3rd Gen Nest Thermostat available for collection at Screwfix Live in Farnborough (Exhibition Centre). Normally £189 is the cheapest available - Flubit best price I was offered is still over £180, and cheapest these have been going for on eBay recently is around £160. So for anyone looking for one of these (as I have been) and can get to Farnborough this weekend this price is a genuine bargain. I still expect this deal to be voted cold on account of "it's a lot of money for a Thermostat" "it's collection only" & "it's only local to Farnborough". Despite all that, hopefully this still might help someone.
Top comments
gszech to Nujol
1 Oct 165#18
Briefly explanation: This looks nicer then your 24hr dial.
All comments (46)
xeneldix
1 Oct 16#1
Ha, just got via ebay a couple of them as flubit never gave me under £180 as you said! :confused:
Good deal <3
Remember this not only a thermostat - it programs heating and hot water, so also gets rid of the 2 channel programmer
dw_uk2000
1 Oct 16#2
How do you book it for collection?
AMJ
1 Oct 16#3
You have to go in person to the show in Farnborough - open tomorrow 10-4pm and buy from inside the show - apart from all the show stands there's ordering points, a bit like inside the Screwfix stores, where you can order anything from the Screwfix catalogue at 10% off, plus any show offers like this one at 20% off normal price (plus the further 10% show discount). They had loads in stock on the stand, but even if they run out you should still be able to order at the show price and get delivery next day from Screwfix warehouse. (I did that today for a few other bits I wanted).
dw_uk2000
1 Oct 161#4
cool, cheers will pop along.
a_scotsman
1 Oct 162#5
lol... remember all their big adverts.... so clever.... so well designed..... so... utterly pointless.
bellboys to a_scotsman
1 Oct 162#8
Eek. I don't usually go on the nagative on deals but unless you are zoning your heating with something like Honeywell's Evohome system you are basically buying an expensive gadget that doesn't in any way address the inherent flaw in your current heating controls - the fact that the whole house heating is either on or off. The bizarre thing is you wouldn't dream of having just the one, whole house light switch and lighting your house is considerably cheaper than heating it. Save the outlay on one of these gadgets and put it towards an Evohome system...
ScoobyZ
1 Oct 16#6
I have a Nest v2 and it's excellent and now my Amazon Echo talks to it.
johnsmith1997
1 Oct 16#7
Can they Fix me a Screw there?? :neutral_face:
andydixon90
1 Oct 16#9
If you're an nPower customer they offer these for £129 I believe
bellboys to andydixon90
1 Oct 16#10
But then you'd almost certainly be paying more for your G&E than you should be. Swings and roundabouts, I guess :stuck_out_tongue:
daskapital to andydixon90
1 Oct 16#12
I'm with nPower and I'm interested in one of these... the only thing might be the installers might sting you for not buying it through them. Also, if you think these devices will save you money they won't it's just a cool gadget (my reason for wanting it) because unless you are the type of person who forgets to turn off the heating when you go out then it won't really save you anything.
Anyone have any idea what a reasonable price for installation is?
mcrobbj
1 Oct 16#11
John lewis price match as it's a physical store?
hdhinsa
1 Oct 16#13
What if you have TRVs? Wouldn't that reduce energy consumption in conjunction with the Nest?
bellboys
1 Oct 161#14
Yes, but it still means you have to go round the house adjusting them all the time so it sort of defeats the object of a gadget like this. Our evohome system employs wireless TRV's linked to a central control panel (can also be done on the internet from anywhere in the world via smartphone app) that allows almost infinite control of each TRV. Basically, we can be sat in our lounge with the heating cozy warm whilst the rest of the house will only be heated for when we need it. All without getting out of the chair.
SmartTRV are also a feature of Netatmo and Hive are also developing the same thing. I'd be very surprised if Nest don't follow.
EVOhome is overpriced.
dale86uk
1 Oct 16#16
Thinking of going for Samsung Smarter Things instead
Nujol
1 Oct 16#17
Can anyone briefly explain the point of this item?
We have a combi boiler so hot water not a consideration. For the heating we have a 24hr dial that we regularly adjust depending on the temp, plus an on/off switch which is just off for 6-7 months of the year.
Plus we can set the heat of each radiator (We have dials which I presume are the TRV things others mention).
gszech to Nujol
1 Oct 165#18
Briefly explanation: This looks nicer then your 24hr dial.
AMJ to Nujol
1 Oct 16#20
Nest claims to learn your changes, routines and will avoid you needing to keep changing the dial on your 24hr dial as it will anticipate your needs based on history. Will also adjust for the weather (e.g. starting to heat earlier if it's really cold) and learn how your house responds so you get the right temperature you want when you want it.
AMJ
1 Oct 16#19
Nest advised at the show they've teamed up with Energenie MiHome so you can control their individual TRV's from the Nest app. As far as I could see it's just the TRV's changing their setting to match the Nest setting. I don't believe a TRV can call for heat though which is presumably where Honeywell EvoHome would have as major advantage.
bellboys
1 Oct 16#21
I agree although it's getting cheaper and further competition will improve the price we pay even more. However, it isn't a gadget like this. You pays yer money.........
bellboys
1 Oct 16#22
Yes, even the rooms you don't use except at specific times :stuck_out_tongue: Face it, it's a nice looking gadget, that is all. If it was truly clever it would notice that many of the rooms it is heating you very rarely use (like bedrooms, for instance).
The_Hoff
1 Oct 16#23
WIFI TRV aren't a new thing though and can integrate with systems easily enough. LightwaveRF being one such example.
You can even go a step further and link them to presence or door sensors to determine if you're using a room, or in your home.
bellboys
1 Oct 16#24
I'm not suggesting they are new. The only thing new about them (with Evohome et al) is their potential appeal to the mass market due to their integration/ease of use.
Waldolf
2 Oct 16#25
Why would you need to go around adjusting TRVs "all the time"?
Ours have been on the same setting for the past 16 years. What am I missing?
The_Hoff
2 Oct 16#26
He's stating, correctly, that unless you dynamically adjust your heating exactly how you require it that you're wasting money.
The_Hoff
2 Oct 16#27
I understand, but EVOhome is certainly not a mass market product. Hive is the largest install count by some margin and yet we're still talking low single digits in terms of market penetration (250k homes).
tom6195
2 Oct 16#28
I have a combo boiler with an RF thermostat in my living room. How do I replace that with this?
bellboys
2 Oct 16#29
Many hundreds of pounds paid needlessly to the grabbing G&E companies would be my answer :stuck_out_tongue: Here's a simple example how zoning works. This evening my wife and I were watching TV in the lounge with the heating in the room set at 21C. Warm enough for us. The rest of the rooms are not being heated at all (why would you when you aren't using them?). But i normally have a shower at approx 9.30PM each evening so Evohome is set to have the bathroom up to 21C by that time and to switch the heating off at 9.50PM, after I've left the bathroom. Result is you are only heating a room when it is use/needed. Heating it all the time is extremely wasteful, even with TRVs.
It's like Honeywell say, who would consider having just the one light switch for your whole house? No-one. But lighting a house is considerably cheaper than heating one so why have just the one switch for heating the whole house? Simple really.
bellboys
2 Oct 16#30
Agreed again. But I did use the caveat 'potential' :smiley: Of course these sorts of things are still far too expensive (at the moment) to have mass market appeal. A bit like a BIC biro when it first emerged (circa 10 quid each?)
The_Hypnotoad
2 Oct 161#31
Man some people are really falling for one mans marketing campaign on this deal.
DominicPTS
2 Oct 16#32
We leave the thermostat on 18 degrees all year. The heating comes on when colder and stays off all summer. We probably waste some money doing this but the house stays an ambient temperature the whole time. We moved the G&E onto a cooperative switch thing and are with People for Places energy, pay £85 a month with a 3 bed end terrace Victorian house and are about £200 in credit. The water is heated by combi so only heating what is needed (plus a bit left in the pipe but that applies to pretty much any central heating!)
People pay a fortune on these gadgets citing the savings - how long does it take to recoup the capital investment?
Sure it's nice to have a system that can be switched on before you get home but if you let your house go cold and warm it up again constantly I doubt you save a fortune over just keeping it constant and turning the thermostat down a bit, and put a jumper on!
you_gotta_be_kidding to DominicPTS
2 Oct 16#35
you've missed how these work, they're intelligent and learn your habits. of course if you leave your house on 18 then that's very low and so it will take you some time to get your money back however we leave ours on around 21c.
The nest can detect when you've left the house and turn the heat off, when you go to bed it turns the heating down through the night and back up before you wake up etc etc.
our gas bill has gone from £100-£110 a month down to £60-£80. in less than a year our nest has already paid for itself.
this device may be 'useless' to you and others but for some people it's a fantastic bit of kit.
you_gotta_be_kidding
2 Oct 16#33
ignore the negative in here, I've had three different smart getting systems, the hive by British gas, the evohome by Honeywell and the nest. there is no comparison-the worst of all was the evohome, at about £800 for all the bits for the size of our house we gave up, our house was always cold and the radiator valves were never accurate, we also had connectivity problems with the valves to the hub, each day a different valve would fail to connect, it's an awful heating system.
the hive is ok but it's basically a less polished version of the nest. The nest is amazing, it's simple to use, the app is perfect and we've genuinely saved a lot of money with it, in the nearly a year we've had the nest v3 (we bought on launch day) it's already paid for itself. The only issue I have is that I have not yet been successful connecting it to amazon echo (echo app can't find it).
Waldolf
2 Oct 16#34
Adjust dynamically like turning a manual valve on and off you mean? That sounds like wasting money and time, and defeating the whole point of an automatic temperature controlled valve in the first place.
Waldolf
2 Oct 16#36
So if you decide to mix it up a bit, and have a spontaneous shower at 7:50 just before a factual programme on the Discovery Channel, then you will walk into a freezing cold bathroom?
BTW, have you done the done the heat-loss calcs to determine how quickly your single room losses heat to the cold adjacent rooms, thus causing the boiler to cycle more often?
mcclunyboy
2 Oct 16#37
I understand the benefits of zoning but what is the cost of the Honeywell evohome plus let's say TRVs on 8-10 radiators? Best guess of £600 but probably over £800 without getting a quote.
Nest seems like a more economical option for most, you can realise your savings quicker as it learns and the cost of the product is cheaper so R2I isn't very long.
There is one exception - big properties - for those get an evohome and use the zones!!
bellboys
2 Oct 16#38
You need to contact Nest, I'm sure (once they'd verified your figures, which would involve checking difference in consumption as opposed to what you pay per month) they would be keen to include you in their advertising :smile: Personally, I would also be interested in your comparison consumption figures because to make those sort of %tage savings with ANY form of heating control whether Nest or zoning you must have been incredibly profligate with your gas consumption before installing Nest.
Nujol
2 Oct 16#39
Hmmm thank you. But I don't see how it can learn our habits - it doesn't know when we will be late or early, doesn't presumably know the weather forecast, doesn't know when we will be on holiday.... it's like saying something will learn when you want the lights on.... it might get it right 70% of the time but the other 30% will involve manual fiddling anyway.... I can't think of a simpler system than flicking the little switches on the boiler.... feels like a complication of a simple process......?
Perhaps at age 38 I am turning into a curmudgeonly old man...??!!
Tado can track your location and check whether forecast.
bellboys
3 Oct 16#42
Looked at Tado in great detail (and all the others!) before going down the zoning route and for this to work you need to have location enabled on your smartphone all the time. Which can drain your battery no end lol.
bellboys
3 Oct 16#43
Don't take this the wrong way but if you believe it necessary to have all your rooms toasty warm all the time on the off-chance that you may decide to take an impromtu shower at 7.50pm instead of your usual 9.30pm....then why are you oin a money saving website? :stuck_out_tongue: But, of course, should I suddenly decide to have an impromptu shower at any time I simply get out my mobile (or use the wireless control panel) and put the heating up in the bathroom and have my shower 10 mins later. Simples. Plus we have Sky Plus :laughing:
With regard to heat loss, no, I haven't calculated it but anyone who recognises the importance of zoning your heating would be an idiot to leave all the doors open don't you think? We have (very heavy, carpenter fitted) oak veneer internal doors throughout (bought from Wickes at a bargain price) which remain firmly shut until used. I would imagine the heat loss would be minimal with such a set up. Certainly when opening one of these doors to an at the time unheated room produces a noticeable chill feeling lol. Akin to venturing into your loft in the Winter when it's been fully insulated. Cold...
Funnily enough we were travelling home from the outlaws this evening (20 min journey) when my wife decided to have a shower when she got in instead of in the morning before work. Out came her smartphone and the temp in the bathroom (only) was upped to 21C. Result when we got home? Toasty warm bathroom, instant shower. An over-size radiator (which we employ all over the house) obviously helps in these circs.
DominicPTS
3 Oct 161#44
Hmmm I work shifts which vary day by day, week by week (it's a 36 week rota, with a 3 week cycle of rest days but there are 17 different shifts plus cover shifts which can mean a swing of 3 hours either way booking on etc. I'd love to know how any system learns my pattern?! If your pattern is that regimented surely a timer set to your pattern will do the job?
SpudGunner
3 Oct 161#45
Cracking deal, I had pre registered to go to Screwfix live and when I turned up they had run out of the bag of freebies I was meant to get for pre registering. So they gave me a £30 off voucher instead! Happy days got the nest for £111 :smiley:
AMJ
5 Oct 16#46
So here's how it appears to be 'learning' so far. Installed this on Monday to control my downstairs heating (water based underfloor heating). When I got up Tuesday morning the thermostat reported the room temp was 18C and the heating was off - so I turned it up to 20C - the heating came on and it advised it would take 20 minutes to get up to temperature. I knew that was optimistic as my underfloor heating relies on the thermal mass of the floor screed getting warmed up to bring the room up to temperature - so it's slow to respond. Sure enough after a couple of hours the temperature hit 20C and the boiler switched off - only problem was that there was so much energy now been transferred to the floor mass that the room temperature continues to climb up to 23C and even by the evening had only fallen to 22C - That's what's called overshoot. Today when I get up the room temperature is already at 20C with the stat set to 20C. When I turn the stat up to 21C it suggests this will take a more realistic 90 minutes to achieve. So already the NEST appears to have learnt how my house responds to heat input and knows to shut off the boiler early, rather than wait for the room to get to the set temperature. I realise Radiant underfloor heating is an extreme use case, but this will also happen to a lesser extent with conventional radiators - being able to avoid overshooting is both more energy efficient and more comfortable than using a conventional thermostat which will only switch off when the room hits the selected temperature. So far pleased with how it's responding as I was worried it might struggle with the slow response time for my system - it also should adjust to compensate for the weather forecast - it checks that too - and can be set to display outside temperature now and forecast for the next day if you want it to :-)
Opening post
Top comments
All comments (46)
Good deal <3
Remember this not only a thermostat - it programs heating and hot water, so also gets rid of the 2 channel programmer
Anyone have any idea what a reasonable price for installation is?
http://getconnected.honeywell.com/en/evohome
EVOhome is overpriced.
We have a combi boiler so hot water not a consideration. For the heating we have a 24hr dial that we regularly adjust depending on the temp, plus an on/off switch which is just off for 6-7 months of the year.
Plus we can set the heat of each radiator (We have dials which I presume are the TRV things others mention).
You can even go a step further and link them to presence or door sensors to determine if you're using a room, or in your home.
Ours have been on the same setting for the past 16 years. What am I missing?
It's like Honeywell say, who would consider having just the one light switch for your whole house? No-one. But lighting a house is considerably cheaper than heating one so why have just the one switch for heating the whole house? Simple really.
People pay a fortune on these gadgets citing the savings - how long does it take to recoup the capital investment?
Sure it's nice to have a system that can be switched on before you get home but if you let your house go cold and warm it up again constantly I doubt you save a fortune over just keeping it constant and turning the thermostat down a bit, and put a jumper on!
The nest can detect when you've left the house and turn the heat off, when you go to bed it turns the heating down through the night and back up before you wake up etc etc.
our gas bill has gone from £100-£110 a month down to £60-£80. in less than a year our nest has already paid for itself.
this device may be 'useless' to you and others but for some people it's a fantastic bit of kit.
the hive is ok but it's basically a less polished version of the nest. The nest is amazing, it's simple to use, the app is perfect and we've genuinely saved a lot of money with it, in the nearly a year we've had the nest v3 (we bought on launch day) it's already paid for itself. The only issue I have is that I have not yet been successful connecting it to amazon echo (echo app can't find it).
BTW, have you done the done the heat-loss calcs to determine how quickly your single room losses heat to the cold adjacent rooms, thus causing the boiler to cycle more often?
Nest seems like a more economical option for most, you can realise your savings quicker as it learns and the cost of the product is cheaper so R2I isn't very long.
There is one exception - big properties - for those get an evohome and use the zones!!
Perhaps at age 38 I am turning into a curmudgeonly old man...??!!
Don't take this the wrong way but if you believe it necessary to have all your rooms toasty warm all the time on the off-chance that you may decide to take an impromtu shower at 7.50pm instead of your usual 9.30pm....then why are you oin a money saving website? :stuck_out_tongue: But, of course, should I suddenly decide to have an impromptu shower at any time I simply get out my mobile (or use the wireless control panel) and put the heating up in the bathroom and have my shower 10 mins later. Simples. Plus we have Sky Plus :laughing:
With regard to heat loss, no, I haven't calculated it but anyone who recognises the importance of zoning your heating would be an idiot to leave all the doors open don't you think? We have (very heavy, carpenter fitted) oak veneer internal doors throughout (bought from Wickes at a bargain price) which remain firmly shut until used. I would imagine the heat loss would be minimal with such a set up. Certainly when opening one of these doors to an at the time unheated room produces a noticeable chill feeling lol. Akin to venturing into your loft in the Winter when it's been fully insulated. Cold...
Funnily enough we were travelling home from the outlaws this evening (20 min journey) when my wife decided to have a shower when she got in instead of in the morning before work. Out came her smartphone and the temp in the bathroom (only) was upped to 21C. Result when we got home? Toasty warm bathroom, instant shower. An over-size radiator (which we employ all over the house) obviously helps in these circs.