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Schedule interval to 15 min

Erik1
Community Member

My daughter is sleeping in a different room as to where the thermostat is hanging. During the nights I would like her heating to be turned on now and then so that she can stay warm. 

The heating in her room is really fast, so I don’t want it to be on for more than 15 minutes, otherwise she gets over heated, which is dangerous for a baby. 

In the schedule I manually created I can only set the intervals at 1 hour, which is way too long. I need it to be 15 mins. 

I’ve been reading online about this issue which  many people have for years. My question is therefore, when will this be solved, because it is very frustrating (and in my case dangerous) and this is an easy issue fix to solve. 

40 REPLIES 40

Jake
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey Erik1,

 

Apologies for the delayed reply. I wanted to reach out and let you know that I have provided this feedback to our Team. We are always looking to improve our products, and we do appreciate the feedback. Please let me know if you have any questions from here, as I would be happy to take a closer look.

 

Best regards,

Jake

Russb12
Community Member

Need to hurry up! cost of living we are all looking at alternative systems that work like normal thermostats and actually do what we want. Alternatives are TADO vs 3, Hive, Ecobee.. am already looking at replacing mine. To only get 30 min options on your boiler rather than 1 minute interval options is such a simple fix - get on with it or lose customers! 

Jake
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey Erik1,

 

I want to ensure you are good to go, and everything is working properly. Please let me know if you are still having trouble, as I will be locking the thread in 24 hours due to inactivity. 

Best regards,
Jake

Erik1
Community Member

Hi Jake, thanks for your reply! I was starting by to think nobody read this. 

Regarding your question whether I still am having troubles, this is indeed still the case. The issue is still there and I still can’t schedule the heating of my baby’s room for only 15 minutes. 

CharlieATL
Community Member

Hello Jake, Erik1 -

I'm following this exchange and it seems that 9 months into this there has been no resolution.  Jake, the simple way I can think to correct this interval problem is to either move away from the graphical interface and/or add a way to manually type the beginning and end times, with the desired temperature.  This would allow the 15-minute interval that we need.  I acknowledge that there may be mechanical issues with certain HVAC products that would preclude to frequent on/off cycles, so perhaps there should be a minimum to protect the equipment, but I would suspect 15 minutes would be acceptable.

there is no way to manually type this on google nest as far as i can see and why must we problem solve a basic issue like time settings even an old mechanical boiler can run timings to 1 minute intervals!

Snichs77
Community Member

Nest is begging to lead me towards Hive. No heat boost option and in the schedule although you can choose quarter past or quarter too. It won't let you select these meaning 30mins or 1hr. In reality 45 mins is plenty. With energy costs soaring this needs to be fixed ASAP

 

Russb12
Community Member

Agreed! I need

to reduce my heating and hot water times and 15min increments would make a massive difference! 

It’s now even more important that Google sort this out following the news of the ridiculous cost increases just about to hit the UK.  It’s  also disgraceful that they don’t even bother to reply to any of the posts on this subject on their own forum.

Russb12
Community Member

agreed! when are they going to fix this! 

KevinG1969
Community Member

Did this ever get sorted out … I’ve asked a similar question and it appears some people can schedule water heating in 15 minute increments.  The best I can get is 30 mins. 

No you can't schedule for anything less than half an hour - clearly google assume people use really old boilers made in the dark ages! 

Erik1
Community Member

Nope, after a year still not picked up.. 

KevinG1969
Community Member

Thank you.  That’s absolutely dreadful.

how hard can it be to push a change like that out to thermostats during a software update?

strange how Nest/Google can go on about saving energy, but don’t even try to actually provide tools to make it easier

 

agreed! Where is the change! We are paying double  for energy! 

nestuseruk
Community Member

this seems like such an easy thing to do, and such a great way for us all to save money and energy. come on google, sort this out please!!! give us an option to choose 15min increments, or specific times. 

I contacted the helpdesk and the feedback was that they decided a while back that to have boilers switching on/off within 15 mins of water heating starting could damage the boiler.  They did make it clear that you could put the timer/schedule on for 30 mins and cancel it after any number of minutes …. Which I’ve tried and it does work.  As such, set the timer to start 15 mins before you wake up and then cancel it when you wake up (stopping it at 15 mins).  That’s as good as it’s likely to get right now.  I must say that the feedback given was quick, detailed and friendly so I can’t complain about that and they have said that the developers will continue to look at it in the future.

Jrrowleyws
Community Member

In some ways I can understand not allowing a minimum of 15 minutes but why can't I set my hot water schedule to whatever I want. If I want it to be 38 minutes then I should be allowed to have it like that!

 

I've only recently moved into a house with nest and will see how it is this winter for heating but it's on the verge of being ripped out and being replaced with a simple non-smart timer unit. The restrictions on this are insane.

Egroeg
Community Member

This is rediculous.  I would like to set the water heating to auto heat for 45 mins as 30 mins is too short.  An hour is too long for energy efficiency purposes.  It should be easily program on the nest software to allow someone set the duration on the hot water schedule for 45 mins daily, but no less than 30 mins to alleviate boiler concerns.  At least that will save some people money.  This app is supposed to be all about energy efficiency.  

I’m afraid that it’s not going to happen.  Whilst I had very good dialogue with Nest it was very clear that this is not considered to be important enough to feature on any priority list.

ridiculous - any thermostat should have down to the minute options to be on and off. If they don't sort this. I am going to get rid of the one installed in my house, more archaic than the old rounded timers you had to set with miniature teeth, they were far better! Crazy! My last house had  a bluetooth device that was a doodle to change. 

Erik1
Community Member

With the current energy crisis and soaring prices, I really don’t get why this is not an urgency to fix. I live in Europe and my energy bills have quadrupled over the past two months. This issue should be very very easy to solve by nest..

KevinG1969
Community Member

I’m afraid that it’s not going to happen.  I have to say that I agree with you completely and whilst I had very good dialogue with Nest it was very clear that this is not considered to be important enough to feature on any priority list.

Gabbo
Community Member

Disgrace. How long have we been asking for this. Stupid google

PBr
Community Member

Agreed with the above request to shorten the minimum time span from an hour.  15 minutes would be fine for me, but 30 minutes would be acceptable as a compromise.

I write software for a living and it is clearly straightforward to change the timer interval to be smaller than 1 hour in the interface.  The GUI allows you to zoom in, and you can add temperatures at 30 minute intervals before the app quickly auto-deletes them.

I suspect there is some back-end cloud processing to do with all the advanced features like 'true radiant' which can't cope with smaller more frequent timers, or would cost more data-centre money to run.

It sounds like a lot of people, including me, are having to manually interrupt their heating to get it to run for smaller amounts of time.  It just isn't good enough as is; gas is ridiculously expensive and people need to be able to control its usage directly, not hope for the best with some unknown uncontrollable algorithms in a data centre somewhere.

Please change the app timer GUI so you can set heating temperatures every 15 minutes, even if this requires some of the 'smart' features to be turned off.

Thanks,

Paul

WA22
Community Member

Agree with everyone, this is absolutely ridiculous. 

This is not a replacement for asking for this important, yet simple feature, although I have been using Alexa as a workaround to manage my heating through nest. 

I cleared everything off the Nest schedule app and use the routine feature on Alexa to control the thermostat. You obviously need to link nest and Alexa in the first instance, but it’s been working correctly and I have my heating coming on and off at anytime and duration I like. 


you obviously need Alexa for this to work and I’m not suggestion people buy one for this but if you have one already it’s a solution. 

cheers 

KevinG1969
Community Member

Thanks for that.

I’ve not had any further replies from Google so it looks like we’re stuck with what we have.

With your Alexa routine are you able to control the water heating the same way?

thanks

WA22
Community Member

Sorry I’m not sure, I have a combi boiler and only use nest for heating. If Alexa distinguishes between the two when it’s linked then I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t. 

I basically have two separate routines one for on and one for off. 

Eg I have Mon - Fri  set nest to 19 deg at 6am. then another one Mon - Fri set nest to 8 deg at 6:45am. 

Then separate ones for the weekend and evenings etc. 

Just make sure you label them clearly so it’s easy to adjust something when you want to in the future. 

 

You do need to make sure that everything is cleared from the schedule on the nest app. 

There is a workaround with Google. Use Google Home to add routines to set the desired temp for the desired time. That way you can schedule the heating at 1 minute intervals. Does not work for water though, but happy with 30 mins in the morning and boost if I need it later in the day.

Brilliant! Never thought of that. Now deleted the Nest morning schedule and set up two Household routines in Google Home. One to set the thermostat to 20C at 7:30 and another for 8:00 to set the thermostat back down to 17.5C again. Thanks for this!

Been looking for an answer to the forever ongoing Nest schedule complaint and this is exactly what I needed. Thank you so much for sharing!

RichardWH
Community Member

This is Bull. 

All we want is to be able to run the heating for 30mins before we get up not 1 hour. That’s enough to take the chill off but not long enough that we’re waking up all sweaty and with empty wallets.

 I’m going to fit a dumb timer across my boiler’s heating contacts in parallel with nest to get around this silly issue but honestly I shouldn’t have to.

Also, the minimum of 9°c is not low enough either. It should be 5°c for frost protection in the UK. Our bypass rad (like most) is in the hallway and so is the nest. this area will regularly get below 9°c in winter causing the heating to run all the time.

If the issue is that you don’t want to be liable for causing damage by short cycling peoples boilers then display a disclaimer on the first attempt to set a 30min increment. 

NB. Most of these boilers in UK are combis so are designed to run for very short periods when you call for hot water to do the dishes or wash your hands after a number 2, etc.

lotusmad2001
Community Member

having the same problem. Its such a strange issue to have when gas prices are so high, especially since they push the eco narrative as part of their marketing

Keeno
Community Member

As soon as this Nest thermostat came to market I had one installed straight away. 
My boiler uses oil and so I don’t have to worry about short times of functioning. 
As everyone in this thread has mentioned, it’s disgraceful that a using customer of the Nest device can’t have better control of their energy. 
Shame on Google. 
I’ll be replacing the thermostat with one that works with Apple HomeKit 

Dwjmcf
Community Member

I'm another new customer who is astonished that I can't set my water or heating at 15 minute increments. First day with the Nest thermostat, big disappointment. 

Use routines via Google home app, you can set 1 min intervals between events including heating events

Thanks. Does it work for hot water control? 

I have combi boiler so I don't have hot water control. I would assume it does as the Nest controls are available in Google Home, but probably best to check for yourself. 

I've downloaded the Home app but as far as I can see, you can't use it to control hot water. I'm completely baffled by this. All those thousands of people with heating and/or hot water on for longer than they need it, paying more, putting more carbon into the atmosphere. Shame on Google.