We went away for a month to visit family in the USA. Before leaving, I turned my thermostat down to 14C to save energy while keeping some house heating. I also realised that the thermostat would sense that nobody was home and switch to "eco" mode. Whilst away, I occasionally checked the house temperature via the app. I noticed that the house was warmer than I expected (usually around 17/18C) but I put it down to the house being well insulated and solar heat gain through the windows. They were casual checks, and I was satisfied by knowing the house was ok. I also had my son visiting the house every other day to check on the mail etc. He hadn't flagged up any issues.
Whilst waiting to board our aeroplane to return to the UK, I opened the app and noticed that the heating was on (orange screen) and the house was 18C - why? It suddenly dawned on me that despite turning the thermostat down before we left, for some unknown reason, the thermostat had been heating the house to 18C for a whole month with nobody at home and burning energy for no good reason!
I started digging around in the app to find out what was going on and realised that, unknown to me, eco mode, buried in the settings menu, was set to 18C. I don't recall setting that, but the annoying thing is that it wasn't obvious and that the super clever thermostat hadn't flagged the issue up to me! So, despite the system being able to track my phone and knowing I was away/not home and knowing I had set the thermostat to 14C, it was happily burning energy and my money to heat the house to the "Eco" setting at 18C. How stupid is this thing?
Then I discovered that all the away mode seems to do is turn the hot water heating off 48 hours after detecting nobody is home. Well, I had my son checking on the house every other day so it would have detected him and switched the water heating on again, so that's not much use either.
I feel foolish for thinking that this thermostat would help me save energy. It has, in fact, done precisely the opposite, heating my home when nobody was there. I mistakenly thought it was super clever, but it really isn't.
I'm hoping that on reading this, someone at google will:-
1. Pay my energy bill for the period I was away - Ha Ha, I can't see that happening!
2. Change the software to make all the key settings, such as the ECO temperature, visible on the front screen.
3. Alert the user with emails or messages to anomalies such as the ECO setting being higher than the thermostat set point
4. Allow hot water to be turned off for specific periods of time. (maybe this exists, and I don't know about it.
5. Make the app simpler with clarity and no hidden settings.
I'm also flagging it here so that others can benefit from my experience.
