Am I Screwing Up the "Learning"?

[wbt]

I just installed 3 Nest Learning Thermostats.  Although I understand the concept of "learning", it's January in New England and therefore cold.  I didn't want to wait for them to learn, so I entered schedules matching those on my older thermostats.  I have two questions about what to expect from here:

1. Am I messing up the "learning" or will the thermostats still get better at responding to my home as time goes on?

2. When I set a scheduled start time for heating is that the time the furnace will be told to start heating?  Or, will the thermostat assume that's the time I want the room to reach the target temperature and start the furnace earlier, so it will reach the target temp. at by the set time?

[CoolingWizard · Accepted solution]

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@wbt wrote:

I just installed 3 Nest Learning Thermostats.  Although I understand the concept of "learning", it's January in New England and therefore cold.  I didn't want to wait for them to learn, so I entered schedules matching those on my older thermostats.  I have two questions about what to expect from here:

1. Am I messing up the "learning" or will the thermostats still get better at responding to my home as time goes on?

The Nest thermostat is always learning about your HVAC system its performance.  In fact, once it evaluates the heating performance, it uses the data as a baseline. In the future, if the system fails to perform at its learned baseline, it will notify you to have the system serviced.  

2. When I set a scheduled start time for heating is that the time the furnace will be told to start heating?  Or, will the thermostat assume that's the time I want the room to reach the target temperature and start the furnace earlier, so it will reach the target temp. at by the set time?

Based on the systems learned performance, Nest will determine when to turn the system on in order to reach the desired set point temperature by the time you set.  So, let’s say your overnight temperature is 68 and you want to have 70 at 8:00am. The nest will turn the heat on say 6am to move it from 68 to 70.

AC Cooling Wizard

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[CoolingWizard · Accepted solution]

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@wbt wrote:

I just installed 3 Nest Learning Thermostats.  Although I understand the concept of "learning", it's January in New England and therefore cold.  I didn't want to wait for them to learn, so I entered schedules matching those on my older thermostats.  I have two questions about what to expect from here:

1. Am I messing up the "learning" or will the thermostats still get better at responding to my home as time goes on?

The Nest thermostat is always learning about your HVAC system its performance.  In fact, once it evaluates the heating performance, it uses the data as a baseline. In the future, if the system fails to perform at its learned baseline, it will notify you to have the system serviced.  

2. When I set a scheduled start time for heating is that the time the furnace will be told to start heating?  Or, will the thermostat assume that's the time I want the room to reach the target temperature and start the furnace earlier, so it will reach the target temp. at by the set time?

Based on the systems learned performance, Nest will determine when to turn the system on in order to reach the desired set point temperature by the time you set.  So, let’s say your overnight temperature is 68 and you want to have 70 at 8:00am. The nest will turn the heat on say 6am to move it from 68 to 70.

AC Cooling Wizard

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[wbt]

@CoolingWizard Thank you for your insight into the process. Can you tell me how long it will likely be before I will notice the thermostats warming the hose early, to reach the desired temperature at the desired time? Will new heating events be added to the schedule when that happens?

[CoolingWizard · Accepted solution]

@wbt , the Nest is constantly learning about your house, your HVAC system and the outdoor weather in your hometown. With this data the Nest, and any smart thermostat that is, can evaluate the time it takes to go from a current room temperature to the set point temperature desired.  Where the nest thermostat excels is that it has the ability to use the outdoor temperature along with the outdoor humidity levels to determine the effect of the weather on the home as well. So, as you can see, the nest can learn how efficient energy wise your construction of your home is. Based on this data, it learns overtime based on the outdoor temperature and humidity just how long it takes your system at any given time to change the temperature from what it currently is to what you were desiring it to be. Over the course of 12 months, the Nest operting system gets more and more accurate. And because of this knowledge it learns, it can make determination at any point if your system is suddenly not performing like it used to. In which case it will send you a warning notification to have your system check. You don’t have to do anything but set the temperature you desire at a given point in time of the day, either manually or by using a schedule. The Nest will do everything else

AC Cooling Wizard