Tuesday, May 19, 2009

PCF Management

PCF Management is a property management, real estate and maintenance company in Ellicott City, MD. Over the last few months I've been helping them increase the capabilities of their maintenance department, and streamline some of their internal processes.

I believe that we will be seeing a small recovery this spring and summer, and that PCF is poised perfectly to benefit by providing both rental properties and single family home sales as people begin to gain confidence in the market, meaning that PCF is going to be busy this summer.

If you are thinking about buying or renting a home in Howard County, or having maintenance or HVAC work done in your home- I'd suggest you call PCF now, because once the recovery wheels start turning, deals will become increasingly difficult to find! So check out PCF Management and let me know what you think!

Saturday, May 16, 2009

WordCamp Mid Atlantic 2009

Today I'm attending wordcamp Mid Atlantic Hosted by Aaron Brazell @technosailor. One of my early surprises is that the speakers have me thinking about why I blog.
I dunno, I guess I thought it would be more about the technical side of blogging. I was anticipating attending more technical types of "what and how" types of information, so I'm pleasantly surprised that I'm actually thinking about my message and how I say it.

I'm really glad that I came to this event, and I'm hoping to use this event as an opportunity to polish my blogging capabilities. I'm even entertaining the idea of merging my wordpress blog with johntindale.com
More to follow.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Ecobee continued


Today I installed two ecobee thermostats for a customer in Northern Virginia. Althought there are a few similarities with the Honeywell wireless product, the Ecobee is a completely different device in other respects.
The Ecobee connects with your wireless network, and communicates with the internet and the Ecobee site for remote access- yes, there's an annual subscription fee but the benefits are pretty cool.
I started by mounting the device to the ductwork near the furnace

then wired it up to the rest of the system. One weakness of the product that it uses its own power supply, which means you need an extra outlet near the furnace. I'd like to see a future device "steal" its power from the system it runs. I guess having a separate power supply means that the ecobee still runs when the system crashes, but an internal battery could do the same thing.

I installed two devices, and I was happy to see the Carrier 58MX high efficiency furnace, since this is a furnace with which I am completely familiar. I have a funny little side story about how Wayne and I installed the first one in the DC area while the other techs in our company were taking a class to learn to install it.
Me: (reading the installation manual by flashlight in an attic) connect small hose A to tab B on exhaust mainifold
Dad: Is that the one with the pink sticker, or the one with the green sticker
Me: I dunno, the picture is black and white...
It's hard to believe that was nearly 20 years ago!
Back to today...on the attic system I mounted the device to the side of the furnace which was installed horizontally.


Finally I got to program it, and put Enercient's information into the device. The owner knew his network ID, registered, and completed programming it after I left. I got a confirmation email on my way home, so I know it was right.

Enercient's first job

I'm going to go install an ecobee thermostat today, which is in fact Enercient's first paying gig involving a zigbee product. The customer bought their own thermostat, and it's in Mclean, Virginia- but none of that matters because it's a step forward.

Similar to the Honeywell wireless thermostat I installed in my house a few months back, it consists of a wireless remote that hangs on the wall, and a module that hard wires into the air handler or furnace in the basement. The wireless module communicates with the hard-wired section and controls the HVAC system.

However, the ecobee comes with a 1 year subscription to their service connecting the ecobee to a web portal, connecting the system to outside data (like weather, etc) I'm pretty good with wireless stuff so far, I hope I am able to connect these systems today without too much trouble.

I'll give an update after I install this one today.