Geofence, what type of a fence is it?

Smartphones, smart-TV’s, smart cars and now even thermostats are all smart technologies. The days of thermostats only maintaining one temperature are long gone. We want thermostats to not only help us maintain our room humidity and temperature, we also want them to maintain different temperatures when we are home and away.  I started reading about all the new Wi-Fi thermostats available to the homeowner and realized that the choice isn’t just Honeywell or White Rogers anymore, it’s ecobee, Nest, Venstar,  or Sensi. There are many more but these are the big names currently in the market.

Two of the brands, Nest and Ecobee use sensors on the thermostat which can override the temperature settings when they sense movement. The thermostats adapt and learn your schedule and in theory will adjust your temperature up or down based on whether you are home or not.

Honeywell chose to not use sensors on their new models. They have added geofencing abilities to their thermostats.Geofence Instead of using sensors on the thermostat to determine if you are in the home or not, they use your cell phone to determine where you are. You can set a geofence distance away from your home in which you want the thermostat to change its settings. The thermostat knows that if I set my fence to 500′ and I’m 3 kms away, it will be in Away mode. It’s a brilliant idea since most of us carry our phones with us everywhere we go.

 

Polyethylene Refrigerant Piping

Say it isn’t so, plastic piping for refrigeration and air conditioning. Well I guess copper has officially become too expensive when refrigeration piping starts to switch to plastic. The company called Multi-flex has designed refrigerant piping up to 1  1/8″ that is light and almost zero coefficient of thermal expansion. The piping can be bent and is good from temperatures of -40ºF to 200ºF or ( -40ºC to 93.33ºC). Multi-flex pipe has a working pressure of 650 psig and a life span of 50 years. That shouldn’t be a problem since most equipment have a lifespan half of that. The company even offers a 25 year warranty. Multi-flex Pipe.

The pros seem to outweigh any negatives that I can come up with. The product is light, easy to handle, strong and has next to zero expansion issues. So is it the future of the HVAC/R industry? I’m not so sure. It’s going to be an easy sell to a contractor because it’s easy to use and quick to install.

Change isn’t easy to most, and this one will be even harder. As an HVAC/R mechanic, all I’ve ever worked with is copper. I trust it, I’m familiar with it and know it’s limitations. There’s something about lighting that acetylene torch that makes me feel like a refrigeration mechanic. Taking that away will help my hearing, but will likely take something away from that feeling of accomplishment, that feeling that I built that. Oh well, change will happen whether I like it or not, and this product from the outside looks to good to fail.