Moving To The Nest Thermostat With WiFi For Snowbirds

One of the main issues we always have to worry about when we head south for the winter is what temperature to set the thermostat to that controls our home heating furnace. We’re lucky here on Vancouver Island because unlike most of Canada our outside temperature seldom ever drops below freezing (0C/32F). Still, it means we have to pick a temperature using our ancient Honeywell thermostat and that’s the temperature it’s set to for 3 or 4 months 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Google bought Nest earlier this year for a cool (hot?) 3.2 billion in cash

It’s not an efficient way to heat a home for sure because we normally pick 11C/52F while we’re away and it keeps it that way 24 hours a day. When we’re home in the winter we normally have our thermostat set to 21C/70F and when we go to bed we always turn the thermostat right down to 0!  Our bedroom is upstairs. It never seems to get too cold and we always sleep with our windows open. So, heating our home 24 hours a day has always seemed like a real waste of money while we’re away.

The Nest offers full control of multiple thermostats in your home

After a bit of research, I’ve decided to buy a Nest Learning Thermostat that learns your heating and cooling preferences over time, so you don't have to program it. But, and this is the big one for me, the Nest will connect to our home Wi-Fi network and a very elegant app will allow me to control our Nest thermostat using my iPhone, iPad or laptop while we’re in Palm Springs or anywhere else for the winter. That is going to be a huge benefit as we can monitor the weather and adjust accordingly.

You can use your iPhone to turn the furnace on while you’re still in bed

For some strange reason I never did get around to replacing our ancient Honeywell with at least a programmable thermostat. That was probably because I found those mechanical devices complicated and irritating.  The Nest Thermostat can program itself. Just turn it up and turn it down. It learns what temperatures you like and builds a personalized schedule. Teach it efficient temperatures for a few days and, within a week, it'll start setting them on its own. It will auto-adjust by season too. Smart!

Our old Honeywell Thermostat will soon be history

For those who may want to set their own temperatures rather than having Nest learn for itself, it’s very easy to do that without having to go through mind-boggling algorithms and 24/7 time schedules. It also has an Auto-Away and manual Away mode that will both turn off your system until your home reaches a minimum temperature that you choose during setup.

The Nest Thermostat back plate – looks like a fairly straightforward install

Thanks to a very generous daughter, I have a birthday gift certificate to Future Shop that will defray the cost of the new Nest Learning Thermostat. It retails for $249. I’ve spent a few weeks thinking about any computer gizmo I might need and couldn’t come up with anything. Then, I suddenly membered about this Nest Thermostat. It’s supposed to be very simple to install according to what I’ve read so I hope that’s true as I’ll be giving it a try sometime this coming week. I suppose I’ll report back!

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