Doug and Pam, if you want to manually control the temperature setting, you going to forgo all the energy savings advantage of a smart thermostat. To disable the automatic settings you simply go into your Nest App and disable the heating and cooling schedules. To do this, open your Nest app and tap the gear emblem in the upper right hand corner. Scroll to the bottom and tap your thermostat. It will open up and show you the various settings and turn off
- Home/Away assist.
- Early-On
- Cool to Dry
- Sunblock
- Airwave
Now tap upper left “<“ to return to main menu. At the bottom tap Schedule. If see orange circles (this is heating schedule) with temperatures in them, you can tap and hold the day of the week and and choose “Clear Day”. If you are in Cooling mode, the circles will be blue. The clear day process is the same. Once the schedules are clear, your system will maintain the set temperature you manually set.
now, let’s talk a little bit about the features of that nest thermostat. Let’s first talk about home and away.
Home / Away: This feature keeps track of your phone and if your phone is at home, it maintains the home temperature settings. When your phone is away from the house. It maintains the away temperatures which are lower or higher, depending if you’re heating or cooling and that saves energy. When you come home, the system the detects you are at your home and switches the temperature settings back to the home settings.
Early On: this feature uses the knowledge the thermostat learns over time and how long it takes to heat or cool your home when the system is active. This is not an energy saving feature. over the course of time the thermostat evaluates the outdoor temperature of the indoor temperature in a relative humidity and it makes determination on how long it will take to either cool your house or heat your house. The longer the thermostat is active and controlling your house temperature the better and more accurate it gets. Now some people will see this when they said the temperature in the thermostat or the app will tell them how long it will take to reach the temperature.
Cool to Dry: this feature is most beneficial and locations where the humidity is rather high. They get the most out of this feature you need an HVAC system which has a multi speed fan. When an air conditioner runs during the summertime, you might have noticed that it condenses moisture that it sends outside pipe. The result is it is pulling the humidity out of the air and it condenses on the very icy cold coil and then drips to the collection pan and then get sitting on a pipe outside. On a system which has a multi speed fan, the system can be placed in medium speed fan, which causes the air to move more slowly over the coils and does collect more moisture. This will help dry the air, and as I said, this is beneficial in high humidity areas like along the coast. It has little value in the deserts of the southwest.
Sunblock: if your thermostat is located on a wall that gets direct sunlight, part of the day, you can turn this feature on, and it will cause the thermostat to be more accurately at measuring the room temperature in that area. Direct sunlight tends to cause a display to get much warmer and that affects the temperature sensor is inside the display.
Airwave: when in cooling mode, if this feature is active, the nest thermostat will turn off the compressor when the desired temperature is reached and leave the blower fan running. This balances the air temperature throughout by continuing to move the air around the house before shutting off the blower.
The next items are Options:
ECO Temperatures: these are the lowest temperature do you want your heating system to go down to or the warmest temperature you want the air conditioner to be going up to before turning on the system to maintain it. These are your away temperatures. Mine are 54°F for heating and 84°F for cooling. You can set these temperatures wherever you want but you wanna make sure that the temperature you choose is represented with a green leaf.
Safety Temperatures: this feature is actually pretty good for anyone who has vacation property that they’re not at for extended periods of time. If your system mode is turned to off, the temperature set here will cause the system to automatically turn on to protect the home. Central heating to say 40°F and the cooling to say 95°F and no matter what the system temperature is or the mode, if the house gets to 95° it will turn the air conditioner on to maintain 95. Or if the house gets so cold as to reach 40° , it will turn on the heater and maintain 40°. The default for air-conditioning is off. In my house I set it for 95.
I hope that this information helps you.
Ken, The AC Cooling Wizard
Google Pro, Mechanical Engineer, Electrical Engineer and HVAC service company owner.
