Nest T3016US - Programmable Thermostat

PURCHASE DATE: 27NOV15 PURCHASE PRICE: $211.44 COMED UTILITY COMPANY REBATE: $100.00 After purchasing a new home and watching our utility bills rise for a while I vowed to change all of that in 2015. I began to purchase LED light bulbs as a start, new energy efficient appliances, and then September 2015 the Nest 3rd Generation was released which caught my attention. I asked my father in-law who had the Nest 2nd Generation for information and he had nothing negative to say about it so I was sold. After comparing it to other competitors I was hooked on this one due to the ease of installation, good reviews, and $100 electric company rebate (ask your local energy company). Do not be intimidated to install this on your own it's not hard. The instructions it comes with and YouTube to be on the safe side did it for me. Before installing please make sure to shut your homes power panel breaker prior to uninstalling the old thermostat and installing the Nest (be safe). Take a picture of the way the wires were installed on your old thermostat prior to uninstalling. In doing so this will ensure that your connections are connected correctly. Test your wires one more time prior to uninstalling to make sure no power is running (avoid being shocked or damaging anything). I did not use/install the base-plate (pictures shown) because I wanted a modern, sleek, and clean look. The body and display (40% increase) of the 3rd generation is slightly larger then that of the 2nd generation. If you have children you can lock it so that a child touching it can not change or disrupt your temperature or any of your settings. The stainless steel dial is very smooth and allows you to navigate through the settings with ease. It takes the Nest a couple of days to remember what temperatures you like when you are home and at what times you are home. After a couple of days Nest will ask you if you want it to automatically go into Away Mode when it senses you are not home (you decide opt in or opt out - I opted in). I recommend opting in to Away Mode for better energy savings. You can control when you are home and when you are away during those few days or if you opt out of Away Mode then you control it all. Smartphone application is free and easy to use. The new Far-Sight feature is awesome and can catch me at approximately 10 feet away even in the dark. When Nest detects any motion it will illuminate with what the current temperature is. This is how it can tell if you are home or not and can automatically place itself in Away Mode for energy savings. Being able to control everything from the application on my smartphone itself is so awesome (fan, cooling/heating mode, humidity level, away/home mode, set a schedule, history, etc.). Nest will remind you when you should change your air filters on your furnace because it can base it upon how many times it turns on and off. Significant drop in energy consumption can be seen on my gas bill after month 1. Due to this my father purchased the item as well and has no complaints thus far. UPDATE: 15FEB17 Still own the item with no problems. If you are doing research and thinking of purchasing it - just do it! It is paying for itself in savings thus far. Highly recommended! (PICTURES ATTACHED) THANK YOU!

So the gentleman who posted the top review that says "Will not display the current temperature -- by design!" is incorrect at worst and misleading at best. I just installed one of these and it will display the current temperature, it's just not in huge numbers. When you walk up to the unit it will know you're there, and display what you have the heat/cooling set to and then will switch to the mode that lets you see what the temperature is. The temperature will be noted with a hash mark/notch and a number. I've included a picture here to show what I'm talking about and the stock amazon photo shows the same thing. If you look at my picture you will see where my unit is set to heat at 66 degrees and cool at 74. In between those numbers is 72, which is the current temperature. I also included a picture where I turned the dial to go to cool to 71 degrees and the display still shows the current temp at 72. In Amazon's stock picture the unit is set to heat up to 68 degrees and the current temperature is 65 degrees, as indicated on the upper left hand side of the picture. If you tap the unit it will pull up the main display screen which has the temp as well. Maybe the gentleman didn't understand the differences here or he had an older firmware than what it uses now. Regardless, I don't feel it's fair to knock this unit for not displaying the temperature even though it does. It's not in giant numbers, but it's pretty easy to tell what the current temperature is if you take a moment and look. The current temp is on dispaly immediately if you're looking at the unit. Now to the actual review. This unit was very easy to install, the big pain was getting my old thermostat off of the wall. Nest has a interactive website for the installation of this unit (nest.com/works) that makes it easy to figure out if your current wiring will support one of these newer thermostats. You log onto the Nest site and chose the wires that you have coming out of your thermostat and from there the Nest site will tell you if you can use the Nest thermostat with your current setup. I would suggest looking that up before you purchase this unit. Or if you too like to live dangerously, do what I did and pull up the site on your iPad after you've bought the unit. With that out of the way, the unit comes with a back plate that you will connect your wires to. Before you do this, turn off the power to your HVAC system. I like to live dangerously, but not THAT dangerously. Connect the wires to the back plate, attach the unit to the wall and flip your breaker. The unit will light up and guide you through a pretty easy set up. NOTE: You do have to have wifi to get this unit to work properly. If you do not have wifi do not bother purchasing this thermostat. The thing I like the most about this thermostat is I can set a threshold for heating and cooling. Every house I've lived in has always had thermostats that seemed like they were from the 1970s so I don't know if this feature is normal on new thermostats, however this is a game changer for me. Where I live the temperatures can vary by 40 degrees each day and having a thermostat that will let me run the ac in the evening and then turn on the heat at 2 am when the temp drops is worth every penny. I literally have set the thermostat and left it alone since installing it. Some other cool features of this thermostat are that it keeps track of how much heating and cooling you do each day if you're into metrics, and it has a feature called "Sunblock". When you install the thermostat it asks you where you're installing it (such as a bedroom, hallway, kitchen, etc) and if the unit is in direct sunlight. If it is the unit will use Sunblock, which uses the light sensors in the thermostat to determine when it's under direct sunlight. This is used to learn the sun’s patterns in relation to your house the temperature sensors to detect the heat spikes that occur in direct sunlight. It then links to your wifi and knows when the sun rises and sets in your area. Sunblock will use that information to set the correct temperature whenever it’s in direct sunlight and not waste energy. Again, this is a game changer. My previous house had a thermostat that was near direct sunlight and close to a computer so it would run the AC when it wasn't needed, and jack up our electrical bills. There's an app as well that lets you control the temperature if you're lazy and don't want to get up, and to set the temp in the house while you're away. Overall I think this is a really cool product, and if the features I've mentioned are something you'd be interested in then I think it's worth the money. It's especially worth it if your power company has a rebate for purchasing one of these units. That can bring the cost down $50-$100 dollars.

I have a lot of observations to make about this product. I'll start with what I was faced with first. I live in a 2 story house, purchased last July. I live in South Carolina, where it's very humid and we rarely use our heating systems. The heater with air handler is located in the attic. The house was built in 2003. No one has ever replaced the contractor-installed Bryant brand heater. I've had these heaters before, and they are annoying. Whenever I replaced them in the past with a Trane furnace, my bill was cut in half and none of the ridiculous traits of the Bryant happened anymore. Those being the following: Cold spots in different places all over the house. A long ignite time, which means it's blowing cold air on you from the vents before it finally ignites. Too long to ignite. Uneven heating everywhere. Too hot upstairs, too cold downstairs. When the temps got below 35, it was unbearable downstairs unless I cranked it up to 70, which is a high temp for me on the thermostat in the winter. My AC condenser was replaced recently, so in the summer the air conditioner handled everything very well. It is a 4 ton unit and unrelated brand to the Bryant. (not a very good plan, but at least the AC works well). The AC has none of the issues that the furnace has. It works great. There's a problem, though. Because past owners pieced together a different AC system, the two systems are not as efficient as they could be. They also just can't put in a furnace and make it all work. Not the kind of efficiency furnace I've bought before. I just needed a furnace, but not an AC unit. So, I set out to talk to all these Trane installers. I love the two stage AC units from Trane because they only go into the higher mode when they really have to. The answer I got? "You can't change out only one unit. It has to be both." (something I knew from previous houses, anyway). Installer: "That's going to cost you $13,000.00" Me: "Gulp. I know that they really need to both be married up, in order for them to work well." Installer: "No other way, with this pieced together system you have right now." The problem with this? I didn't have the cash. Lowes would only loan me $6,000 at no interest. I always went for no interest loans in the past. Wells Fargo would only give me 5,700.00 but I could not combine both of these financing options. No one would loan me (or anyone else) that much money. I could've gone with a personal line of credit at my bank, but it was 10 - 12 %. Banks are a lot tighter with home improvement loans these days, since GE sold its finance division to a company called MySynchrony. GE gave me 15,000.00 no interest for the first year once. Not anymore. So, I set out to get 4 more quotes. Same answer from all of them. So, I was stuck with running downstairs to turn the heat down at night because I felt like I was going to suffocate upstairs, then running downstairs in the morning to turn it up to get it warmer down there. Then I remembered the Nest. It's expensive, yes. But .....it is better to at least try to spend $248.00 instead of 13 grand. (All the quotes I got were pretty much the same.) At the very least, I could incorporate it into a new system in the future. Install: Easiest install of any thermostat I've ever performed. I've always done my own installs because I liked Honeywell for many years, but there are no screws or difficult, cramped holes to put the wires into. You don't have to read a book to figure out which wires to use and guess what kind of system you have. It already knew, once I installed it. It's connected to the Internet through your WIFI. If I'm upstairs with the heat on and it gets too hot up there, I just pick up my iPhone, go to the app and adjust it. If I want to go downstairs in the morning and know I have it set to 65 down there, I just heat it up a bit on my iPhone before I get out of bed. It learns. I'm not quite sure what it will learn from me, because I'm retired and usually keep things about the same. But, the programming was extremely easy, both on the unit and on the iPhone app. Change it anytime I want. I was at the doctor yesterday. Realized that just my dogs were at home and I had started the AC this past weekend. (You can switch between heat and air any time you want on the iPhone or iPad app...awesome. ) So, I just turned up the AC to a warmer temp because my dogs aren't too crazy about it being really cold. Before I got home, I set it back to 70 for AC, where I like it. I was bed-ridden after some spinal injections this past weekend. I was praising this thing for making my life comfortable while I recuperated upstairs. Before, it would've been absolute agony to go downstairs all the time because South Carolina is in Spring already. You never know what the day will be like. I just changed it when I needed to on my iPhone. The WIFI was easy to connect, once I realized that you turn the unit itself with a rotating dial either left or right, then press on the choice you want. No annoying methods to type in your password like it is on a Bluray player to login to an app like Netflix. Those are a pain. The screen is motion-sensing on the unit, so you just have to walk by or wave your hand to see its settings. It seems to also get my systems to the correct temperature WAY faster than my Honeywell thermostat did. Seconds vs minutes. Now: I've saved $13 Grand. For now. It's made my furnace manageable in a two story house. I can save up the cash for a new system. It has a mode called Airwave that is supposed to save you on AC costs. I'll know in July and August if that works well. I believe it's going to save me a lot of money and allow me the time to save up for the new system that I really want. I will have my installers just leave the Nest there. It's an incredible product. I've not found one bug with it yet. It's only been about 5 days, but it is already telling me it is learning. Love this product. So glad I bought it. It's the best piece of technology I've bought so far, besides the iPad Pro. Thank you Nest. You saved me a lot of money for now. A few months later: This product is already saving me a lot of money. It's already saved me $40.00 this month on electric. One thing I wanted to mention was someone was complaining about the way it displays the temperature. I think that it is just a matter of getting used to it because there is a rare occasion that the large number in the middle and the smaller number are not the same. What I've noticed is it gets my system up to the correct temperature way faster, and so I'm really not so concerned with the smaller number anymore. I also saw that someone was complaining about the Away function if you don't walk in front of it often and waking up to a cold house. I'm retired, so I don't really need a regular Away function. I go out at really different times, so I went into the settings on the App and turned that off. Problem solved. I love that my air conditioner doesn't run as much as it used to, and I noticed I don't have as much cold air coming out of the vents when the heater is working. I also get an email of my usage each month from Nest. (see image) The leafs mean you've set your temp to an energy-saving setting and will also show up on the dial. And It's still saved me 13 grand. Win win for me.

I copied this from M Strikers review because it is exactly what has happened to me. I was until I had all of this trouble a Google shareholder. I have since sold my shares as I have lost confidence in the company. After reading the reviews it appears that when the Nest works it works well. But when you have an issue they send you a replacement from their collection of broken thermostats. I hope it works for you but be prepared to be without a working thermostat for months if it ever breaks. Save your old thermostat, you may need it. M Striker 1.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase The worst piece of technology I have ever purchased Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2023 Color: Stainless SteelStyle: Thermostat Only I purchased a Google Nest 3rd Generation Learning Thermostat in late August of 2022. It worked fine until early January 2023 when it started displaying an error message stating it could not connect to my Wi-Fi network. My wife and I both tried to get it to reconnect and could not get it reconnected to our Wi-Fi network which has a very strong signal. My Wi-Fi network has been the same network during this time, and no other devices in the house including phones, tablets, laptops, printers, cameras and numerous other connected devices have had any Wi-Fi issues during this time. I called Google tech support and they talked me through a bunch of steps including several ‘master reset’ attempts and it did briefly reconnect to the network, but within an hour had disconnected from the Wi-Fi again. I called Google Tech support a 2nd time, and they determined my unit was defective and needed to be replaced. They wanted me to send the thermostat back to them, and then they would send a replacement. Considering it is the middle of winter, and I can’t have a house without a thermostat, I asked for another (faster) option to get their defective unit replaced. They said the only option was to charge credit card for a replacement unit, and then when I returned the defective unit to them, they would remove the charge on my credit card. I reluctantly agreed to this (because I had no other option). When the replacement unit arrived, I discovered it was not a new unit but a ‘reconditioned unit’. When I went to install it, it would not power up, so I called Google Tech Support (3rd call to Google). They helped me to determine that the battery was dead on the replacement unit, and I had to charge the unit on a USB cable before installing it. The next day (after charging it for 24 hours) I tried to install the unit and it again would not make it through the start up menu. It alternated 2 error messages (1. Disconnect unit from the wall 2. Reconnect unit to the wall) depending if the unit was on or off the wall. So, I called Google support again (4th call) and they determined the unit was defective. I requested they send me a brand new unit this time, but I they said that was not their ‘process’ and they would send another refurbished unit. I protested to no avail. They said I would have to send back the defective refurbished unit before they could send me another replacement (All this time I have been using the original Nest from August because it at least functions as a DUMB thermostat, it just can’t connect to Wi-Fi or run schedules). So, I sent the defective refurbished replacement back and then waited almost 2 weeks for them to send another refurbished unit. I think during that time I called Google support 2 more times trying to get the status of the replacement. That 2nd replacement unit arrived 2 days ago, and again the battery was dead. I charged that unit for 1 day, and then reinstalled the unit, and again found it would not make it through the startup menu. It alternated 2 error messages (1. Disconnect unit from the wall 2. Reconnect unit to the wall) depending if the unit was on or off the wall. I again had to call Google tech support who again determined this 2nd replacement unit was defective. I again begged for a new unit, and they again would only send a replacement by charging my credit card again. That third replacement arrived and was another refurbished unit with a dead battery and had to be charged to get it to work. That unit worked from mid-February to unit midmid-April (2 months). However, on the first really warm day, we turned on the AC and our outdoor unit started making a loud clicking noise. I assumed there was something wrong with the motor or fan on the outdoor unit and schedule an HVAC repairman to come diagnose the problem the next business day. That repairman came today and spent about 2 hours troubleshooting the issue and he determined that the Google Nest was not sending a consistent signal to the AC unit causing the outdoor unit fan to intermittently shut off/on repeatedly. Obviously, I had to pay for that service call which was not cheap. I just purchased and installed an EcoBee Thermostat and it, and my HVAC unit are now working fine. I just tried calling Google to ask for a refund for my Nest and the Google Nest Remote temperature sensor, and they have refused to refund my money. They only want to send me yet another refurbished unit, but after all these problems, I am not willing to try that. So now, I am out almost $300 for the Google Nest and the Remote sensor, but also out another $100 for the HVAC service call, and countless hours trying to get the Google Nest to work. This is absolutely the worst piece of technology that I have ever purchased. Google’s tech support was completely inflexible to offer any solutions other than just more refurbished units. If I could have rated this product lower, I would have.

I ended up buying this thermostat directly from Nest.com because they had a promotional discount on the 4th of July. I was very happy with this purchase as there are rebates for Southern California Edison and SoCal Gas for buying this thermostat with continuous rebates throughout the year. I really do love this thermostat, not only is it incredibly functional, it's very beautiful on the wall replacing an ugly old school Honeywell system that was easily 16 years old. Things I love: * Installation was very simple and Nest makes it easy by going online first and doing a compatibility check and shows you a wiring diagram you should print off. I'm no electrician and could easily do this install in about 15 min once I had the diagram and the tools in front of me. * The integrated feel - it connects to your wi-fi, you have an app for iPhone (and I believe Android), you can control it online in a traditional browser. Besides doing it's job it's keeping track of energy usage and helping to show you where you can be saving. Plays well with other internet of things, like Amazon Alexa and IFTT * The trim plate - the ugly old Honeywell system i had left a large square mark on the wall, the trim plate that came with Nest easily covered that up and it looks beautiful. * Senses when you walk by or approach and lights up to show you the current temperature, and outside temperature (gleans from wifi weather) * Intuitive interface, you press in the lower part of the thermostat to bring up a menu and you rotate the dial and press again to make choices, very simple and easy-to-use. * Partnership with energy companies - besides a rebate with gas and electric companies, they have a partnership with a solar company in my area I'm going to check out. Strong partnerships like that can lead to highly efficient systems and reducing cost (hopefully). What I don't like: * As a geeky nerd, I'm a little disappointed that I have to use the interface to connect to my wifi. If you have a very secure wifi password that is long, this will be a test of patience. In other devices, I'm used to it broadcasting it's own connection that you can securely connect to and set the password on with another device, like your iphone. I wish this kind of option were available, or other kind of pairing ease-of-use. * The auto-schedule that tries to learn your pattern in the first few days can be a little grumpy. For example, I had my power off on a hot day when installing. Once I got it installed it was quite warm in my house. I turned it on and immediately set to 65. I later adjusted that, but over the next few days it set itself to 65 until it figured out that wasn't a normal thing. Overall, I like the auto-schedule, it's just in the first few days you'll be scratching your head. * Don't do like me and set to 65 if you'd be happy at 71, for example. Just set your ideal, not a drastic temperature. * When you first turn it on, it may not be immediately apparent how to achieve what you want. I put it on hot/cold (by accident) and was trying to figure out how to just cool the house when I was staring at the heating screen. Stick with it and it will get easier in a day. The iPhone app is a lot easier to deal with, but once you get used to the interface, you won't give it a second thought after 2-3 days. * Cost.. it's expensive. Nest had a 4th of July sale for $50 off which made it attractive along with the rebates is like $175 off. But, you do get a lot more for your money. Final thoughts: If you plan to do more home automation, or already have a home automation system, be sure to know if this will work with it. For example, at the time of writing this I'm considering a SmartThings Hub system by Samsung which apparently Nest does not have a working partnership with Samsung on, so Samsung doesn't have a supported connection to Nest thermostat (although there are developer work-arounds that work). It does work well with Wink Hub system. This isn't an endorsement for either SmartThings or Wink Hub but it's a good idea to know this information if you have the desire to integrate and update more items in your home like lighting, locks, sensors, etc that require a hub of some sort.

Honestly the installation of this thermostat is pretty darned simple, or so it seems. Take a picture of your existing wiring, look through the app and if necessary send a copy of the picture of your wiring into Nest support and you should wind up getting a clear set of instructions on which wires need to connect to which terminals that this thermostat will be using. In most cases it is simple. Until it isn't quite so so simple. Which was the case for me recently. I actually called in the services of a family friend that I paid a few $$ to do the install of this thermostat (along with putting in an older thermostat back in my old home as the new owners didn't want to have the Nest thermostat and instead wanted a "dumb" thermostat to use there). He got it installed pretty quickly and the initial tests seemed to show it was working as it should. We could feel cool air blowing through the vents when we should and seemed to be getting warm air when we should. Seemed to be though, and not actually getting forced air like we should have. I didn't catch the issue until the next day and at that point it was a bit cooler outside and I was looking for more forced air to push the warm air around. I was very disappointed in not having the fan motor running as it should be, and worse without the fan working the heat was working too hard, heating up and not having the air blown through so it was turning itself off after just a few minutes before it cooled down enough to try to repeat the cycle. This issue lead me to make use of Tech support to try to confirm the wiring was correct and had me uploading the picture of the old wiring along with a picture of the new wiring. They confirmed that things *should* have been correct. OK. That lead to more trouble shooting and a determination by the tech that the Thermostat that I had just purchased must have had a bad terminal internally. No problem, I was offered a replacement unit and would be shipping the "bad" unit back upon receipt and install of the replacement. Replacement unit was received and other than having to take down the old thermostat (that I had to go back to using during the intervening period, at least temporarily) and wire in the new one, the replacement went quickly and easily. Except the same problem still existed. Which ruled out bad hardware and left me wondering and troubleshooting again as to what wires were used on which terminals. More troubleshooting lead to proving that the fan motor worked, that the heat worked depending on how the device was wired, or that the air conditioning worked depending on how it was wired. Getting the proper combo of all of those was continuing to elude me. Back and forth between where the thermostat was and where they HVAC and heating system are installed was exhausting me a bit, but I went and confirmed the manufacturer of the hardware and relayed that information to the technician that was providing technical support. In doing this I started researching a bit myself to see if that combo of hardware and Nest was a problem or had known issues and that eventually lead me to solving my own problem when I saw mention of the wiring for the Oil heat making use of the RH terminal. Hmmm, the recommended wiring for me was using the other R terminal, and not that terminal. The tech support person kept going with me and I noted that I was going to and did test using the RH terminal. MAGIC happened!! It worked. Again, not what the tech support people were telling me to use for my own wiring, but was exactly what was needed. I give credit to the tech support people for being pretty patient with me. I give credit to them for working to ship me a replacement item when they thought that the one that I had was malfunctioning. I give credit for the additional support and trouble shooting time that was taken when I was trying to get the replacement working. I take away some of the rating for not realizing early on that they should have suggested trying the RH terminal earlier. Functionally, this is a pretty nice smart (learning) Thermostat. I like it, otherwise I wouldn't have bought a second one for use in my new home. (One upstairs, one downstairs actually) I have a complaint that has been common with these in the past in that I really, really, really wish that you could set a "hold" temperature and get this thermostat to stay at that manually set temperature until the hold is released. If I know I'm going on vacation, I should be able to quickly and easily use that sort of function. This has been asked about multiple times by multiple users or potential users and I honestly believe this is a failing that the company just doesn't want to address. It shouldn't be that tough to add as a new feature. I can't give this 5 stars at this point (reasons listed above), but I do really like it. It is mostly a really nice Smart Thermostat and the Alexa integration makes it a really nifty item to use in my home. Alexa set {Thermostat name} to {Temperature} is really powerful for someone wants to make things easier on themselves. 4 stars from this reviewer.

I bought this item through Amazon, as always the item came well packaged and on time. If there is one thing I have ever learned, that is nothing is as easy as plug and play, but first I want to get to the good. Besides what others have said this does show the current temp in the house but it is on the outer ring and in small numbers. Others have complained that the current temp is to small and the temp setting being the focus is a problem for them, I am more concerned with what temp I set it to, not what the current temp is. Once the unit has programmed it's self based on your temp preferences the only reason to be concerned with the current temp is if the unit fails to turn on, or you really have to have that gee wiz info. I bought this to save money not to impress others with the screen and info. The screen is large, easy to read, I like that it turns on when you walk up to it, it is simple to use, the app is great and works flawlessly, and yes it is a bonus that it looks nice. Now for the bad, when I installed it I followed all the instructions, all the wires went exactly where they belong. It is nice that for those with large dual zone systems and humidifiers and all the bells and whistles they have stickers with the wire names provided, they say Y1, RH W1, G and so on. My system only used 4 wires R, Y, W, G and had no jumpers for the old system so my system was not exactly rocket science to wire correctly. I kept getting a fault saying it would not recognize the Y1 (cooling) wire, after trouble shooting on my own I confirmed the connections were good, no wires broken or twisted and everything was good on that end. In this 4 wire configuration there is no blue (or sometimes black) wire which is required, this is a power wire that some systems use to provide constant 24 volt power to the thermostat. If you do not have this wire some systems will still work with this unit with no problem, it simply takes a little power from the RH and Y1 to get its power, and remember it was not recognizing my Y1. I finally call customer support and was on the phone with them for about 2 hours, they were very polite and tried there hardest to help but that night it was getting to late at night and the house getting to cold to deal with it and the thermostat required a full charge to continue troubleshooting. As a side bar there is a mini USB plug on the back of the faceplate that works with android style plugs to provide a quick charge, this is in the event of extended black outs you can recharge fast. So for the night I reconnected the old thermostat and the HVAC worked fine. Next morning I'm back on the phone with tech support. After giving them the case number from the night before we started going through many of the steps again since my old thermostat seemed to work fine that proved there was no problem with the HVAC wiring it's self, so this wire detection problem was a bit of a mystery. After moving wires to different terminals and reading out voltages from the tech info screen for about a hour and a half, they determined that it was a faulty base plate, they were kind enough to order a replacement base plate and even overnight FEDEX it to me, so at this point I'm waiting for a part that might fix the problem. Knowing modern housing construction practices, I still had my suspicions that it was not a issue with the baseplate but was a wiring problem with the HVAC, besides I hate throwing parts at a problem to see what might fix the issue. I had a friend that does HVAC look at the system, first thing he said was I needed that C (blue) common wire connected to provide enough power. I had already tried that and seen that the issue was not fixed, that was because as I suspected the system was not wired up correctly. The common wire was there but not connected to anything, so after rewiring the entire system we got the Nest thermostat to work as advertised. There are two morals to this story, first is that Nest tech support is great and they try everything they can to get you up and running, but in the end you are talking to IT people not HVAC professionals. The second moral is if your are replacing a old "dumb" thermostat or even a newer programmable one but not a "smart" one, and they worked fine before does not mean that the system was wired up correctly to work with this unit. So if you plug it in and it gives you a E80 fault code and you do not have a blue wire or it's not connected to the terminal, chances are you need it, and after connecting it if you continue to have faults chances are your blue wire is not connected properly. If you really are insitant on upgrading your thermostat call a HVAC person to look at your system.

I love my Nest Thermostat! I used to have one in my former home and I got spoiled with having access to it whether I was home or away. I love the feature of being able to control the settings for when I’m away at work and the capability to adjust if I’m out of town. It was very easy to install. Very simple, just follow instructions and you’ll be done in a short amount of time. Great quality, exactly like the one that was in my former home. Just install the Nest app afterwards and complete the set up. Oh, I did purchase a separate plate cover thingy. It comes with a white one, but I wanted it to match the color Nest I chose.