When we bought the house this year one of the things we were most excited to do during our renovations was to find ways to make the home more energy efficient and environmentally-friendly. In addition to improving light sources, we also wanted to ensure we got to the source of our energy usage – namely heating.

Our house originally had the classic, old-school mercury thermostats, so one of the first things we did upon moving in was install programable thermostats.

Since we live in the arctic, winters are brutally cold and most homes hemorrhage heat throughout the year. Although, we’re quite lucky to live in a very well insulated and efficiently designed house, we still pay pretty high heating costs (even with the heating oil subsidy). With programmable thermostats, we expected we could at the very least cut down on our energy usage (and costs) when we’re not in the house during the day, and at night when we’re sleeping.

We did some research and heard some good (and a few bad) things about the Nest thermostat. Nest is the new wave of intelligent/smart home technology that learns your habits and preferred settings, figures out how long it takes to heat your house or to increase the temp by a few degrees (so it doesn’t waste excess energy heating it up too soon), and even senses when you’re home or away so that it doesn’t waste energy heating an empty home. Pretty clever.

So we bought one to test out before changing all thermostats over to this ‘smart’ system. Our primary concerns were issues with power outages, which are frequent in the north. If the power went out, and the backup battery on the Nest died, we needed to be certain it would turn itself back on when the power came back – and ultimately, if we are away when this happens, would the house continue to be heated once the boiler goes back online? Some online reviewers had issues with this very thing happening (or not happening for them) with the earliest version of the Nest, but the current 2.0 version of the Nest (post 2012) appears to have worked out this bug and it no longer appears to be an issue. I can further attest to this as we’ve had at least 3-4 power outages since we installed our Nest, and although the backup battery has considerable life, when it finally did die, the Nest still managed to turn on within a few seconds of the power turning back on in the house. Yay.What has me so excited about Nest, aside from it’s sleek design and ease of use (and installation I might add), is how helpful it is at making me more energy efficient. Each day it calculates how much energy we used on heating and lets me know how that compares to previous days/weeks. It also has a handy app for iPhone, iPads or Android so you can change or check on your heating settings (which I enjoy doing when I’m away on work trips or when I want to pre-warm the house for lunch on a chilly day) and you also receive energy updates by email.

As you can see above, it also gives you insightful information as to WHY you may have used too much energy. If it was because of external elements, like the weather outside was especially cold, or if human factors were at play and you manually increased the temperature higher than the usual presets. It also helps you be a little competitive with yourself and gives you a green leaf next to days where you were most energy efficient, or when you used the most energy saving settings. It also sends you monthly updates to inform you of how you’re doing at saving energy. Here’s our update from last month:

Monthly energy use report from Nest

Nest is a handy way to help you save money and be more conscious of your impact on the environment. Although it comes with a substantial price tag ($250) compared to your basic non-programmable thermostat ($30), we’ve managed to reduce our heating bills considerably in the first 6 months we’ve had ours, to the point that it’s already paid for itself and then some.

Next month we’ll be installing another Nest thermostat upstairs and are looking into the Nest smoke detector & CO alarm as a possibility down the road.

TWO YEARS LATER: A quick update 2 years after we installed our first Nest, and it’s still one of my favorite household gadgets. We’ve gone through about a dozen or more power outages and crazy storms and it’s always kicked in as soon as it’s the power is restored. I love this thing!