How to improve energy savings with your Nest thermostat

There are lots of ways to help improve energy savings and reduce your utility bills. Here are some steps you can take that can help reduce your energy use.

Teach your Nest thermostat

The first week after being installed, your thermostat will build a schedule by learning each time you walk in front of it or adjust the temperature. Your thermostat will never stop learning, so teach it good habits to help save energy. Turn it down before you go to bed, or whenever you would usually turn down a thermostat to save energy. Your Nest thermostat will remember these changes and adjust your schedule. You can find the results of teaching your Nest thermostat good habits in your Home Report.

Adjust your radiator valves

Adjusting your radiator valves can help save energy by helping to make sure that your home heats and cools more evenly. If some of the rooms in your home are overheating, try to make gradual adjustments to the radiator valves in each room. Close the valves for a room that heats up too quickly and open up the valves in the rooms that feel too cold.

Set your Eco Temperature thoughtfully

Eco Temperature can help you save energy when no one’s home. Choosing an energy-efficient Eco Temperature will prevent your home from wasting energy while there’s no one in it. The more efficient your Eco Temperature is, the more you’ll save, but make sure you don't set your Eco Temperature too low or too high if you have pets, plants or delicate items in your home.

Learn how to change Eco Temperature settings

Your thermostat can use your phone’s location to help tell when you’ve left home and when you’ve returned. If you want your family or friends to be able to use their phone location as well, they can sign up for a Family Account. Every Family Account member can use their phone location to help improve the accuracy of automatic switching.

Check for the Nest Leaf

The Nest Leaf is an easy way to know you’re saving energy, and it encourages you to continually improve your savings over time. You’ll find the Leaf on your thermostat when you set a temperature that helps save energy. The more often the Leaf appears, the more you save.

Try an easy 0.5°C change in your schedule

Most people can’t tell the difference between a room set one day at 22 °C and the next day at 21.5 °C. In fact, the difference in temperature between your nose and your toes is likely to be more than 0.5 °C. Adjust your thermostat's temperature schedule by just 0.5 °C and learn how much you’ve saved compared to the previous month in your Home Report.

Set your thermostat to its Eco Temperature if you’re going on holiday

If you’re going to be away for an extended period of time, you might want to manually set your thermostat to its Eco Temperature to help save energy.

Learn how to save energy with your Nest thermostat when you’re going away on holiday

Avoid cranking up the heating

Most systems won’t heat your home any faster if you set your thermostat to a higher temperature, but your system will probably run for longer and use more energy. If you want it to be 22 °C inside and you turn the heating up to 30 °C, it will warm up just as fast as if you set the temperature to 22 °C.

If you crank up the heating often enough, your Nest thermostat will learn these temperatures and automatically add them to your schedule, which can use even more energy.

Use Time-to-Temperature as a guide

When you change the temperature, check the Time-to-Temperature on the thermostat screen to get a sense of how long it will take for your home to reach the temperature you've set. You may not know if you want it to be 21 °C or 22 °C, but it’s easy to know the difference between running the heating for 15 minutes versus an hour.

Check your Energy History

You can view the last 10 days of your heating activity in your Energy History. It’s a great tool for building better habits to save even more in the future. If you want to know your energy activity over a longer period of time, you can check your Home Report.

Use two or more thermostats the right way

If you have more than one thermostat in your home, teach them differently so that they build schedules for each part of your home that they control. You can save even more energy by closing the interior doors between the different areas of your home. This will help to keep the warm air where you want it and prevent your system from turning on when it doesn’t need to.

If you have a condensing boiler

Condensing boilers are more efficient when the return water flow is below 55 °C. Because different homes dissipate heat at different rates, and because each boiler is different, a heating professional can help select the boiler supply temperature that will keep you warm and save the most energy. Contact a Nest Pro to help you adjust settings on your condensing boiler to help you save energy.