Today in the shop (well house) Nest Thermostat

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reible
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Today in the shop (well house) Nest Thermostat

Post by reible »

Our local utility offered one of these for $100 off ie $149 price. Then if you let them cycle your AC during the summer high usage days they give you $40 off your bill. So it is a 4 year payback from that alone.

The install went pretty well. The only real issue was that the builder had put in the thermostat used a 4 wire cable. The 24V, heat, AC, and fan. We have a humidifier which is wired local to the furnace and only takes in to account the passing air humidity.

As some of you who have this sort of hot air system you need to change the humidity setting depending on outside temperatures. This meant that I had to do the settings manually based on the forecast. If you leave the humidity at say 35% and it gets -10 or so you get frost on the windows.......

Anyway the problem was I needed another lead to connect to the Nest. I decided I would just run a two wire cable rather then rewire with a 5 wire cable. The problem was getting the cable run up to the thermostat.

One of my first thoughts was to pull the cable back down with a cord attached then add the new cable and pull back up. Problem was that the wire was run before the sheet rock was on and the installer made sure the cable didn't fall back down in by wrapping it around a nail somewhere up inside the wall. With out making a large hole in the wall there was no way I was going to get that cable loose.

OK tired several other sure fire ways to snag a cord loop draped in the wall... Tried to run a wire snake up, dowel with camera on it to find things...... and well about a half dozen other methods. The final solution was to make a loop that went around the cable with cord attached and attach that to a dowel so it followed the cable up to the hole.

Now I have the cable added and left a cord attached so if this happens to need to be done again it will be a snap.

The humidifier has it's own transformer so I didn't want to chance getting the furnace and it connected together so I put a relay in for isolation. The coil of the relay is attached to the "C" terminal in the furnace and the other side goes to the * on the Nest.

The relay contact is in the circuit of the humidifier solenoid. Got an electrical box to mount the relay in and then patched the duct where the old system mounted and put the box there.

While I was inside the furnace I give it a good cleaning, hadn't done that for a while so it needed it.

All put back together now and programed so when ever we need heat or cool it should be working, didn't actually test it but might do that tomorrow. Today was long enough as it was.

Two of my adult children have the Nest, both like them so I'm going to see how it goes. The old thermostat was programmable which was fine back when I use to work but after retirement we are almost always home and have no set schedule of when we go off places, so it hasn't been "programmed" in years. This new on I can set using my phone so if we turn it up/down when we leave I can always let it know when we will be home and have the temperature just like we want it. That might help save some energy.

Ed
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Re: Today in the shop (well house) Nest Thermostat

Post by JPG »

Be aware that the most common time for 'them' sequentially cycling off is during peak load times during very hot days. A bit of watching forecast so one can 'pre' cool earlier in the day will prevent slight temp(and humidity) increase during those periods.

As for programming the thermostat, I would think that in the winter lowering temps at night would be beneficial.
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Ed in Tampa
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Re: Today in the shop (well house) Nest Thermostat

Post by Ed in Tampa »

I thought about getting the Nest but like you since we are retired we are home most of the time.
We set our cooling for one temp and our heat for another and they never change.
Our electric company wanted us to go to the plan where they can shut off power to HVAC but they wanted to do it when we want cooling or heating. No thanks!
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reible
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Re: Today in the shop (well house) Nest Thermostat

Post by reible »

Looks like I misunderstood the capabilities of the Nest, it doesn't self adjust the humidity like some of the other smart thermostats. Oh well back to the manual adjustments but at least I can do them without going to the furnace room each time so that should be just a little better....

I'm not sure I want to have the AC cycling program, we are on a peak savings plan now where they notify us and we decide if we want to make changes and for the times we do they provide a savings depending on how much we saved on electricity. In a typical summer, if there is such a thing, we have that happen about 4 times a year and it seems we get about $8 off each time so a return of about $32 rather then the $40 but it is up to us to decide and adjust as we see fit.

Now with smartphone access even if we are away we can take advantage of the program by adjusting things a little warmer. For the most part this is for a pretty limited number of hours, say 2:00 to 6:00 on a particular day. You only get a couple hours notice before hand so not being home meant a late start on our savings.

One thing that is nice is that it will both heat and cool while our old one was one or the other. So spring and fall you had to decide if it was going to be needing one or the other and flip the switch. It seemed that we were more likely to wake up to a cold house then the other way round but still.....

Ed
{Knight of the Shopsmith} [Hero's don't wear capes, they wear dog tags]
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