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@TechConnectify My house has a schedule thermostat (with weekdays, Saturday and Sunday for different settings) and the temporary hold until next schedule point is exactly how that works too. I have no idea why you wouldn't do it that way.

And it's not *that* complex a thermostat.

Since I was in Italy at the beginning of October (and snow was on the horizon) I asked my grandparents to turn the furnace on and they were unsure on what the switch to do that was.

So ecobee sounds nuts

@DasGanon yeah, it's ridiculous. Nest behaves like you would expect any programmable thermostat to behave when you change the temperature: it will stay what you set it to until the next program point. But for some ridiculous reason, you cannot simply have it hold and become a dumb thermostat. Ever.

Ecobee, on the other hand, decided to give you way too much control over what it does with temporary overrides. But at least you can hold.

The best answer is exactly between the two.

@DasGanon like, I honestly cannot fathom why anyone would value "a two-hour hold" or whatever the hell Ecobee lets you do.

Presumably, you want it to follow the program you set up until you don't. So you make a change. But you want it to resume the program once that change has been over. But if you don't, then you put on hold mode.

I do not understand why ecobee has the granularity it does, and I do not understand why nest refuses to let you just turn it into a dumb thermostat when you want.

@TechConnectify @DasGanon For me, the 2-hr hold is useful for when it’s just a little cold / hot. My house is well insulated, though, and can maintain the inside temperature fairly easily.

Coupled with the lack of true winter, I think it is useful the way it’s designed, but will admit it is opaque.

@jdechko @DasGanon I can't help myself from pointing out, though, that if your home is well-insulated, then it's not like it's going to run much after that two-hour duration once it's attained the setpoint you asked. I think just letting it resume the program at the next change is fine, plus - you could also just set it back down later.

Deciding a "default" behavior - or picking which one every time you do an override - feels like, well, too many options to me.

@TechConnectify @jdechko @DasGanon Isn’t having a sensible* default but providing options for those that want something different a pretty good way to satisfy a broad audience of users?

*I acknowledge that “sensible” is doing a lot of work there.