I got the nest in hopes that it would lower my electric bill and offer more control over the temperature at any time. After several days of trying to program the nest to follow the schedules I wanted, I became frustrated at this product already.
My goal was to have the heat low at night, for comfortable sleep. Not using any energy unless below 64.
Then, an hour before I get up, the thermostat to warm my house to 75.
Once I am ready and have gone "away" I wanted the thermostat to let it get to as low as 60 in my home, and not use ANY energy unless absolutely needed.
An hour before coming home, warm my house to my desired temperature. Not hard, or shouldn't be.
A few days in, of having to virtually change the thermostat, which is nice to be able to control from my phone instead of walking down the stairs at night, I started checking the energy it was using. I noticed i kept waking up to the unit blowing air, but it didn't say it was heating, and my house was about 65 degrees on its own as long as it was heated to 72 or more, it would hold around 65 through the night. So the nest was using energy to blow cold air and use the fan. When it should have just been "off" essentially, unless it reached that low minimum temp.
A few days in, as it got colder outside, the nest was allowing my house to get as cold as 50 degrees at night. I would wake up freezing. So now, not only is it not following the set schedule, it was also letting my house get below the minimum temp. Once I woke up, I would adjust the app and make it heat my home, which says "heating to 74 in 2hrs+". Annoying but i can grab an extra blanket until it reaches temp. I turned off the schedules and left it at a constant 73. It would not keep it at 73. i was using space heaters.
Then, the most recent night I used it, It got to 53 and my outside unit froze up. My app showed my nest using energy for 15 HOURS STRAIGHT just blowing COLD air. Not actually triggering the unit to heat. Just essentially fanning my house. Kicking the fans off, a few second break, kicking them on. No HOT air at all. I reset the breakers in my home, HEATED my unit to unfreeze it, with a hairdryer, reset the nest and worked through 2 hours of it saying i need to do this, do that. I hook it back up and it does the same thing. Says 2+hours until set temp. I attempted emergency heat. No heat. I attempted to flip between o/b wire control on the app. I wriggled around all the settings. The nest is useless. It was still blowing COLD air through. So now the nest went from moderately working, at least it was heating just not on a schedule i set for it, to not heating and blowing FRIGID air through my house no matter what. At no point should it have let my house get that cold. Or allowed my unit to freeze up which would concern anyone because I thought I had a true HVAC issue. I was about to call someone, spend money to look at the actual unit. Then I took it off again and put my old thermostat back, which promptly heated my unit in an hour and it worked perfectly fine.
How ridiculous for such an expensive, boasted product. The nest read compatible for my unit. All wiring was correct. The nest is just a pain in the butt. And now, from just a few days of using it, I anticipate my energy bill to be HIGHER than what it was with my traditional thermostat.
