Nest Learning Thermostat Unboxing/Install

After about three weeks of waiting, my Nest thermostat finally arrived. Well, three of them to be exact. One is for my house and the other two are for my Dad (one for my parents’ house and one for his office). So, with Valerie’s help, I set out to unbox and install my new Nest thermostat!

Step 1: Open the FedEx Package containing my new Nest thermostat. Looks like the guys at Nest did a good job of making sure these little guys didn’t get damaged in transit. Can’t ever have too much brown paper!

Step 2: Open the Nest thermostat box and packaging. Opening the Nest box was like opening a Russian Doll. I kept finding more and more surprises inside. On top was the Nest thermostat itself, followed by the installation instructions/manuals, followed by the base, wall anchors and screws, as well as a Nest screwdriver, which contained four interchangeable driver heads, and finally a series of optional mounting plates

Step 3: Out with the old thermostat! As always, safety comes first, so we shut off the power to the heating and cooling system. Next, we unscrewed each wire from the old thermostat’s base one by one and used the labels/stickers provided in the Nest installation instructions to mark each wire. Then we unscrewed the old base and removed it, saving it (along with the old thermostat) for safe keeping if I ever needed to go back to it (not that I would, of course)!

Step 4: In with the new Nest thermostat! First, we tried to install the new anchors. However, we unfortunately didn’t realize that there was a crossbeam behind where we were installing, so we ended up with one anchor that went in just fine and the other that wouldn’t stay in (and ended up pulling apart the drywall and having the anchor spin freely and eventually just fall out of its hole). Darn. Oh well, instead we installed the Nest thermostat’s base by screwing it directly into the drywall without using the anchors (Note: Later I ended up purchasing some drywall filler/spackle and anchors, filled the hole that was created in the drywall and mounted the Nest properly using anchors).

Once that was done, I connected the wires back into their respective places on the Nest base using my labels from earlier as a guide.

Step 5: Now that the base is installed, all we have to do is connect the Nest thermostat to its base, turn the power back on, and we’re done! Well, not exactly. Nest ran through a series of updates and reboots for about 30 minutes before we were finally able to play with it.

Once it was set up and done, I configured it to connect to my wireless network and then added the thermostat to my nest.com account via my iPhone. Now all that’s left is to teach Nest a schedule so that it starts intelligently controlling my heating/cooling, making sure that my house is nice and comfortable when I am home, yet saving me money when I’m not home by reducing the amount of heating/cooling that is done for an empty house!

Ok, well not exactly done. As you can see there’s a good amount of bare drywall where the old thermostat used to be. So, we ended up painting it to match the rest of the wall. I’ll post pictures of the final product soon! 🙂

Not too bad. Overall the install was pretty quick and painless, minus a few bumps in the road. So far the Nest thermostat has been working just fine, and I can’t wait to see what it does for my electric bill! 🙂

Thanks, Nest!

For more information on the Nest Learning Thermostat, visit Nest’s website: http://www.nest.com