# learning thermostat



## maverick06 (Jan 15, 2014)

All,
I have a programable, digital thermostat that runs the heat pump / oil heat quite well.

I have been thinking about getting a learning thermostat, like Next ( https://nest.com/ )

BUT since the extreme majority of my heating is provided by the wood stove. Since thats not really a learn-able pattern by the thermostat, do you think it could really learn anything useful?

Similarly for cooling, I use a whole house fan a lot. I think that would likewise screw up the benefits provided by the thermostat.

Any thoughts?


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## mass_burner (Jan 15, 2014)

for a wood stove setup, one main benefit of the Nest would the ability to turn on the system remotely when you've been away for hours and the house has cooled down. the Nest would go to your "auto away" temp when it senses you have left the house, that could be 55 if you want. when your on the way home, you can punch it up to 68 so you don't come home to a freezing house. there is also the daily usage info that it gives you.


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## TradEddie (Jan 15, 2014)

I have an old Honeywell programmable thermostat with a learning mode that is totally useless. Unless the thermostat also reads the outdoor temperature, the normal daily variation will prevent accurate learning. To compensate for this, the thermostat will err on the side of caution and ramp up sooner than necessary. I'm sure the Nest is a cool gadget, but I'd take a lot of convincing that it'd save an already energy conscious user much money.

TE


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## Cynnergy (Jan 15, 2014)

mass_burner said:


> for a wood stove setup, one main benefit of the Nest would the ability to turn on the system remotely when you've been away for hours and the house has cooled down. the Nest would go to your "auto away" temp when it senses you have left the house, that could be 55 if you want. when your on the way home, you can punch it up to 68 so you don't come home to a freezing house. there is also the daily usage info that it gives you.



I think a Honeywell wifi programmable thermostat can do this too for about half the price.  Of course it can't tell that you're away, but you can program it for daily movements and turn it up before you get home.  The Nest does look a lot cooler though.

I would have got one for our house but we have electric baseboards and Nest doesn't work with the circuit .


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## mass_burner (Jan 16, 2014)

Cynnergy said:


> I think a Honeywell wifi programmable thermostat can do60this too for about half the price.  Of course it can't tell that you're away, but you can program it for daily movements and turn it up before you get home.  The Nest does look a lot cooler though.
> 
> I would have got one for our house but we have electric baseboards and Nest doesn't work with the circuit .



Your probably right. But aside from that mentioned,  it is way easier to program via the phone and pc. 60 % of the decision was based on appearance since we just did a remodel.


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## peakbagger (Jan 16, 2014)

I have used a Honeywell smart thermostat that adjusts the ramp rate of the heating system based on prior heating cycles. I set the desired time I want to be in the room to be at certain temp. It looks at prior days requests an adjusts when it needs to start heating to meet the desired time and temp. It is great for oil but useless when I am on storage as the response of the baseboards are different between the after out of the oil boiler and the water out of the storage. Plus throw in a mini split and it gets even more confused.


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## woodgeek (Jan 16, 2014)

I have had a HP and nest together for 20 months.  While it is lovely and programmable, it calls aux too much.  Right out of the box, it would increase energy usage by 30% over my old Honeywell.  With a certain amount of hacking and nonsense, I can get it to only use 10% more energy than competing stats.  Very frustrating to buy a unit to save energy and have it cost you more.  I have been posting thi problem on their forum for a year, and they are a completely effed up and non-user-responsive company.  All bling, no engineering.  I will shortly be taking it down and replacing with the Ecobee Si, which has the same or more functionality, should save me some energy, and costs $100 less.


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## mass_burner (Jan 16, 2014)

woodgeek said:


> I have had a HP and nest together for 20 months.  While it is lovely and programmable, it calls aux too much.  Right out of the box, it would increase energy usage by 30% over my old Honeywell.  With a certain amount of hacking and nonsense, I can get it to only use 10% more energy than competing stats.  Very frustrating to buy a unit to save energy and have it cost you more.  I have been posting thi problem on their forum for a year, and they are a completely effed up and non-user-responsive company.  All bling, no engineering.  I will shortly be taking it down and replacing with the Ecobee Si, which has the same or more functionality, should save me some energy, and costs $100 less.


 

does this one have auto-away? my wife is all over the place during the day, no consistent routine to learn. knowing that the temp set will step down automagicaly when she is out is good to know.


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## woodgeek (Jan 16, 2014)

mass_burner said:


> does this one have auto-away? my wife is all over the place during the day, no consistent routine to learn. knowing that the temp set will step down automagicaly when she is out is good to know.



The Ecobee does not have motion sensors.  In my case, the nest auto-away worked ok for the first few months, then they changed the nest firmware so that AutoAway was more aggressive, and overrode schedule temp changes.  It was turning off the HVAC every 30 minutes while we were all home and walking past it regularly.  No user adjustable sensitivity or options, so we had to turn it off and never use that feature again.


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## zorcean (Jan 20, 2014)

I have a question and i might be in the wrong forum. But, I have a pro1 iaq thermostat from http://pro1iaq.com and it is a non-connected device. We are going to be building a new home and we are being asked if we want wifi connected thermostats. I have heard some bad reviews and some good reviews. Can anyone tell me if it is a sound investment and will a connected thermostat actually save me money? I would appreciate any ones feedback. Thanks!


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## woodgeek (Jan 20, 2014)

zorcean said:


> I have a question and i might be in the wrong forum. But, I have a pro1 iaq thermostat from http://pro1iaq.com and it is a non-connected device. We are going to be building a new home and we are being asked if we want wifi connected thermostats. I have heard some bad reviews and some good reviews. Can anyone tell me if it is a sound investment and will a connected thermostat actually save me money? I would appreciate any ones feedback. Thanks!



Depends.  Programmable stats save energy. Not a lot, maybe 10% or so, but only if you use them.  Most folks don't.  I find that with a wifi stat I DO set and run a program, and with my old stat I didn't.

The exception is Heat Pumps.  If your new house will use a HP for heating, then the wifi stats will not save you energy.


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## lml999 (Jan 27, 2014)

maverick06 said:


> All,
> I have a programable, digital thermostat that runs the heat pump / oil heat quite well.
> 
> I have been thinking about getting a learning thermostat, like Next ( https://nest.com/ )
> ...



I have 3 hydronic zones in my house, and now have a Nest on each zone. The "learning" feature is useful as each thermostat learns how long it takes to get to a temperature you've set, and will call for heat prior to your scheduled time. With an older programmable thermostat, you'd just do the mental calculations and move your set time accordingly.

The main living zone and the upstairs zone are directly affected by our insert in the living room.

I find the scheduling over the web/phone/ipad/computer very useful. I tweak it regularly based on our weekly schedules. 

Nest also notes that you can just set the temperature as you want and the thermostat will learn and build your schedule. I never bothered with that.

I'm happy with how they work and would recommend the Nest.


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## Nelson (Jan 2, 2016)

I'm going to try and revive this thread instead of creating a new one.

I'm just starting to look seriously at the Nests, EcoBees of the world. Would love to hear some feedback from current users. One of my main objectives is to be able to obtain usage reports over a long period of time (monthly, preferably year over year but not sure they can store that much data). Wifi access would be nice. Not so important are the remote sensors and the "auto-away" type features.


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## Where2 (Jan 2, 2016)

Unless you're going to poll the Nest every 10 days and make notes of the data, all you will see in the monthly emailed reports from Nest is your system ran X hours in cooling and X hours in heating. I've never encountered any way to acquire all the data that is available in the "last 10 days" view after that 10 day window has gone.

If you're really curious what you get from a Gen2 Nest monthly report, drop me a PM with your email address and I'll forward you one of the monthly reports. I'll warn you, I don't have many with heating reported, nor do I have two stage heat. My A/C is still running in January!


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## woodgeek (Jan 3, 2016)

Second that.  I have had both.  Dumped the Nest, got the EcoBee.  I have the Si, want the '3', but can't justify replacing a working smart stat.  The Nest was a buggy PITA, autoaway was useless BS.  The Ecobee has been SOLID and configurable.

Nest has a 10 day history that you can see (despite them keeping all your data forever), and even then it is a simple runttime barchart.  Ecobee has AFAIK the hands down best report system, logs forever, real time data (15mins delay), can dump a spreadsheet of all relevant data with 5 minute granularity, and prepares a pretty useful monthly report....which tells you weather corrected runtime comparisons with earlier years, etc.


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## Nelson (Jan 13, 2016)

Thanks for the replies! I'm going to do some additional research on the EcoBee as it sounds like everyone here has been happy with these units.


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