When your heating or cooling turns on and off frequently it can use more energy and may increase wear on your system. To help prevent this, your Nest thermostat will wait to turn on your system.
This delay is commonly called the maintenance band, differential, or temperature swing. Many thermostat brands and models also use the maintenance band to help prevent system wear.
How the maintenance band works
- The maintenance band allows the temperature in your home to change by a few degrees before turning your system on or off. You may notice a difference, but you should still be comfortable. For example, when your thermostat is set to cool your home, your target temperature might be 70ºF. If the maintenance band is 1ºF, the thermostat will cool your home to 69ºF, turn off your air conditioning, and wait to turn it back on until your home reaches 71ºF.
- When you manually change the target temperature with your Nest thermostat or with the app, your thermostat may turn on your system right away, or switch your system on when the room temperature is 1°F (0.5°C) away from the set temperature. It'll then run your system until the temperature is slightly beyond the target temperature that you’ve set.
- You’ll know that your Nest thermostat is set to turn on your system by the color of the screen. For example, if the screen is orange, your thermostat will turn on your heat, if it's blue, cooling will activate. You’ll also notice the temperature screen change color in the app.
- Your thermostat will learn over time how quickly your home heats and cools and automatically adjusts the heating and cooling maintenance bands to balance comfort and system wear.
- Nest Learning Thermostat (4th gen) supports manual adjustment of the maintenance band settings. To adjust this setting:
- Open the Google Home app .
- Tap Favorites or Devices .
- Select your thermostat.
- Tap Settings .
- Tap Thermostat Advanced configuration.
- Adjust the Heat temperature difference and Cool temperature difference as preferred.