Nest Thermostats, Home Automation & Energy Efficiency

The latest sensation in real estate is home automation, and that doesn’t surprise us. What with the soaring popularity of productivity apps, it makes plenty of sense that these are steadily becoming integrated into our houses.

One of the most exciting new technologies in home automation is actually a thermostat called “Nest.” Nest is a smart device that continually learns from the ways in which your family controls your home’s temperature. Each time you adjust it, it remembers, and within a couple of days of use it begins to calculate what is termed your “home occupancy” pattern, so that it can ensure your family is focused on energy efficiency. With 50% of energy costs fully reliant on a house’s thermostat, this means those costs can be cut down for you by as much as 20% simply by making use of the Nest thermostat.

Let me be clear about what “making use” truly means for this device; we are talking about home automation after all. Nest requires minimal work on your part for energy efficiency. Its Auto-Away feature detects when your house is empty and adjusts the heating or cooling to your pre-set choices of minimum and maximum temperature. This means that during the winter, Auto-Away might sense that you’ve gone out for the evening and allow the temperature to fall down to 15 degrees Celsius, but no lower; or that during the summer it might allow conditions to reach 30 degrees Celsius, but not to rise any higher. Also, if your home is always empty during certain hours – say, when you and your spouse are at work and the kids are at school – Nest will learn this, and during those hours you can be certain it will be set for energy efficiency.

So what if you’ve gone out, but your plans have changed and you’re suddenly coming home early? Will Auto-Away mean that you’ll return to an uncomfortable home? By no means. Nest includes an app that you can use from any device, including your phone, to adjust the temperature of your home remotely. If you’re hopping into your car after work at 12 noon, because it’s unexpectedly been just a half day, and you know you’re feeling like a breezy 20 degrees to go with an iced tea and an episode of your favourite TV show on Netflix – no problem. Your house will be ready by the time you arrive.

These are just a few of the many perks that come with the Nest home thermostat system. Others, like the leaf symbol that shows up when you’re on track for reducing consumption and improving energy efficiency, or the program that offers a breakdown of the way your home runs, make a sweet development in home automation even sweeter. You can learn more on the Nest website, or stop in at Kelowna’s Home Depot to pick up your system today!

If you have any questions about other trends in the Kelowna real estate market, please don’t hesitate to contact us.