Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is John Appleby, CEO of Avantra, the AIOps (Artificial Intelligence applied to IT operations) platform for SAP. Specializing in helping customers move from reactive to proactive operations, Avantra empowers businesses to focus on digital transformation by reducing manual operations and the cost to serve.
Here he talks about how he is modernizing his house which can trace roots back to William Penn:
I often reflect that I'm either the oldest millennial or the youngest Gen X. I could type before I could talk.
When it comes to a house, I'm slightly more old fashioned. The trend in younger buyers is to move into the city but downsize. It's caused a glut of larger houses with large lots in our area, and we were able to buy a classic house at roughly half of what it was listed for in 2008.
We have worked on modernizing the property so that we can behave like millennials. Fascinatingly, we have also managed to reduce operational costs with the automation. Here are a few thoughts for those of you who might be in a similar situation.
Green is the new capitalism
If you focus on the right projects, you can save money and the planet. For example, I spent $1000 on insulation at Home Depot to bring us up to code. That not only made the house much more comfortable, it also fixed a problem with airflow in a fireplace and saved us $1000 on AC and oil in the very first year.
Your local electric company likely has a ton of rebates. I had a problem with my water heater and got a new high efficiency one, for free. It was paid for by a home warranty and a rebate from the utility. In addition, it delivers about $250/year in savings.
They also came around and installed for free over 40 LED bulbs. We have hundreds of bulbs in our house, so this was appreciated!
Don't be afraid of the old
We have older oil-burning furnaces, but we get them tuned every season to keep them in the early-90s efficiency state. If you are to believe people on the internet, oil furnaces are the work of Satan, but the facts don't bear that out.
For a start, oil furnaces are powered by #2 heating oil, which since recent EPA ruling, is now red-dyed low-sulfur diesel. Diesel is exceptionally safe besides being relatively clean. A natural gas leak can blow up your house.
Replacing the oil burners for gas would be switching one fossil fuel for another. When our units stop working, we will consider solar or geothermal.
Automation is awesome
I run an AIOps company so you'd be surprised if I didn't love automation. I'm not as proficient as some of my coworkers, but here are a few things we have done:
We have Phillips Hue bulbs for all the major areas like living rooms and bedrooms, and they turn on and off to a schedule. They are also integrated with the Nest cameras that we use to stay safe. The cameras turn on the lights when they detect activity.
We also have robot vacuums on each floor to reduce dust buildup. I can't recommend these enough. One tip is to buy the cheapest ones on Amazon, not necessarily a $1,000 Roomba.
As you start to add items to the collection, they all begin to work in harmony; for example, the Nest system informs the water heater when we are away, and turns it automatically onto low power mode, saving a few dollars a day.
Renewing the old
There are just as many parts of the house where nothing has changed in the last 50 years. Two years ago, I cleaned up the deck, ruined with neglect and cheap pine boards. I took the cedar back to the grain, replaced the rotten board with new cedar, and stained the cedar to match the property.
We are also in the process of fixing up the old stables. In the 1930s, a trail association in our area was born, called the Bridlewild Trails Association. It looks after miles of trails, which are accessible by horseback. One day we may have horses, who knows?
Cedar roof repair is a painstaking task, and I am in the process of individually positioning and fastening thousands of cedar shingles with two nails each.
What's next?
High on my list is to modernize the swimming pool. We have an old 2HP single speed pump, which costs a fortune to run.
I had planned to add this year a variable speed salt-based system, which should slash the running cost and maintenance required: salt-based systems are more or less self-maintaining, and less harsh on the skin. It will also link into home-automation.
We postponed the swimming pool project due to COVID-19: it would no doubt require several visits to Home Depot to get the correct plumbing fixtures, and I'm going to save that until the current round of social distancing is over.
The summer room also requires some work; it had an old radiant ceiling heating system, which has since ceased to work. We will replace that with some yoga panels to keep that room warm on a fall night.
Final Words
I find peace comes from preserving the history of our culture and yet modernizing our environment. There can indeed be a symbiosis between enjoying our heritage and living in the 21st century.
It's something I often consider while riding up an old pathway on the property on my John Deere. The path was originally used by horseback riders in the 18th century, on property owned by a Welsh man called John Roberts. Roberts met a sad end: executed for High Treason, despite requests for a stay of execution from three signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Perhaps it's a parable for the world we live in: it is possible to modernize without destroying what came before us.
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