The nest Thermostat is now in my nest. I thought I would write up a step by step account of going from my old thermostat to the new one.

To begin, my first step was to take a gander at the contents by unboxing my new Christmas gift. (Wife let me do this a bit early so we would not be freezing our guest out of the house over the holidays if this did not go well.)

So far so good…

A little sticker with a reminder to make sure my system is compatible before opening the box all up. Check! (easy peel with starter corner a nice touch)

Open. Simple and clean.

Nice surprise! A high quality tool with both a philips and flat head screwdriver included.

Two additional plate options. One for an electrical box, and one to cover a larger area that may be damaged or that you do not want to take the time to repair. (nest is going to be a good bit smaller than most conventional thermostats) I chose to do a quick spackle repair and so neither plate option was needed.

A little information booklet, and step by step guide also included.

Front of the wall mount wire connection plate has a nice little built in level making it a snap to mount just perfectly.

Back of the wall mount is very simple and clean and the composite material has a high quality durable feel. At this point, you are really sensing the influence that was brought over to the company from Apple. Everything is top notch.

Back of the nest thermostat reveals a micro USB port, I am guessing for doing manual software updates, but I am hooking up to my Wi-Fi network so this will not be used.

Okay, I am good to go. Time to get to installing!

Step 1: Getting rid of this ugly old thing. (Turn power off to system before getting into this) I also turned the heat setting way down so nothing was set to kick on while I was working.

Step 2: Snap a quick Pic of current wiring. (This will come in handy if you need phone support or end up putting back the old one if there is an issue)

Step 3: Unscrew wires and label them with stickers nest included in the  little instruction booklet. Then unscrew plate from the wall.

Step 4: Attached new mount plate and connect wires.

Step 5: Snap on nest thermostat and flip the switch on the breaker box.

Step 6: Cross Fingers

Okay this is a good time to announce I had an issue. Things were going too well on this Saturday morning. My nest was not powering on. I double checked online with nest’s excellent website and step by step troubleshooting guide, but the issue was not there. There was a number to call and true to my experience so far with the product, I was very pleased to find out they work 7 days a week and are very helpful. The tech I got on the phone was very knowledgeable, sounded well trained (like he has installed a bunch of these for people already) and was based here in the USA. Got to love great service!! Switched a couple wires (my system is VERY old and so there was an extra wire that needed addressing) and the system lit right up!

Step 7: Follow the on screen set up by first connecting to my Wi-Fi

Step 8: It found a software update, downloaded automatically and installed.

Step 9: Checked my competence level. (I was not offended)

Step 10: Confirmed wiring

Step 11: Confirmed attached systems

Step 12: Had me select some things about my system. ( Very basic things like heating system type, number of thermostats, etc.) Also some basic heating cooling preferences.

Step 13: Kicked the heat on!

So at this point I just played around with it a bunch, but not for any reason other than I felt like playing around with it a bunch. I walked toward it to watch it light up as I approached. I turn the click sound on and off, and then left it alone. It worked. It was really very simple. The whole experience met my very high expectations. One final step.

Step 14: Installed the App on my iPhone!

Entered a user name and password. Good to go and now controllable from anywhere!

IMPRESSED!

I’ll follow up with my own “Living with nest” in about 60 days. I would love to hear from anyone else who has had one installed for awhile now. One other quick note, nest does have a concierge service that for a fee, will install this system for you. Not many will need it. 