Owning a home can be a rewarding and gratifying experience—but with little expertise in home improvement, I typically stumble my way through projects. These are my misadventures in home improvement.
Whether at the recent home show in Las Vegas or tech savvy CES expo, the breakout trend for 2016 is the smart home. What do I mean by smart home? The idea that you can monitor and control all sorts of home functions right from your mobile device or tablet, is sweeping the market. From a Bluetooth enabled grill, WiFi security cameras and even appliances, the connected home is the next great frontier and I dove headfirst with one of the pioneers and purchased a 3rd generation Nest Thermostat.
I know you’re asking why do I need a Smart Thermostat? With its price tag of $250 and the ability to set a schedule on most thermostats already, there were three factors that drove my interest: The overwhelmingly positive reviews, the $100 ComEd rebate just for installing it and the idea that a thermostat would learn my schedule and save me money by adapting to it (average users save nearly 15%). I try to be a fairly forward-thinking techie and the more I learned about Nest, the harder it became to resist pulling the trigger.
Once I determined Nest would work with my furnace (google will nest work to use their easy online tool), the purchase was straightforward and featured instructions that took away even my ‘how the heck am I going to wire my furnace thermostat without blowing up my house’ fears. Everything is included right in the box: wire labels, wall mounts, easy to follow pictures and even the tools you’ll need to complete the task!
