East Austin Projekts

Spring has just about sprung which means another blog update. Since we hit the sweet spot in the Texas weather I figured I better update blog before I have no motivation. Even though we have not said much in a while the Household Projekt Plan continues. Much like the USSR in its heyday we have a five year plan of things we want done. One of things I noticed when it was colder a few weeks ago was that the outlets in the CMU were “leaking” a ton of heat. I could feel the arctic air flooding the living room. I never really noticed it in the summer but boy did I notice it when it snowed. To fix this I got a bunch of foam insulation gaskets for the light switches and outlets on the outside walls. They worked great! One thing that we were not impressed with about the house was the use of the standard rocker light switch that has been around since Edison invented the light bulb. Now we wanted to replace them with the Lutron Vierti Series but since it would require a second mortgage to replace them all we decided go with something that was not the cost of an iPhone per switch. We decided to go with the Lutron Maestro series instead. One nice thing about this series is that there is an RF wireless option. This is a bonus for us since we have a walkway from the car port to the side door. With the wireless controller we can turn on the light for the walkway at night from the car and not leave it on when we don’t need it. It’s a “green” option that’s also convenient.
So far about a half a dozen switches have been replaced and only 5 million more are left. I did say this was a five year plan… Now one of my pet peeves about the house when we first moved in was that the thermostats from the 1950s (Okay it was not that bad but it felt that way). Now just like the light switches I wanted one type but I settled for something else. What I really wanted was the ecobee thermostat. It has a color touch screen and a Wi-Fi antenna that links it up with the Internet. This just rocks. You can program it via a web site remotely. Did you forget to turn the A/C down while on Vacation? Log in and turn it off! The thing even has a current weather display. The bad thing about this is that they charge you a monthly fee to access the thermostat. That is just plain ridiculous. I’m not paying a monthly fee for that unless it is running SETI@Home in the background and ET plans a visit. Hopefully they will come to their senses sometime and drop that fee. If and when they do I might reconsider my choice. The runner up for the thermostats replacement was the Honeywell Prestige HD Thermostat it does all things the ecobee does except the internet stuff. It has an exterior weather sensor which is a bit much (we did not get it) but otherwise it’s a pretty nice system.