Thursday, February 16, 2023

A public service announcement

Not really. But I am really happy what we found.

We bought our house in 2008 and it was already 2 years old. So, that makes it 16 years old. And so is the hot water heater. Our community has 746 homes and there is a lot of talk about what can happen when those things give up the ghost. And there were some horror stories. It made me nervous.

When we had a plumber out for a service we asked about that boiler too. He looked at it and told us that it was still in good shape and should service us a while longer. What a nice guy. He could have made some money.

When our neighbor got a new hot water heater and even opted for a tank-less one because we all have our boilers upstairs, I too started to get worried again. We thought we might get a quote from our A/C and Heating service people and a very nice guy came out. Well, he told us that we didn't have the right size gas pipe for a tank-less, relocating it was out of the question but the one we had was still looking good. Second professional to tell us that.

My main question to him: When it gets wrong, will it be a slow leake or a rush of water? He explained that we had a catch pan and that had an overflow pipe draining it. I had never noticed it. He also told us about water leak sensors.

Well, google can give you lots of info about them. When I talked with daughter Sarah she sent a link to "Yolink" which she had just read about in a lady's blog she follows. Easy, peasy. Amazon took care of it and a few days later we read installation guides. 

It was amazingly easy. You have to have a hub which is in the next photo on the left. On the right is our router which daughter Sarah had installed for us.


Turning the router over I could just plug the ethernet cable in and the hub was online. 


See the little water leak sensor in the pan? It has a QR thingy and with help of a camera you register the gadget in the Yolink App.



Our "kit" came with the hub and 3 sensors. We called the first one "hot water tank" of course. As you can see on the smart phone app it is still normal. In case of a problem we will be notified by text or email etc. 


Now we have decide about the other two. One probably under the washing machine. The other could be under the dishwasher or close to the fridge ice maker?  -  Nice peace of mind!

Now this was a satisfying accomplishment. Ha-ha, there is also another. Look at my fitbit. One more step and the shoe drops. Yes, for those who don't have a fitbit ... we are notified that we have accomplished what we hope to do ... we see a shoe dropping.


I would be very interested to hear what you think about this. Please leave a comment.


No comments: