Well, I have to admit that we live in Paradise. Never too hot, never too cold.Originally Posted by Bill George
Mike
Contributor
Well, I have to admit that we live in Paradise. Never too hot, never too cold.
Mike
Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.
Moderator
The temperature is certainly wonderful in your area, coast, inland. I used to travel to points from San Fran to San Diego and was never disappointed.
But how is your area now? Are you getting the heavy rain and flooding we see in the news? I haven't seen reports from specific areas.
JKJ
Contributor
Thanks for your question, John. Where I am, in southern California, we're getting rain but nothing that's causing any problems. The really hard rains have hit northern California, especially the area above San Francisco. In general, the rains tend to become less intense as you move from Northern California to southern California.
I don't know if the rain could be effectively captured, but we could probably use a bit more of the rain in Southern California. There's basin close to my home where they leave a lot of water in for most of the year, so that it can percolate into the ground. In late fall, they release the remaining water so that the basin can be used to capture rainfall and prevent flooding further down the stream. I passed by the basin a few days ago and it wasn't full.
The only area in southern California that I've heard of any real problems is Montecito (close to Santa Barbara) where they've had some flooding and debris flows. You may know of Montecito because of the celebrities who live there, such as Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres, and recently Megan Markel and Prince Harry.
We have our threats, especially earthquakes, but overall, coastal California is a wonderful place. The population is diverse and there's a significant percentage of highly educated people. The weather is very nice most of the year, neither too hot nor too cool. But within a day's ride, you can go from surfing to snow skiing.
I came here for the first time in 1968, after I graduated college and fell in love with the place. Unfortunately, I wound up being drafted but eventually got back here and will live out the rest of my days here in paradise.
Mike
Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.
Member
Smart thermostats can be a two edged sword. We have 2 HVAC systems in our house. I swapped out the “dumb” thermostats for two Nests several years ago.
I started by setting specific times/set points and then let the thermostat do its thing by noting where we were in the house, coming and going and, of course, wetting its thumb and sticking it up in the air. The result was that the Nest(s) tweaked themselves to their satisfaction; us, not so much. I reset them and told them to stop playing around.
Last year, we replaced one of the systems with a Lennox gas heater AC unit. After 19 years, one of them rolled over and died. The Lennox came with a sophisticated thermostat that took about 3 months to settle down, but it is now doing what I want it to do. Only problem is a very hit and miss geo fencing feature. It detects our returning home about 75% of the time. The other system is still on the Nest and geo fencing has worked without a flaw.
We now have smart switches (including the espresso machine), lights, locks and the 240 ceiling heater in the shop is on a smart thermostat. It is nice to use my phone or Alexa to turn the heater on 1/2 hour before I go out and into what is sometimes a mid 30s F environment.
Contributor
I have a policy. Once I install an app I turn off automatic updates. Far too many times after updates I find the app no longer works on my phone or they change something and make the app worse. Somethings you have no choice about and somethings just stop working. But I often find that outdated apps work just fine. I think Android pressures app designers to drop support for older versions to pressure people into updating to the latest version of Android. Of course that usually means a new phone. I get that some people can't help but buy a new one each year but I just upgraded from a Note Edge (10 years old) to a Pixel 6 Pro that I never would have done except that I wanted some new apps that I couldn't run.
As for wanting "dumb" things, I use to think that way. But some of the "smart" stuff is actually worth the upgrade. I have several smart bulbs for example. I can turn them on from the bottom of my driveway or halfway around the world. Before that I had a light switch made by Liftmaster that could be turned on when the remote was close enough. It worked but by the time I was in range it wasn't worth it. I don't have much of a use for a smart thermo as my main source of heat is a woodstove with an endless supply of wood.
Moderator
Alex, sometimes there may be efforts to push folks toward newer devices but that's not just Google/Android, but also the device manufacturers. OTOH, the continual need to update the OS for security, etc., invariably closes off some system APIs that app vendors might have used...sometimes those APIs were published for use, but sometimes they were "discovered" things by the app manufacturer which is risky. It's pretty complex all around for maintaining any kind of app on any OS over long periods of time simply because change has to happen to keep the "bad actors" from, um...acting...
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The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...
Contributor
We have the sister version of the same app under the Bryant branding and ours recently went through the same update. I hardly ever use it but one thing that drives me crazy is that if another person sets up the app, it kicks the prior person out. For example, if I have it working on my phone and then my wife installs and sets it up on her phone, mine no longer works. I’ve relegated the control to her phone and just use the manual screen entry on the thermostat itself as my work around.
Moderator
Greg, can you both not use the same login credentials for the app on multiple devices? All of the "smart thing" apps I have work on both my device and Professor Dr SWMBO's device. (iPhones in our case)
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The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...
[OP]
Contributor
That is the way the sensi branded ap worked. Only one registered phone. I will see if my wifes phone can connect to the new improved ap or not.
The thermostat came with the house and no documentation. We owned the house for two months before we had wifi working there.
Bill D
Contributor
I hope that this does not take things too far off topic, but I wanted to add my experience. I've had a Nest learning thermostat for several years. I set all the fancy features to off. It does not track when I'm home, for example. I do not use their app. When I am on vacation, I monitor it from the web browser. What can I say? I'm a luddite. Recently, we noticed that the set temp was lower than we wanted. I went onto the browser and saw that my schedule was fine. I called Nest/Google. (Note: When I bought this, the omnipresent and omnipotent Google did not own Nest.). The very nice lady at Nest told me that twice a year, they will send me an email asking my permission to muck with my settings. (I've never received such an email, despite her assurances.) If I do not reply, or do not say No, they will do it anyway. No choice. We are GOOGLE. We know more about you than you know about you. The only way to stop this is to take the thermostat off my wifi network. That way, Google cannot see it. Of course, neither can I.
As someone else here, I recently replaced my old Carrier furnace with a shiny new Lennox one. I kept my Carrier AC. On advice from the installer, I upgraded my Nest to a new M30 Lennox thermostat. Pricey little bugger, it was. Well, after a month of service calls, it turned out the the M30 would not play nice with my AC. So, I had to remove the M30 and put the Nest back. No refund on the M30. Lennox will not even talk to consumers. Their position is that the "customer" is the installer and I don't exist.
Rant mode off.
Grant
Ottawa ON
Contributor
My daughter bought a house 4 years ago. One of the heat pumps died before settlement and the owner replaced it before the sale. After 6 or more failures, waiting for parts, replacing parts (All warranty luckily), 6 months later they replaced the fancy thermostat with a basic one. The unit worked flawlessly since.
Contributor
Knock on wood, but my Honeywell WI-FI thermostat has not caused any equipment failures. My HVAC equipment has not had a single failure in eight years and the WI-FI thermostat was installed about five years ago. I know a lot of HVAC techs absolutely hate Nest thermostats because they do strange things with the equipment.
Contributor
There are several websites that sell refurbished phones, and you do not need a SIM card (mobile service) to use them with WiFi. Get an old one in fair condition that's new enough to be supported for a few years. They're guaranteed, so if the phone stops working in a year you can get it swapped.
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