A few months ago I won a sustainability award at my old company. Basically, we were asked to submit stuff we were doing for sustainability. I wrote in about our worm bin, our (vacant) bat house and a few other minor things we do. Every submission was a winner, and so I got a nice check for about a hundred dollars.
Now, when you win a nice sum for sustainability, it seems somehow ironic to blow it all on Starbucks. And I’d just read about this ultra cool futuristic thermostat. So it was that I placed an order for a Nest.
At this very moment, a highly sought after piece of cutting edge technology is sitting on my wall, lamenting that of all its beautifully designed brethren IT has to live on a wall with ’70s era dark wood paneling.
Guys, this thing is so cool. My husband is, as we speak, putting a detailed schedule in (online), including the fact that he’s gone to aikido at a certain time, etc. etc. If we make manual adjustments, it will “learn” from them and modify our schedule. It has wireless access, so you can totally change the temperature from, oh, your mobile phone. (I can forsee endless fun with this.) It tracks and monitors your power usage. It has a light sensor to see if you’re actually at home or if you left. It shows you reports on your energy usage.
Now all I have to do is paint that wall, so my ultra cool piece of technology doesn’t feel so embarrassed.
My Truant Pen 
I hereby volunteer for painting duty. Yay!!!
LikeLike
Wait, it tracks and monitors your power usage? I WANT ONE JUST FOR THAT. Seriously, this new house is an electric guzzler like whoa, and I’m not even sure where all the juice is going.
LikeLike
I know – so cool! But only energy usage associated with heating/cooling. We also have a device called a Kill-o-watt. You can plug appliances into it and plug it into the wall and it will measure their energy usage and you can find out that something’s a huge hog, or it’s not really and a its a red herring. You can borrow it if you’d like… maybe we could actually see each other again! That would be great!
LikeLike
This actually got me to finally bite the bullet and order one of those free energy inspections that I’ve been meaning to set up. But we should still totally hang out sometime soon when everyone is feeling better!
(Also, if you and/or Adam feel like paying a subscription fee to go run around with lightsabers at 10PM-midnight some nights, I’m always up for more friends to play Star Wars with! It’s really good!)
LikeLike
I am so close at buying this Nest thermostat. But I just cant see how it can be “that much better” than my old (and trusted!) Honeywell RTH7600D thermostat. + the Nest is like $249?…. But then again… It’s so freakin’ sweet lookin! 🙂
LikeLike
The truth of the matter is that if you’ve properly programmed your Honeywell, you probably won’t see THAT much improvement (although the light/motion sensor definitely catches times you’re away but didn’t change the temp). But still… two words: mobile app. I admit to sometimes saying, “I’m cold!” and the pulling out my Droid phone to change the temperature.
No arguing its a luxury, but it’s a fun one.
LikeLike