• Heating Controls

By: Rob Wells

Updated: 5th November 2021

The Nest Learning Thermostat is a heating thermostat and a programmer in one. It’s the perfect smart thermostat for modern homes and busy lives.

Nest works by learning your energy habits to bring down your energy costs, making sure you don’t waste unnecessary energy and money. Providing precision temperature control, it works by learning your energy habits to create a personalised schedule to efficiently heat your home. And, it keeps on learning too, adapting to any changes in your energy usage and routine.

What is a Nest Learning Thermostat?

Like most modern smart thermostats, Nest will work with almost all condensing and combi boilers. It’s also compatible with system and heat only boilers, as well as air source and ground source heat pumps. You’re looking at a price of around £279 for Nest 3rd Generation, fully installed. Without installation it will cost you £219.

You can now purchase the Nest Thermostat E, a simplified and lower cost version of the Nest.
 

How the Nest Learning Thermostat works

The Nest Learning Thermostat comprises of a thermostat and the heat link, which controls the boiler and communicates wirelessly with the thermostat. This clever bit of kit will adapt to your energy habits and only needs about a week to learn your routine.

Once installed and connected to WiFi, you can use the Nest app to control the thermostat from a tablet or smartphone and take control of your heating remotely. Alternatively, login via a computer and you can edit your personalised heating schedule, make adjustments and see how much heat you’ve used.

As well as being able to make your own adjustments, Nest is always learning and adapting to changes in your lifestyle and heating habits, leaning about:

• Your preferred time for the heating to come on
• The time you turn the heating off
• Your preferred temperature

Then when you leave the house, the Nest will turn itself down to save energy.

Benefits of the Nest Learning Thermostat

According to Nest, its customers in the US have enjoyed savings of around 20% on average on their heating and cooling bills. Although with a different climate in the UK our energy requirements are going to be rather different. Other benefits include:

• Improve the efficiency of your home
• Lower heating bills
• Compatible with combi and condensing boilers, and system and heat only boilers
• Use with air source and ground source heat pumps
• Control your heating via a computer, smartphone or tablet
• Automatic shut off – Nest won’t heat an empty home
• Learns your schedule and programmes itself to heat your home efficiently
• Easy to operate with an attractive design

About the author

Rob Wells

Rob is another of our resident home heating experts. He manages our external partnerships, making sure you get the most up to date information.