I received a Nest Thermostat from Verizon Wireless as part of the #VZWBuzz blogging program; all opinions are my own.

Nest Thermostat - Photo Credit - Nest.com

When I found out I’d be getting a Nest Thermostat from Verizon Wireless to try out I knew nothing about it. I had no idea what a fabulous little piece of technology it would turn out to be and now that I have it installed, I don’t know how I lived without it.

Nest is more than just a way to turn up the heat from the couch – sure, you can do that, but you can do so much more. Even my husband who’s never a fan of technology is squarely behind this gadget and all that it can do.

What Nest Can Do For You

The Nest Learning Thermostat connects to your wireless Internet to give you the capability of accessing it from any internet connection. But it’s also a smart thermostat. Gone are the days of programming your thermostat in what you think your family’s schedule is. Nest learns your habits and patterns and sets itself up. It’s simply brilliant.

Plus it reminds you to think about your energy use by giving you visual reminders when you’re saving energy (as in turning down the thermostat) which relates to saving you money.

Installing Nest

Nest’s quality is evident in the installation process. A simple online prompt system let me know if my current heating system was compatible and showed me exactly how the wiring was done for my specific location. Total installation was less than 5 minutes and that included screwing in a trim cover (provided) to hide the huge holes left from our old thermostat. A little paint and you’d never know the Nest hadn’t always been there.

Removing the old thermostat - Nest Thermostat Installation - ad

Once installed, adding it to our home wireless system took just a few minutes. The Nest walked us through the process and our details were entered by rotating the dial and then pressing on the face to “enter” right on the Nest itself. It’s pretty amazing.

The Nest wanted to know some simple information about our home including what kind of heat we had – either conventional, forced air, heat pump or duel fuel, or radiant. It uses that information as well as how many square feet are in our home, the year it was built, what our zip code is (to get weather information),  and other questions to determine which features to turn on.

Nest Thermostat Installation

Once the Wi-Fi is connected, accessing the Nest from the internet is simple. A free online account allows me to see my Nest’s current temperature, the outside temp, and more. I can adjust my schedule, make changes in the current temp, etc. If I had more than one thermostat, I could check or adjust them all (how fabulous would that be to change the temp in the kid’s room without entering!).

My Nest Thermostat Online

This smart thermostat has three temperature sensors to track my home’s temp and it tells me how long it will take to heat to the temperature I’ve chosen. It has another sensor that not only tells it when we’re home, but it tells it when we’re approaching it and it lights up the display with the current temp.

Installing the Nest Learning Thermostat – 2nd generation (video)

 Teaching Your Nest

We overrode our old programmable thermostat most of the time because it was so difficult to program. That’s NOT the case with Nest. For the first week, we just turned the temperature up and down as we needed and Nest learned our habits. Now it’s setup a scheduled based on that input (of course, we can change them or override the temp at any time just by turning the dial in person or online). It uses its motion sensor to decide when we’re away and sets itself to Away and the temp we determined at set up for it (for us it’s 50 degrees). That saves us money by not running while we’re gone and it knows when we’ll be home so it starts itself and warms up the house before we get here. I told you it was brilliant!

How the Nest Learning Thermostat Learns (video)

Can You Save Money with a Nest Thermostat?

They say most people save up to 20% off their heating bills because of the scheduling. I haven’t had mine long enough yet to know, but I do know that our home his much more comfortable that it’s ever been. No longer do we arrive home to a freezing temp where we crank the heat to warm it up only to be gasping for air when it gets too hot. That doesn’t happen with the Nest.

After seeing how brilliant the Nest Thermostat is, I’m pretty excited about their next product, Nest Protect. It’s a smoke and carbon monoxide alarm and sure, we have at least 15 alarms in our 1800 square foot house (hello, a firefighter lives here) and the last last thing we need is another one. Yet I can’t wait to see what this one does.

I can’t recommend the Nest Thermostat highly enough. I’m blown away by how smart it is and I’m confident that its purchase price will be more than covered in energy savings.

The Nest Learning Thermostat is compatible with most home heating and cooling systems, including gas, electric, forced air, heat pump, radiant heat, hot water, solar and geothermal heating. To find out if it will work in your home, visit widgets.nest.com/compatibility. 

A Nest That Comes With Your Energy Plan

Some energy companies will send you a Nest at no cost when you sign up for certain plans

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