Editorials

Kitchen remodel / tech woes

My 1940’s house with a 1960-1980’s kitchen is getting remodeled and I’m fighting a series of tech scenarios that I had not planned on.

The first being that my 1940’s house with 1980’s wiring probably was only up to 1940’s codes in the kitchen. This has lead to the power being off quite a bit as electricians came, laughed, and replaced. I’m learning a lot of tech straight up doesn’t function normally these days after power has been removed.

TL;DR – things unexpected, woe is me. Read as “oh, this is interesting,” rather than Paul complaining about something.

A lot of my smart devices are struggling post power outages, which occur frequently these days. Now, I have a *lot* of devices, I review them, the main issue here is I have a router that gives out X leases per minute and when 50+ smart devices come online within the same second and flood it, well, it sucks. There’s no firmware update, probably new router time, but it works great other than post power outages and I have enough tech.

I also live across the street from a retirement high-rise and power on my street generally is the most robust in the area. I live in a sea of pretty good power.

Not even sure if anyone has a breakdown of how many leases can be sent out per minute by router. I really don’t think the average person has as many little network backdoors as I do.

I now have a room filled with WiFi signal blocking appliances. I don’t know exactly how it’s screwing up the whole house WiFi but it is. Large metal stove, fridge, oh they’re hanging out in the room next to the WiFi, taking a little break from the kitchen. Acting as a parabolic reflector. Looks also like someone piled iPads on top of the router for reasons…

Add to this that due to COVID, timing, my work, etc the house is never not requiring internet. We’ve got offsite backups running, my wife’s office is now temporarily 5 feet from the bed and her work doesn’t go back in person until end of Feb at this point, the cord has been cut and entertainment is only via IP or OTA antenna (which isn’t working for some reason, I have not been able to get to because it also involves moving a large piece of furniture and there’s no space left in the house.)

2022 01 25 17.08.02 Small - for some reason we don't have an alt tag here
The only room that has floor space is the room that now has no floors

For reasons unknown we’ve discovered that although the internet can survive a normal power outage of up to 50 minutes generally (lots of UPSs,) throwing a breaker takes it down. My guess is someone (not me,) recently pulled a plug and moved it honestly, I can’t imagine the wiring is that ratchet although we did find a wire that only provided power when there was a bulb plugged in outside. Can I get to the plug? Nope. That involves moving a mountain. Oh, I’d move it but to put that mountain somewhere requires space and I have none.

Tested with unplugging things, no everything works. They throw a breaker and I’m gone I lose the house. What the actual?

Due to them doing much more work on one of the walls than expected (plaster, not drywall) the workers decided to remove my TV from the opposite wall (I am good with this decision.) As it was sitting on the ground and my kids are 6 & 8 I unplugged it from everything. When it went back up the sound bar refused to work even though it claimed it was being controlled by the tv. Soft reboots nope, ended up having to unplug from power and plug back in.

Sound bar has been on the UPS the entire time, so it’s never lost power. No idea.

My Airthings View Plus says we’re dying constantly. I believe it. Dust everywhere. My Sense Home Energy Monitor is on vacation because for reasons unknown the workers don’t want live 220 wires hanging out of a wall where they could bump into them (and that’s how the Sense is powered.) This lead to a lot of rando alerts and also my makeshift “washing machine is done” notice on my phone no longer works and I ended up with a load of frozen clothes.

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On the up side, time for a Dexter re-watch
Does the plastic sheeting that’s been everywhere stop the dust? No. Does keep it contained however

With the network having been crap, the thermostat’s been in offline mode quite a bit. Not that that matters much because there’s a door open nonstop and it’s 22F degrees -Cold.

Speaking of cold, discovered some of my remote temperature sensors do not function well below 45… I need to do some investigation on that as it may be battery related though.

Once again, not complaining, just see a lot of stuff I had not expected happening.

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Paul E King

Paul King started with GoodAndEVO in 2011, which merged with Pocketables, and as of 2018 he's evidently the owner. He lives in Nashville, works at a film production company, is married with two kids. Facebook | Twitter | Donate | More posts by Paul | Subscribe to Paul's posts

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