Robert Spychala

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Installing The Nest The Hard Way

Why the hard way? Well, if you’re gonna bring the dry wall cement and paint out, you might as well do a couple things!

Last week we got the Nest and I decided we would need to paint the area where the previous thermostat was. You can do without this if you choose to use some of the braces that come with the Nest and the size of the braces is bigger than the previous thermostat footprint. Our thermostat’s footprint unfortunately was way too big. Regardless, having it directly against the wall gives it a nicer, more polished look.

The “before” look:

Now comes the process. It took about 4 days to complete.

Taking off the cover we find the wires and label them using the sticker kit Nest provides.

Now, one of the “extras” I wanted to do is get rid of the switch socket space that we don’t use anymore.

Here is a closer look:

We do this by getting some chicken wire out, thanks @twepius!

and literally jam it into the part of the socket hole we want to patch up. Of course be sure to turn off electricity to the switch in the breaker box.

nice.

Now we take out sheet rock cement and start applying it into the places we want to fill.

Use sheetrock compound like it’s going out of style.

 

Now what I found, no matter how quickly you want to have the sheetrock dry, do not apply heat to it. Meaning no dryers, etc. Just let the chemical process do its thing. This might take a day or 2, depending on the humidity. It’s been raining here in NY and this took longer than expected. 3 days for multiple applications of the compound.

Now, apply more sheetrock compound to fill out the holes and give the wall a flat surface.

 

BTW, if you’re doing this in winter and have the thermostat offline for a few days, make sure you have an alternate source of heat!

Now, sand the wall, apply more sheetrock compound if needed.

And sand again. And paint!

and after a few hours of drying and a few coats. it’s done! now the fun part, installing the hardware.

Apart from the Nest, I decided to install some Lutron Vierti dimmers. If you want to turn your house into a Starship Enterprise deck, might as well do it right :)

Here is the dimmer with the base of the Nest being screwed to the wall.

And it’s done!

After a few minutes of downloading patches the Nest figured out its configuration and works as expected. I’ll post a review of its day to day use. But so far we’re very impressed.

The “after” look: