Nesting our Home

How do you know when you're a grown-up? When instead of in addition to little-kid toys like video games, you get big-kid toys for the home. This year for Christmas, both of our sets of parents gave us awesome home-improvement gifts. The first was a Nest. (Stay tuned for the next one until our next update.)

The Nest is the hot new learning thermostat, designed by Tony Fadell - designer of the original iPod. Why is this thermostat $250? Well, one it looks cool with it's sleek steel ring and elegant design.

Two, it has a sensor to detect whether anyone is home - so it knows when to turn down the thermostat. Three, it connects to the internet allowing you to change settings through either a web interface or through an iPhone app. Four, other stuff.

Still, is it worth it? For people who never touch their thermostat, this device will probably save you a lot of money. Since we actually have programmed our original thermostat, the Nest makes less sense. Still, after a few days of ownership, I really like it.

The install is both easy and painful. Easy because it is super easy to hook up.

They even give you a screwdriver. Which seems totally unnecessary. Who does not have a screwdriver?

Why did I say it was easy and painful? Well it's painful because the Nest smaller than most of the old thermostats, so you will likely have to deal with some ugly wall. In our case we also have an additional problem: the hole drilled out for the wires is off-center from our planked wall.

So my brother drilled a new hole and threaded the wires into the new hole with a coat hanger.

The new hole.

What we should have done next is filled in the old hole, primed the wall, and repainted it. But 1. we were a bit pressed for time and 2. we do not have the original paint. So we took the easy way out and used the vanity plate.

The wires were super easy to install. You just shove them into little holes on the gray tabs - no screws needed. The Nest itself just snaps onto the front. The first thing it did, after powering up, was update itself. The Nest people apparently are continually adding features to the Nest. Which is awesome. After the update completed the fun begins!

First you connect it to your WiFi network (not required, but it makes the Nest a lot more useful). Now the Brave New Home is part of the Internet of Things! Next you tell it what kind of heat (or A/C) system you have installed (in our case, we have oil-powered radiator heat), then you can fill out a schedule, then some other bits like what the minimum or maximum temperature should be.

The scheduling is far easier than a traditional thermostat because you can use the web interface or mobile app to fill out the week.

For now I've re-created our old schedule - turn on the heat when we wake up, very low for the day, on again when we get home, and cooler for the night. What is awesome is that we can change the thermostat anywhere we have an internet connection. So if we are going out to dinner on Friday night, our iPhone can be used to tell the house not to follow the schedule.

What is nice is that the Nest is smart about heating (and cooling). It learns how long it takes to heat and cool the house so that it can reach the temperature by the specified time. Which is great, because with the old thermostat I had to fudge, by telling it to turn on the heat (or A/C) early.

Another great feature of the Nest is the motion sensor. When it doesn't see anyone walk by the thermostat for a while, it will stop running the heat or A/C. This is not too useful for use during the week because we leave and return on a regular schedule, but this will be useful on the weekends.

Because I love data, I like that the Nest records how long the heater or A/C runs and scores how energy-efficient you are with a leaf. So far, we are doing well.

Unfortunately they do not seem to make the data available in a text format, so I cannot play with the data myself. There's supposed to be a monthly email. Maybe that will have what I want?

So what is worst part about the Nest? I like it so much I am very tempted to get a second one to control our A/C!

Under PRESSURE!

We had a little buddy visit us for a month this fall - my parent's pressure washer! We'd noticed that the small bits of siding on our house looked pretty dingy and wanted to try to get rid of the mold.

We plugged him into the water and electrical supply and got to work.

We found it worked better when we could get close to the wall, so for the side of the house that's just above the one-floor garage, we could easily perch on the ladder. We tried to work top to bottom to minimize the amount of water that got pushed up between the panels, but we didn't always succeed.

See? Top to bottom:

Isn't it a huge improvement? We could still see some stubborn grime but decided to quite while we were ahead - I hated using all that water and we could just imagine accidentally aiming wrong and breaking a window or a roof slate.

Then it was onto the back, which was quite a bit higher. D stood on the ladder - extended this time - while I spotted him from the ground. The pressure wasn't that high, but I still envisioned some horrible "Funniest Home Video" incident where the pressure pushed him and the ladder to the ground, so I held on tight.

Much better!

The side of the second floor was a little more awkward because of the height and the angle. We did what we could, but it still looked pretty dingy when we gave up.

I briefly left my post beside the ladder to snap this shot - see how we just couldn't get the right angle to really clean it?

The last side was much easier except for all the overgrown shrubs and ivy all around, making it hard to position the ladder and all the cords. We couldn't quite reach well because of the length of our hose, but we still managed to give it a decent scrub.

In all, we spent about 2 hours on this project and won't have to do it again for another few years. We also hit the wood trim under the gutters as we made our way around the house, so that's looking much whiter now as well (it's amazing how we didn't notice it was dingy until we started washing it). Definitely all worth the effort, especially with free access to the pressure washer. 

Dryer update

Here's the last update from our honey-do weekend when, as you may remember, family and friends converged to help us knock a few things off our to-do list. A year and a half ago, my parents help us clean out our dryer vents and get rid of the lint that could be such a fire hazard. At the time, we planned to replace the vent with something that could insulate a little better against the cold. The existing one was already mostly unstuck from the brick and dented and looked like it had seen better days. The problem was that it was too chilly outside to apply caulk (it required at least 45 degree F or something like that, in order to set properly). Of course we never got back around to installing it when it warmed up that summer.

But this fall we finally had help and motivation. Here's the old pipe - covered in lint, dented and sad. There was a louvered opening, but it didn't seal very effectively when it wasn't in use.

Here's our replacement. Right now it's shiny and new, but I'm sure it will look grungy eventually. The louvered opening closes much more tightly, blocking some chilly air. And the grating on the outside will protect it from dents and from curious critters trying to get in.

(We didn't get pictures of the actual installation because getting the ring around the vent in the basement turned out to be a fairly difficult two-person job and no one was able to snap an action shot.)