Well THAT'S not going to help...

[johnridley]

A few nights ago, I think it was Saturday, I was feeling a bit chilly in the wee hours. I kept digging deeper into the blankets, but finally I got up for something and noticed DAMN the floor was cold. This can only mean one thing...

Yeah, the french door in back had blown open. It doesn't always latch right. I guess I had noticed that the furnace had been running pretty much all night, which is NOT normal for our house even in the coldest weather. Once the door was shut it ran for about 45 minute before shutting off.
I'm sure the kids rooms upstairs were NICE and warm that morning.

Our gas bill had just gone down (we're on budget, which averages the bill over the year) - due to the warm winter so far they'd dropped it twice. We'll see what happens over the next few months, though of course running the furnace for an extra 6 hours or so on one night won't really make any difference across the year.

I need to see if somebody makes an alarm that will go off if a door is open for more than 30 seconds.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"I need to see if somebody makes an alarm that will go off if a door is open for more than 30 seconds."

Wouldn't a bar across the door be cheaper?

B

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Well, it's got a deadbolt already which would solve this, but the problem is that you need to remember to actually lock it. Since we almost never lock our house, any physical measures wouldn't really work since they'd never get used. Certainly a bar would NEVER get used since the door gets opened a dozen or more times a day (it's the dog's primary means of entry/egress, since it's near the computer so there's usually someone there to let her in/out).

There are a number of things on our house that I'd like to put alarms on; I should probably just come up with a program for an Atmel processor to take a variety of inputs and alarm on some selectable combination. I'd like to alarm if the outside lights are left on for more than an hour, if one of the doors is not tightly closed in the winter for more than a minute or so, if the garage door is still open at 10 at night, etc.

In reality the french door popping open is the only one that is more than a small irritation, and it's the one that's the most common, since it is easy to think it's latched when it's not. Also since it has levers on the latch, the dog can open it from the outside, and unfortunately she hasn't learned to close it again yet.