HOME SAFETY MONITORING

We've done a few things at the to keep things safe and keep an eye on things.  What types of things?  Temps, water and electricity!

First up, we got these.  They are the GOVEE remote temperature sensors.  We bought them HERE ON AMAZON if you are interested.  They also measure humidity but we're mostly concerned about tracking temperatures.

Here's one outside on the front porch...

...and here's one hanging inside the well shed.

App screenshot

Here is what we initially had: we put one in the well shed (very important), one on the front porch (to get an accurate outdoor temperature) and one in the garage near the whole house water filter and pipes (also very important).

App screenshot

We thought they were so valuable to have when we had our big freeze, we bought three more!  We put the ones in the garage attic, in the house attic and the last one on the back screened in porch.  Now we can monitor temperatures in vital areas all year long.  It will even send us alerts if a temperature reaches a level we want to be warned about.

For our water to the house, we bought the FLO device by Moen.  It goes between the water coming into the house from the well and going out to the rest of the house plumbing.  We had the builder do this for us, so we paid for it, but they installed it.  It was a bit above our experience level, though they say it's easy to install.  Better to have it done when the house was being built, ha.

App screenshot

Here is some info from the website:

Leak Detection & Prevention: It identifies small leaks (down to a drop per minute) and, through FloSense AI, learns your home’s water usage to identify irregularities.

Automatic Shutoff: If a major leak or burst pipe is detected, it can automatically shut off the water to prevent flooding.

Real-Time Monitoring & Alerts: The Moen Smart Water App provides live data on water usage, pressure, and flow rates, sending alerts if abnormalities are found.

Daily Health Checks: It runs tests to ensure your home's waterlines are secure.

Remote Control: Users can shut off their water manually from anywhere in the world via the app.

App screenshot

Lastly, we have this.  It is called the TING and is a sensor designed for proactive safety, catching electrical problems that are often hidden until they cause damage. It's super simple to install, you just plug it in to an outlet!  We got ours for free with our insurance company but they do sell it HERE ON AMAZON.

App screenshot

Info from their website:

Fire Hazard Detection: Uses advanced technology to identify potential electrical fires, with a proven record of preventing 4 out of 5 such incidents.

Monitors Hidden Faults: Identifies issues behind walls, in outlets, in switches, and within plugged-in devices (e.g., overloaded power strips).

Utility Grid Monitoring: Detects dangerous power surges or brownouts coming from the utility, which can cause damage.

Proactive Alerts & Support: If a hazard is detected, Ting sends a notification and provides a support team to help identify and resolve the issue.

Simple Setup: Plugs into a standard wall outlet and connects to Wi-Fi, without requiring cameras or microphones. 

There is some great technology out there nowadays to keep homes safe, we figured we might as well protect ours as best as we can.

SPECIAL CABINETS FOR CUTTING BOARDS AND SHEET PANS

 You may remember me mentioning I helped to create a dream kitchen for 2nd Man.  Part of having a dream kitchen is to make sure you have easy access to your stored cooking items.

Since we designed our island, we planned for these.

There are two cabinets, one on each end.  Normally, there is an inset on the end of the island that either occupies these spaces or it's dead space or some people put in a bookshelf or something.  We will have plenty of bookcase space elsewhere so we decided to let them put slender cabinets on each side because we knew exactly how they would be used.  

The island is, of course, conveniently located right behind the stove/cooktop/ovens.  

This the end closest to the sink.  

Of course, the cabinets come with two shelves.  In this case, I removed one of them and put the other up at the top and created a place for all of our cutting boards!  The tall ones fit nicely in the bottom and then the top shelf can hold the smaller ones just stacked on top of each other.  This gives us quick access, it's right below the island countertop so we can quickly pull them out to use them, it's opposite the knife drawer (more on that coming soon) and lastly, it's also next to the sink so we can wash veggies etc before cutting.

Here is the other end, directly across from the ovens which makes it convenient for...

...sheet pans!  Just like the other cabinet above, it had two shelves but in this case I removed both because, well, baking sheets are large. 2nd Man likes to have all three sizes, full, half and quarter.  He also keeps the cooling/roasting racks (that fit the sheet pans) in here as well.  Once again, its convenient location puts it right by the ovens and under the island countertop so it it super easy to get a sheet pan out, put one some foil or parchment paper and things are ready for the oven behind you.

More things coming soon!

WE HAVE GUTTERS

 We know, we know, another not so exciting topic.  Here it goes anyway, ha.  One thing that our builder didn't provide was gutters.  The reasoning is that every home sits differently on different properties and the way water flows off your roof and onto your land can be different. You want to make sure your gutters are designed around that flow of water. 

As they said, most people want to be in the home for a bit to decide how they are doing to do their landscaping, flower beds and such and where they want the rainwater to go.

We found a great local gutter company.  They came out and designed a plan for us and then came out and installed them all in an afternoon.

They are seamless gutters...meaning the long, straight sections are made of one continuous piece of metal.  The only seams are at the joints and downspouts like this.  They also matched our trim color perfectly.

Here is a picture of part of the back of the house.  Gutters all along the back with four downspouts (two are just out of the shot).

Here is one of them, the other side of the dining room by the back door to the garage...

...and here is the other one at the end of the garage.  This part will be nice to keep the water from pouring off the roof and splashing onto the concrete.

Here is the front...our roof lines presented some challenges, but they did it right, down to creating small sections of gutter (as above) to direct the water.

On corners, they added these "splash guards" (or damming deflectors as they are sometimes called).  This is to prevent heavy rainfall from becoming a high-volume overflow at those corner spots.

The last unique thing is this "captive area" we have.  We had to have a gutter downspout here since it was an important corner for handling runoff.  However, because of this area being surrounded on all sides by concrete (porch, driveway, sidewalk), we didn't want to create a ponding situation in there.  The concrete guy put in two underground drains there to handle the rainwater and direct it out of the area into the front yard.  What they did was connect this downspout to one of those drains so the water from there will flow under the sidewalk and into the front yard. They are coming back to dig a trench to put this underground.

Here is the front, the gutters blend in perfectly.  We love it and are excited to have them.  Now we just need a good rain to see how it all works, ha.

Side note, grass is greening up!  Spring is coming!

STORY OF THE MOVE

So the move was eventful, kinda stressful and we were worn out but it's over and we're moved in.  On Wednesday we closed.  On Thursday the packers came.  It was chaos, ha.  We had packed as much as we could but we needed help.  They came and did their thing.  It was a lot of boxes.

On Friday morning, the movers showed up.  They were supposed to be there at 9am but were running late because they had an "incident" on the way.

They arrived about 10:45am.  That put us behind for the day, at least with our plans to get out before rush hour traffic kicked in.

Our building has two freight elevators, and we reserved one of them.  They program it so that it only goes up and down to our floor.  They sent four guys and they were pretty good in getting stuff out and loaded.  They used lots of moving blankets and wrapped things well so that part was good as well.

The truck was a good size but it was almost filled it up by the time they were finished.

We had a bunch of stuff in the basement storage unit.  I had spent the better part of a week organizing it all and getting it all ready.  This is what it looked like.  Some collectible things, a large part of our Christmas decorations and our main Christmas tree.  It took about 3 elevator rides up and down to get it all out onto the loading dock area so they could get it put on the truck.

I point all of this out because it will come into play later.

We went out on the balcony one last time for posterity and took a few pictures.  The apartment was finally emptied and so we locked it up and left.  They were still loading the truck when we left about 4pm to try to beat rush hour.  Didn't work, ha.

They showed up about 6:30 and started unloading.  They brought in all the furniture first and put it where we pointed and then all of the boxes were put in the garage along one side.  While all this was going on, we get a call from the apartment asking us to return the keys by 6pm or, since it was the 31st, we'd have to pay for another month.  

WHAT THE WHAT?

We were never even told we needed to bring them back before hand, we figured they'd just change the locks anyway for the next renters.

We called back and said "our lease should run through 11:59pm, what if we moved at 6pm instead of 9am?  We've been there 10 years, this is unacceptable!"

They agreed and said "just bring them back before midnight".  About 7:30pm, after the movers were gone, I headed back into town.  

I went up to the apartment to make sure all we didn't miss anything in the cabinets or closet shelves.

Everything was empty except, oops, we forgot the fridge contents!  Thankfully we had already moved the freezer stuff earlier in a cooler.

I go downstairs to the loading dock area and got a couple of boxes and went back upstairs to fill them up.  It took me about three trips (carrying heavy boxes) to load it up in the car and on the last trip, I dropped a jar of salsa and it breaks all over the ground.  Had to go find paper towels to clean it all up.  Then cut my finger, not bad but, being on blood thinners, I was bleeding.  Had to go to the restroom to clean that up!

I took the keys off the keyring to take them to the front desk and decided I wasn't sure about which one was the storage unit key, so on a whim, I decided to go down to the basement level and check it.  I pushed the button to call the elevator...

Look familiar?

Here's more.  Turns out about half the stuff from our storage unit, WAS STILL IN THE ELEVATOR!

Hours after they left!

It's like 9pm and I was in full on panic mode.  No way any of this would fit in the car.  The apartment had been trying to figure out all afternoon/evening who it belonged to and were about to just take it all to the dumpster.  I called the moving company, the owner answered and I said "we have a major problem!".  He had me send pictures and, also panicked, he called an employee that had a truck.  About an hour later, it gets loaded (with me helping since it was just one guy).

Finally, I get the keys to the front desk and I'm on the road back home.  It's almost 11pm.  Then I had to stop and get us something to eat and we also needed body wash as we couldn't find out bathroom stuff and we both needed showers.  I finally get home about 12:30am.  It was a very long, and in the end, very stressful day.  But I was home, we were together in our new house.

We had full tummies, we had our showers, we put clean sheets on the bed and we slept with the windows open. 

Best. Night's. Sleep. Ever!

The next day, the guy brought the stuff that was left in the elevator.  And they gave us a discount on our move. 

For the last week, we've been living out of boxes and getting things put up.  We open them...

...and then use two sets of shelves as a place to put the next things to go through...

We've managed to open them all so that we can see what is in each box so that we can go back to get things as we need them.  Have already emptied about two dozen boxes.

After we open them, we move stuff to the other side of the garage to get them close to the door to bring them in and put them up.  It's a process, but it's working.  Funny story, we opened probably 20 boxes, couldn't find our utensils.  So, we bought some plastic ones and have been using them.  Then yesterday, we found that one of the first boxes we opened, had a second layer on the bottom and that was where all the utensils were, still in the drawer organizer.  Welp, that's the way it goes sometimes, ha.

But we're here and we're as happy as can be.  Slowly but surely, we're creating our new HOME!

DRIVEWAY AND SIDEWALK NEW HOUSE UPDATE

Here is one of the last things to do.  We opted for some concrete work in various locations (more on the other location in a future post).

The main thing we wanted was a place to park the cars and a sidewalk to the front porch.  This was a few days ago.  We hired the same concrete contractor that did our foundation to do this.  He drew out a plan and we said "go for it!"  He sent us this picture during the day so we could see.

Here it is just after the concrete was poured and smoothed out.

Here it is from inside the garage.  We had them make it a little wider than normal to give us plenty of space and it's 30' long to give more space that way.  We will park in the garage of course but this will be nice for unloading stuff and of course putting them there to wash and clean, including the farm truck.

Look at the awesome new flower bed I have!

If you click to enlarge, you. might see the two pipes they put in for us.  They are essentially drains so that the flower bed won't fill up with water toward the house.  It naturally slopes away so the water will also drain out and into the front yard.  Also makes it easy to pass things under the sidewalk, like cords or plumbing.

Oh the things that will happen here!  See the electrical outlet there on the wall?  I chose that not only so we'd have it handy for the driveway if needed, but also so I could have a water feature in that spot!  A fountain most likely.  Something with a gentle trickle or cascade.

It's going to be really fun to plan this out next Spring.  Well, I suppose the planning can happen this Winter and then the planting can be next year!

WHOLE HOUSE FILTER AND BONUS PICTURE NEW HOUSE UPDATE

Here is something else we had done.  It started with a plumbers loop.  A what?  That's OK, we hadn't heard of it either, ha.  This is what it is:

This was right after it was done.  It is where the water comes into the house from the well but instead of just going straight into the house, this "loop" allows you to put something in between the incoming water and the and the rest of the house.  That something is where our whole house filtration system will go.

This is what it looked like with the drywall in place around it.  Nice and neat.

Shortly after this, we needed to have our well water tested so they could determine the correct filter system for our house.

We ordered the top of the line kit from a third-party company that does this nationwide called "National Testing Laboratories".  The kit tests for everything in the water.  Lots of specific requirements for testing.

This was the kit.  Each bottle had to be filled, directly from the well (no hose) and there were lines on each bottle and strict rules to follow.  Some were filled to a line, but one had to be filled so full that there was no gap between the cap the water, but you couldn't let it overflow because there was a powder inside that mixed with the water.  Then a frozen portion to keep everything cold during shipping and it had to be shipped overnight.

Oh, and it had to be shipped after 12:30pm to make the window for the next day (to minimize time in transit).  To be overnight, there was a window of time for days of the week, to make sure it didn't sit over a weekend.  For us, we really only had Mon/Tue.

So, I headed out from work for a long lunch break, drove out there, filled the bottle per the instructions and stopped by FedEx on the way back.

After a couple of weeks, we got our report back.  

These are our results.  As you can see, like we said, they test for EVERYTHING, ha.  All was good, only a couple of things that were slightly over the minimum detectable levels, but the water filter guy told us he'd drink right out of the well as it is so that's good. 

We ended up with this:

I know, looks complicated right?  Ha.  2nd Man is in charge of this!  We will have three stage filtering.  By the way, this also bypasses our outdoor faucets, so watering plants won't speed up the filter usage.  We'll need to replace these about once a year.  We also had them go ahead and put the pipe covers on since it's the garage.  Just in case!

They said our water will be as good as any bottled water you get at the store.  It's fresh from the ground and filtered.  Since we already have this machine, and we love having it for instant cold and instant hot water, we will just fill our 5-gallon bottle with our own water from the tap and then be able to keep this and use it.  In fact, we already planned ahead for it in the pantry with a space and an outlet.

The filtration guy said he sees a lot of water test results from wells, and ours was one of the best.  That makes us feel good.  Maybe we should bottle our own water, LOL!

OK and for those needing house updates, here is a bonus picture:

You saw the porch the other day, here's is a bit more of the finished front.  All wood details done!

This are happening fast.  News coming soon!