

ChrisJ

I believe GreenGene's point is when a customer asks someone to install a thermostat, or any device they know they've had endless issues with and the contractor installs it, and then it fails and the customer blames the contractor.

People are weird.
Next thing you know they're threatening you, telling all their friends you suck etc even though you warned them the device was a POS.

I could be wrong, but that's what I got out of his comment.