Installing my Nest thermostat

Cyril gave me a super nifty birthday present: a Nest thermostat. It was a bit of an indulgence since my old thermostat wasn’t broken but I was entirely grateful for a new gadget. I’m a bit of a lucky duck to have central heating and cooling in my NYC apartment. If you are thinking of buying Nest, make sure you do a compatibility check first.

I’m comfortable switching out light fixtures and handling light home repair so I watched a few of their videos first and got cracking on the installation. It took about 45 minutes total. Not so bad not knowing what to expect when I took out the old thermostat.

My observations in no particular order:

• The whole user experience was solid. The packaging was beautifully designed and the manual was easy to understand. I really appreciated that in the manual, Nest had little blue stickers that allowed one to label the wires so you wouldn’t forget what wire was what. Extremely helpful.






Helpful blue stickers




• The Support section of website was well done. I was able to find an answer relatively quickly. I had just (1) R wire and I wasn’t sure where to put it, in RH or RC. Turns out it doesn’t matter which one. I put it in RH.




• The User Interface of the thermostat is superb – the turning and pushing interaction is simple and intuitive. I can definitely see the Apple iPod influence here.






Powering up for the 1st time




• As a dog owner, remote access through the iPhone is smart and definitely a huge plus. This is an extremely useful feature that I’m sure I’ll use repeatedly to make sure Mac is comfy while I’m away.






I can control the temperature through my iPhone

Things that can be improved on:

• A minor problem in the whole installation was the inability to register with the iPhone Nest app. It repeatedly flashed an error. I was able to register through the Nest website and connected my iPhone to my thermostat.




• I routinely like to have my fan on to circulate air in my apartment. I eventually found how to turn it on by selecting the Fan option in the “Settings” area. For me, it doesn’t seem intuitive to place the Fan On/Off controls in “Settings.” My old thermostat had a simple on/off switch. That so far is the most non-intuitive UI item I’ve found in Nest.

It’s an amazing device and I’m looking forward to when it gathers enough information about my habits in order to save money.