Warning - this post has nothing to do with medicine, EHRs, or anything I've written about before. It will mostly be of interest to my geeky friends who haven't already heard all this.
We've been getting letters from the gas company that our consumption is around the 75th %ile of our "peer" houses. I find it hard to believe they are comparing to true peers - we have 2 set-back thermostats that go down at 11 PM and I have made interior storm windows for all the windows that will accommodate them. But our gas bill certainly is unpleasant in the winter.
I was also made aware that the gas company was offering a $100 rebate on the purchase of a wifi-enabled thermostat. So, I figured, let's give it a try, though I wouldn't expect much savings when we already have programmed, set-back thermostats. Our house just has 2 wires going to each thermostat and, according to their websites, all the wifi thermostats except the Nest require more wires than that. So, I swallowed hard and bought a Nest, even though we are an Apple-free family(TM).
The Nest installed easily. Despite my starting it off with some settings, the house was noticeably, unpleasantly cold at first. That has improved. Its "away mode" kicked in a few times when we were home, yet when we went to Hawaii, it took about 3 days for it to decide we were away. Luckily, I could turn it down remotely, anyway.
However, the boiler is right off my office and I started noticing an annoying buzz coming and going at night and eventually realized it was from the controller box. One of the relays was buzzing so I ordered a replacement. I later thought to swap with the relay for the other zone and... it wasn't the relay, it was the circuit. The one with the Nest. Googling quickly revealed that, in a 2-wire system like ours without a "common wire" for power, the Nest frequently pulls a small amount of current to keep its battery charged. Some furnaces are listed on the Nest website, if you know to go hunt, as incompatible because this is enough to make them turn on. Ours doesn't, but the relay buzzes. I could quiet it a bit by suppressing harmonic vibration of the box, but it's still there. I emailed Nest support, who eventually responded that I could return the Nest to the place of purchase. Thanks, guys. I'm still trying to decide about that. Google having just announced that they are purchasing Nest is pushing me more toward removal...
One thing the "smart thermostat" hasn't helped at all is the fact that our bedroom is the coldest room in the house - a corner room, and I think a smaller amount of radiator for its square footage than the other rooms. That got me thinking - with small computing devices like the Arduino and sensors so cheap, should't I be able to put temperature sensors in each room and turn the hot water supply to the radiator on or off depending on whether the room was above or below a temperature I set? Then, even though the whole upstairs in just 1 zone, each room could be its own mini-zone, with a demand for heat in any room kicking on the boiler. I think an über-geek friend has sensors for climate control in individual rooms in his house. (I am a bit worried that his Arduino network has started addressing him as "Dave.") He was sure I was reinventing an existing valve and, while I'm not sure it's quite the valve he was thinking of, it turns out folks in the UK have had thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) for years and now can get electronic/programmable/remote controllable ones. But, remember, they have a long tradition of gas meters you have to keep feeding to stay warm and the like, so I suspect even current construction likely has shut-off valves on radiators. Here in the US, we believe that, if we are cold, we should heat up the entire planet. If I wanted to install such things in my house, I'd have to cut into all the radiator piping and sweat in new joints for the TRVs. Not worth it to me.
This strikes me as a good case for the heavy hand of jackbooted government thugs. If building code for hot water heat had required shut-offs for each radiator, I could easily put in a system to keep the bedroom more comfortable at night without heating the rest of the house, keep the boys' rooms cooler when they were away, etc. It would probably increase the cost of a new house by, say, $100, but could save hundreds of dollars a year on energy bills. But there's no incentive for any builder to do it unless they are pushing the house as a "green house" and consumers are aware of the potential value of this. It should be easier and cheaper to do a retrofit on forced air heating systems, where you just need to open or close dampers in ducts (which might be a nice niche business for one of my legions of readers to look into starting).
Sorry, this is just another case (like health care) where a regulated market could deliver greater efficiency than the free market. Remember, the theoretical free market requires complete information on the part of buyers and sellers.
Speaking of which, today's latest NY Times article on the cost of health care, focusing on Dermatology, is well worth reading. Damn - almost made it through without any reference to health care.
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