Save Energy and Money with Nest

By John Thompson, Executive Vice President. Intero Real Estate Services, Inc.

I’m sure by now you’ve all received your gas and electric bill for the month of December and you might not be too happy with it.  Between the heater running all day and the Christmas lights running all evening, I’m always amazed at how much it goes up during the month of December.  Not to mention the fact that you forgot to change the settings as you ran out the door for that last vacation of the year.  All of these elements can add up to a very expensive and wasteful month.  If only there was a way to set it and forget it.

The Nest Thermostat can help you do just that. The device learns your schedule, programs itself and can be controlled from your phone. With this kind of set up, your heating and cooling bills could be lowered by 20%.

To get started, purchase the Nest Thermostat here.  The device itself is about $250 but I promise, it will pay for itself.  Install the Nest Thermostat and answer a few simple questions to optimize the system, then over the first week turn it up and down as you go through your normal daily routine.  This teaches the thermostat what temperatures you like and builds a personalized schedule just for you.  After about 7 days, The Nest will automatically set everything on its own. Pretty amazing!

If you need to reset the system, say for the summer months, just go through this process again to reprogram it for your new routine.  If you leave on vacation and forget to turn off your thermostat, don’t worry, The Nest Thermostat will automatically turn to an energy-efficient Away temperature.  Want to adjust your thermostat while you’re away? Connect your smart phone to your Nest with the Nest app and you’ll have a warm welcome when you arrive home.

When your setting are saving energy, The Nest Leaf appears on the thermostat so you know you’re moving to a more eco-friendly temperature.  The Nest Thermostat even gives you an Energy History to see exactly how much energy you’re saving.

It really is super simple to use and by doing so, you could end up with a great reward: not only more money in your pocket but a more energy efficient home too.

Technology WANT vs. NEED

I really want one of the new iPhones from Apple.

There, I’ve declared it to the world.

It turns out that there are benefits for a real estate agent, like me, to have an iPhone. Thank you OMUOTO for helping me begin to justify this business investment. He really did a better job of justifying why my customers would want an iPhone in his article for vflyer Blogsight, but I was able to pick out two components where I might benefit:

1. The phone part – duh!


2. GPS – a real estate agent needs to be able to get to and from new places.

Do I need it? Need – there’s a word to get the defined. I looked it up at the Meriam-Webster online dictionary. The verb form of the word, under definition 2 could be usable for me here. The phrase, “a physiological or psychological requirement for the well-being of an organism,” looks like it might apply to me.

As a matter of fact, I think that it absolutely does apply to me.

So long for now. I’m going shopping!