Owning a home means you get excited about really weird stuff. Like programmable thermostats. And I'm not talking "Oh that's kind of nice" excited, I'm talking highlight of your week.
This probably has something to do with the fact that Tom and I are both pretty bad at remembering to turn the thermostat down when we're not home. Which means we are often mistakenly are heating or cooling our empty house. There's nothing more annoying (okay maybe I'm exaggerating a bit) than coming home to an excessively hot/cold house, and realizing all the money you've just wasted getting it like that.
Needless to say, owning a programmable thermostat has always been fairly high on our wish list. I probably would have settled for any thermostat that let me program a schedule, but when I realized that the ones that came pre-installed in our house didn't have that function, I started dreaming bigger.
So last week I took the plunge and bought the latest craze in home technology - the Nest. I even installed it myself one night before Tom got home from work.
Also big shout out to Paul who sent me this nifty tool after I sorta electrocuted myself the last time I attempted electrical work. If it wasn't for this thingy, I probably would have done it again last week. Lesson learned: don't trust the labeling in the electrical panel, even if everything looks meticulously documented. It could turn out that the breaker labeled "Master Bedroom" actually controls the smallest bedroom upstairs. And the one labeled "Hallway and Bathrooms" is the one controlling the power to the master bedroom thermostat.
After about 20 minutes of running up and down two flights of stairs flipping off different breakers and having the little light beep at me, which warns me there was still electricity somewhere, I finally flipped everything off. After that, it was actually surprisingly easy to swap out our old set up for the Nest.
We've only had it for a week, but so far we're loving it! Not only does it turn the AC on and off automatically when we've scheduled it to, but it tells us how energy efficient we're being, and will auto set itself if we're not home and forgot to tell it (which we can also do from an app on our phone!)
I've already been told by a few co-workers that when the machine uprising occurs, our house will be one of the first they take over, but we'll have to worry about that later. For now we're too busy enjoying our Nest. :)