Any recommendations on thermostats

[Left Seater]

We are looking for a thermostat that we can control by web. There are a number out there including one our utility will provide and install for free. Problem with that is you have to agree to allow them to make changes to your temp settings on the hottest days when electricity demand is at its peak. I have no desire for them to be jacking up my ac to 78 or higher when I am home.

The wife seems to think the nest thermostat is the front runner. Any of y'all have suggestions? On thermostats that is.

[Mikey]

Not sure what your utility incentive program looks like (I deal with the CA programs pretty much all day on most days as part of my job) but a lot of them will install the free thermostat as long as you sign up for their program, and they pay an incentive on top of the free T-stat. I had one installed by SDG&E probably 8 or 9 years ago and they'd only jack up the setting on "reduce your use" alert days. Even on those days you could override the adjustment and you'd just lose part of the incentive payment. You still get the free T-stat. That program ended after a couple of years and I still have the T-stat.

The biggest problem with programmable thermostats is that you have to program them. You can set different temperatures for different times of the day for each day of the week. Most people can't or don't have the patience to figure this out so they just set a single cooling temperature and a single heating temperature.

That being said, I've heard that the Nest is a pretty smart product. It's supposed to learn your habits - when you normally come and go and what you like the temperature setting to be. Seems pretty cool until you consider that they're probably collecting all that data and storing it on some barge floating in San Francisco Bay.

[Left Seater]

I don't really care if the floating barge says lefty likes the a/c set at 74 during the day and 68 at night.

In our previous house we had a thermostat that was programmable with 4 different heating and cooling periods. You programmed it and it would follow along. That was fine but didn't really help when we were gone. I do turn the a/c up to 80 when we are gone and would like the ability to turn it down prior to getting home.

I will look into the local freebie and see exactly what it entails. I was turned off by the up to 5 degree override they mention on the hottest days of the year, ie largest power demand days. I don't want to be working at home and have the temp setting changed to 79/80 when it is over 100 outside.

[Mikey]

I don't really care if the floating barge says lefty likes the a/c set at 74 during the day and 68 at night.

In our previous house we had a thermostat that was programmable with 4 different heating and cooling periods. You programmed it and it would follow along. That was fine but didn't really help when we were gone. I do turn the a/c up to 80 when we are gone and would like the ability to turn it down prior to getting home.

I will look into the local freebie and see exactly what it entails. I was turned off by the up to 5 degree override they mention on the hottest days of the year, ie largest power demand days. I don't want to be working at home and have the temp setting changed to 79/80 when it is over 100 outside.

Not to be paranoid or anything but it also learns when the house is normally occupied and when nobody's home, if you and your wife come and go an a regular schedule.

And it probably talks to Alexa when you're out of earshot.

[Left Seater]

Yeah I get that it might learn our patterns, but then that is good for this purpose. As long as the house is 74 when we get home in the evenings then that is a win.

Who is this Alexa you mention?

[Derron]

I have been running my AC at 70 degrees all year but I'd like to be able to set something up to where I can crank it down to 65 an hour or so before I get home

How So Cal of you. 70 degrees not cool enough ??

[smackaholic]

I live in a place where AC is rarely a concern thanks to a few large oaks on my south side and a whole house fan, so we get by just fine on a few rarely used window units, but when I lived in TN, I did have central air. I frequently had a discussion with the local rednecks who claimed that you used more electricity if you let the house heat up when unoccupied, because it had to "work harder" to get it cool when you got home. Any explanations involving my very rudimentary understanding of thermodynamics were met with blank stares, ridicule and their favorite "you're a fukkin' yankee, what do you know".

Mikey, you're some sort of energy wizard. What say you? My contention is that it is simple physics. If you keep a high temp delta between inside/outside, you use more lectricity, period. If you let that delta get smaller (delta means difference, btw. I am just trying to impress mikey with fancy scientific jargon) your total number of BTUs pumped is lower. I think the bottom line here is that they didn't want to deal with programming t-stats or put up with a sweltering house for 20 minutes when they got home.

[atmdad]

I have been running my AC at 70 degrees all year but I'd like to be able to set something up to where I can crank it down to 65 an hour or so before I get home

How So Cal of you. 70 degrees not cool enough ??

Nope, sounds about right. Living 1/2 mile from the beach in So Cal means not even having an AC system.
Was cutting/trimming some tree branches with my son last Sunday afternoon. It was sunny and we were working up a sweat when the boy commented that it was hot out. I agreed saying that it is probably pushing close to 80 degrees. Bwahhhaaaa

[Mikey]

I live in a place where AC is rarely a concern thanks to a few large oaks on my south side and a whole house fan, so we get by just fine on a few rarely used window units, but when I lived in TN, I did have central air. I frequently had a discussion with the local rednecks who claimed that you used more electricity if you let the house heat up when unoccupied, because it had to "work harder" to get it cool when you got home. Any explanations involving my very rudimentary understanding of thermodynamics were met with blank stares, ridicule and their favorite "you're a fukkin' yankee, what do you know".

Mikey, you're some sort of energy wizard. What say you? My contention is that it is simple physics. If you keep a high temp delta between inside/outside, you use more lectricity, period. If you let that delta get smaller (delta means difference, btw. I am just trying to impress mikey with fancy scientific jargon) your total number of BTUs pumped is lower. I think the bottom line here is that they didn't want to deal with programming t-stats or put up with a sweltering house for 20 minutes when they got home.

Sort of right but it's more complicated. Obviously, if it takes an hour to cool down your house from 90 deg to 75 deg, that will take more energy than keeping at 75 deg for an hour, but consider a few other things.
Say you leave your house for an hour and you turn off the AC while you're gone. When you come back it takes an hour to get it back down to 75. It takes more energy to bring it down over that hour than it would to keep it at 75 for that hour, but remember you're really comparing it to two hours at 75 because you'd have to keep the AC running during that hour when it heats up. But then again, who wants to sit in the house for an hour while the temperature comes back down. In reality it wouldn't take an hour to bring the temperature back down, but hopefully you get the point.

Now consider this more extreme example. What if you're gone for two days? It definitely takes more energy to keep an empty house cool for two days than to cool it down one time. In fact this is a big energy saving measure if you have an office building that's closed up for the weekend. At 5:00 p.m. on Friday you shut down the HVAC. At 6:00 a.m. on Monday morning, when it's nice and cool outside, you open up the outdoor air dampers and cool the building down basically for just the cost of running the fans. Sort of like a really big whole-house fan. If you have some executive that wants to come in on weekends, it's pretty expensive to keep the whole building cool just for one person.

If you leave your house at 8:00 a.m. and it's empty until 6:00 p.m. I'd say that, cost wise, you're better off shutting it down and using the programmable T-stat to turn it back on at 5:45.

[Moving Sale]

I decided to live in a place where we don't need AC except for maybe a few days a year. Glad the rest of you idiots picked someplace else.

[Left Seater]

I decided to live in a place where we don't need AC except for maybe a few days a year. Glad the rest of you idiots picked someplace else.

So you still need a/c.

[Moving Sale]

No, but it's in the house so I turn it on from time to time. Is that a problem?

[MgoBlue-LightSpecial]

I don't have any recommendations.

[Moving Sale]

No, but it's in the house so I turn it on from time to time. Is that a problem?

That was pretty good. I laughed. You still suck shit off of old docksiders, though.

Define "old"

[Dinsdale]

I don't have any recommendations.

What ^^^^ he said.

Central AC here. Not sure if it still works. No one is home during the day, and it cools down in the evening here. If it gets hot on the weekend, we have these things called "rivers."

People I know call me a freak because (among other reasons), heat doesn't bother me... fuck a buncha cold, though.

[smackaholic]

Being in heat doesn't bother me. Sleeping is another story. I hate trying to sleep on a hot sticky night with no AC.


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[Softball Bat]

I don't have any recommendations.

Ditto.

Wake me when the discussion turns to shellacking.

[smackaholic]

I decided to live in a place where we don't need AC except for maybe a few days a year. Glad the rest of you idiots picked someplace else.

So you still need a/c.

A fair number of us can get by just fine without it. I might have a half dozen nights a year where I am laying in bed thinking, a little AC would be nice right about now. You, OTOH live where heat/humidity was invented. I suspect people did live in Houston prior to AC, but I can't imagine how fucking miserable it must have been. I guess there was a lot of sleeping on the porch back in the day, but it still had to be miserable. I would think cen/nocal along the coast pretty much has bode in this area. You could live just fine without AC and I am guessing without heat as well if you don't mind wearing a sweater now and then.

Too bad this area is populated largely by douchebags.

[Dinsdale]

I hate trying to sleep on a hot sticky night with no AC.

Glad we rarely have those. We did have a "Texas-hot" day a couple of weeks ago... and I had a tire blow out on the way to fishing at 5AM... and I hadn't bothered to get the spare fixed. The heat-index after we got done not catching salmon (in town... BODE) was somewhere around 14 buhzillion.

[Dinsdale]

You, OTOH live where heat/humidity was invented.

I believe LS lives in the SA area.

The folks down in McAllen think Houston is cold. All the temps of inland TX, with all the humidity of the Gulf. The RGV is a hair on the warm side.

[Left Seater]

You, OTOH live where heat/humidity was invented.

I believe LS lives in the SA area.

The folks down in McAllen think Houston is cold. All the temps of inland TX, with all the humidity of the Gulf. The RGV is a hair on the warm side.

This and this.

Not only do we have a/c but the system has a dehumidifier built in which makes it feel more comfortable.