Category: home improvement

Ring-a-Ding-Ding, I Do Hate This Thing!

Our ring, our unwanted alarm clock!

The sound of glass breaking. Once, then twice. I roll over, squinting to view the digital clock on my bedside cabinet. 2:37 a.m. I know from experience that no one is breaking one of the glass panels in our paneled front door. I know it is only the Ring app on Barb’s phone–the latest in modern security–letting us know a fern from our potted plant is waving past the sensor at our entrance. It’s another dream disturbed, another good night sleep lost.

Remember when we built this house five years ago, the original raison d’être for this blog? We put some technology in: wi-fi and soundbars and an electronic door lock. We have added tech through the years: Alexa now allows Google to track our every move and utterance, and we have a nifty motorized window shade. But we had resisted Ring.

Our front and side doorbells were nothing fancy. If someone pushed the doorbell button, Westminster chimes played. The tones were slightly different for the two doors, though I admit the dogs learned which tone was for which door better than I did. We would then stand, walk to the appropriate door and open it. Just like it has been done for millions of years.

A few months ago, while having some Wi-Fi updating done, we succumbed to temptation and had the Ring doorbell/security cameras installed, and added the app to our iPhones and Apple watches. And gave away a little bit of our sanity.

My wrist now vibrates every time Barb takes Cooper out for a walk. I get a tingle every time Barb goes out to water the flowers. I am alerted every time a goose waddles by and whenever debris gets blown by one of the doors.

Yes, I also now know important things such as every time FEDEX or Amazon makes a delivery to our home. But unlike many of our neighbors, we don’t do all that much online ordering. So far, deliveries have accounted for less than 1% of all the alerts–and the most frequent of those deliveries has been Lou Malnati’s Pizzas. And believe me, I don’t need an app to be watching for those particular deliveries (donations of thick-crust cheese and pepperoni, well done, gladly accepted!)

Yes, the installer gave us tips for minimizing all the nuisance notifications, but spoiler alert, the tips haven’t helped. Yes, I could totally turn the alerts off. Then what was the point of getting the contraptions in the first place? Good question!

So if I seem a little blurry-eyed on many a morning, if I keep checking my watch as another alert blazes through, you now know what’s going on. It’s just my head Ringing.

(Added note: I have received approximately 14 alerts while writing this blog. Ouch!)

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TikTok Problem Solved. No, Not THAT TikTok

filterSo many of you wrote in with your thoughts, suggestions, and tips in regards to that awful tick-tick-tick in our walls. Though all of your help is appreciated, none of you nailed the cause of the noise. It wasn’t bees, or raccoons, or birds in the venting. It wasn’t the house settling. And much to my relief, it wasn’t scary mojo from long-forgotten burial grounds beneath the basement. But it is to the basement we shall go to solve our problem…

Thursday evening the printer died. Alexa2 stopped answering questions. By checking our phones I could tell that one of our wifi networks had died (no, I don’t know why we have two networks, the installer just did it that way.) So I visited the basement utility room to reboot the router or modem or whatever the black box is called. And the ticking down here was louder. I knew I was near the source.

I hunted around and saw a small green signal light flashing in time with the ticking. I flipped a switch under the flashing light and the ticking ended. Eureka! And what was the device that had been causing the ticks and the flashing light? It was an electronic air cleaner, part of our HVAC system.

When I think of house air filters, I think of fiberglass sheets in flimsy cardboard panels that slide into metal frames in the air duct system. You buy the filters by the case, and if you remember, you change them every few months, trying to avoid skinning your knuckles forcing them into place. That type of filter served us well in all our prior homes.

But the architect for this house designed the system with more “state-of-the-art” electronic air cleaners. These use filters to trap large particles, and electric charges to clump and remove smaller particles. But as the repairman explained to Barb, they are temperamental little beasts. They get dirty, they stop filtering, they click—and unless you pledge to clean all the parts several times a year, they are expensive to maintain. The workman let us know that many households left the casing in place but pulled out the electronic innards and inserted replaceable HEPA filters. Something for us to chew on.

Barb and I have developed a philosophy. We believe that the more gizmos and gadgets we have in the home, the more gizmos and gadgets we have that can go wrong. Yes, of course we love some of the doodads. Alexa keeps us entertained, the electronic keypad on our side door lets me go for a run without bringing keys. But sometimes plain-old plain-old wins the day. Give me those old cardboard air filters any day. I’ll live with a set of skinned knuckles. That is what Band-Aids are for.

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