To watch a video version of this podcast, click here: https://youtu.be/btTlpjM1w2c
In this episode, Reuben and Tessa explore practical smart home upgrades and energy-saving tools. They share hands-on experiences with infrared cameras, energy monitoring devices, and water leak prevention systems. The discussion also touches on the challenges of managing multiple smart devices and finding the right balance between convenience and simplicity. If you’ve ever wondered which gadgets are worth the investment for safety and efficiency, this episode is for you.
Here’s the link to Inspector Empire Builder: https://www.iebcoaching.com/events
Takeaways
Infrared cameras for mobile devices can be great backups but aren’t ideal for daily home inspections.
Smart plugs with built-in energy monitoring (like TP-Link TAPO) are affordable and effective.
Energy monitors help track electricity costs and optimize usage.
Automatic water leak detection systems can prevent costly damage and insurance claims.
Managing multiple smart devices can become overwhelming—simplicity matters.
Leak prevention systems like YoLink offer peace of mind for homeowners.
Investing in smart home tech should prioritize safety and efficiency over novelty.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Personal Updates
03:45 Infrared Camera Review: TopDon TC002C DUO
08:14 Affordable Alternatives for Android and Apple Users
09:37 Energy Monitoring Devices and Smart Plugs
14:30 Automating Energy Savings with TAPO Smart Plugs
18:00 The Reality of Managing Multiple Smart Devices
27:08 Leak Prevention Systems: Guardian vs. YoLink
32:12 Why Every Home Needs Automatic Leak Detection
35:45 Wrapping Up and Listener Invitation
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is an AI-generated transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is mostly accurate, it will contain some errors due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Reuben Saltzman: Welcome to my house. Welcome to the Structure Talk podcast, a production of Structure Tech Home Inspections. My name is Reuben Saltzman. I’m your host alongside building science geek, Tessa Murry. We help home inspectors up their game through education, and we help homeowners to be better stewards of their houses. We’ve been keeping it real on this podcast since 2019, and we are also the number one home inspection podcast in the world, according to my mom.
Reuben Saltzman (00:01.174)
Welcome back, Tessa. Great to see you. It looks like you’re all moved into your new place. Congratulations. It looks like home.
Tessa Murry (00:07.138)
Yes. Thank you. has been, yeah, it’s been a marathon week, but we are basically all settled in and loving it.
Reuben Saltzman (00:15.83)
Love it. Love it. Yeah, it looks great. You have to give me a virtual tour of the place sometime.
Tessa Murry (00:22.38)
I’d love to. I’d love to. One of the best things is there’s a front porch now and we’re kind of in a more rural area so I can spend a lot of time outside. Well, okay, come summertime, probably not. But right now, our porch this morning, I was working on a painting project out there and I was cooking. The sun was coming in. The porch is painted white but it was probably like 80 something degrees on that porch. I was like sweating. You know, it’s like…
Reuben Saltzman (00:46.286)
That sounds pretty sweet, Tessa. Sounds pretty sweet.
Tessa Murry (00:49.602)
It’s December 11th and I’m out there in a tank top sweating.
Reuben Saltzman (00:53.971)
my goodness, do you have a rocking chair?
Tessa Murry (00:56.63)
Not yet, but I we want to get yeah, we need to get some so that’ll be perfect. Yeah Yes, yeah Yeah, well what’s new with you?
Reuben Saltzman (00:57.998)
Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. You need, you need Rockers and lemonade. Yes. Okay. Okay. Good. Uh, boy, not well, there’s a lot new, but what are we going to talk about today? This is going to be a weird show. Uh, we had, we had a guest cancel. I saw the email while we were waiting for them to jump on.
Tessa Murry (01:15.318)
Yeah, what are we? Yeah. What are we talking about today?
Reuben Saltzman (01:28.204)
Because I was in back to Mac mediums were like, where’s our guest? They canceled. I had some hard hitting questions and they did not feel like they were prepared to answer them. So they canceled. That’s all right. Maybe we’ll get somebody else from said corporation to jump on and answer some hard hitting questions. But as we were talking about before we decided to go ahead with the show today, it’s like sometimes for those tough questions, you need an engineer.
Tessa Murry (01:32.932)
Here we go. So plan B.
Tessa Murry (01:40.653)
Ooh.
Tessa Murry (01:47.311)
Hmm?
Thanks.
Reuben Saltzman (01:57.752)
But the engineers aren’t the people who want to come on a podcast. So what do do?
Tessa Murry (02:00.89)
Or it’s not who the company wants to showcase. Yeah, we need… Yeah, I don’t think the sales rep could probably answer your detailed, very scientific questions.
Reuben Saltzman (02:04.955)
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
Reuben Saltzman (02:13.452)
Yeah. Yeah. The PR rep is the one who nicks the podcast, I think. But that’s okay. That’s okay. we’re, just going to pivot and it’s probably gonna be a shorter show today. But before we get into any specific content, let’s give a shout out to our sponsors, IEB inspector empire builder. And I know they, give me some stuff to talk about, but, okay. I’ll, I’ll cover this. The, big thing coming up here is the convention. It’s.
Tessa Murry (02:15.628)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (02:23.702)
Yep.
Reuben Saltzman (02:43.422)
I E B unite and it’s, coming up May 15th through 17th. That’s the next big thing. And I’ll talk more about that in the future. That’s a ways out right now. What I want to say is I attend these weekly calls for my group. And yesterday I almost just had my mind blown with this new idea that we came up with. I shouldn’t even say we, somebody else just came up with the idea and I’m not going to.
Tessa Murry (03:10.201)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (03:11.51)
let the cat out of the bag yet. I’m not even sure we’re going to jump on it, but my mind was just filled with ideas. And I went to bed thinking about how to implement this new business thing. And that’s, that’s why I’m a part of this group is just for all the ideas that I get. So inspector on power builder, lots of great ideas. So today I thought
Tessa Murry (03:23.278)
cool.
Tessa Murry (03:28.068)
That’s very cool. Yeah, that’s great.
Reuben Saltzman (03:36.702)
know it’s the it’s the spending season it’s the buying season where people buy stuff for other people and sometimes buy stuff for themselves and I thought maybe we could just talk about some new gadgets out there that I bought for my house or I’m testing out how’s that sound
Tessa Murry (03:45.69)
Thanks
Tessa Murry (03:54.346)
I would love to hear what you’ve been up to recently. Let’s dive in.
Reuben Saltzman (03:57.056)
Okay, okay. All right. So we’ll cover a few things. The first one would be a review of a new infrared camera. This is a camera that plugs into your phone. And this is another manufacturer that reached out to me. The latest one I tested is called the Top Don, as in T-O-P Top Don, as in D-O-N.
and it’s all one word that topped on and the model they sent me was a TC002C DUO and it gets the name DUO because it comes with a USB plug so you can use a USB-C plug so you can use it with either an Android or a what do they call it an iPhone that’s not the generic term the Apple OS platform so you can use it with either one
Tessa Murry (04:23.706)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (04:48.814)
Okay. Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (04:52.578)
And I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna get into all the specifics here. If you want to see my review of it, you can go to the website. did a video. It’s probably 10 to 15 minutes long. I got a blog post. I got a ton of sample images comparing this to some other camera. But the bottom line is I thought this camera was a little bit too big and bulky. And the case that it came with was almost the size of a mobile phone. Whereas the
Tessa Murry (05:14.51)
Yes.
Reuben Saltzman (05:21.368)
the mobile infrared camera that I carry around in my backpack has a case that is, I don’t know, it’s about twice the size of my thumb. I mean, it’s really small. So you can put this camera in any little pocket, you carry it around inconspicuously, and I always have an infrared camera with me. So compared to that, it’s much bigger and bulkier. I’m not as likely to take it with me everywhere. And the price point for this,
Tessa Murry (05:45.156)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (05:50.654)
was much higher than some other very, very comparable cameras like the one I carry around all the time. They’re selling it, you know, their Black Friday special, which is now over today. You can get it on Amazon for 250 bucks. But one that I really like that I that I carry around with me was only like one hundred seventy dollars on Amazon.
Tessa Murry (06:00.3)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (06:05.943)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (06:11.13)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (06:20.596)
And that’s that’s for an Android. So bottom line is, I think there’s better cameras out there. If you’re an Android user, the one that I happen to carry around with me all the time is this one called the what is it? I’m trying to. I’m looking at their listing right now, and it doesn’t tell me on Amazon. It just says thermal camera. OK, it’s it’s called the thermal master P2.
Tessa Murry (06:20.804)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (06:43.834)
funny
Reuben Saltzman (06:49.582)
I think that’s probably the best value if you have an Android phone. If you have the Apple OS, I think the Top-Down is comparable to anything else out there that you might buy. I don’t know why, but the Apple OS platform seems to have more expensive products. So it’s just as good as anything else out there. So if you’re an Apple user, I’d say this is a great product. For 250 bucks, you get a very nice
Tessa Murry (06:50.115)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (07:08.316)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (07:12.173)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (07:19.546)
mobile phone infrared camera. I don’t recommend it for home inspection use except as a backup. I mean, if you’re a home inspector, buy a dedicated camera, carry something around that you can drop. I mean, if you’re trying to plug one of these mobile phone cameras into your phone and you drop your phone one time with this thing stuck in the charging port, you’re probably going to break the charging port on your phone. And then what do you do? So it’s not, not great for day-to-day use, but it’s a great backup camera. If you’re
Tessa Murry (07:22.5)
Cool.
Tessa Murry (07:41.412)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (07:48.088)
primary camera dies or you forget it at home or something like that.
Tessa Murry (07:50.81)
Right. Well, I’m just thinking like, for a lot of the clients clientele I’m working with, it could be contractors or builders or like HVAC people or even homeowners. Like the fact that you can get a good eye or a camera for less than $200 these days is great for the average Joe, know, a home inspector, it’s different. But yeah, there’s some great products out there nowadays.
Reuben Saltzman (08:09.89)
absolutely.
Reuben Saltzman (08:14.508)
Yep. Yep. And, know, I feel like I have relegated myself to the average Joe user level now. mean, yeah, yeah, you’re not using it every day. whatever you have will probably work fine.
Tessa Murry (08:21.914)
Same. Same. No.
Yeah, the one you gave me, Ruben, is great. And it serves its purpose. it’s, yeah, it’s a, I appreciate that, that having that tool with me still, I still use it every time I do a house coach appointment.
Reuben Saltzman (08:40.224)
yeah. Good. Glad to hear it. All right. So that, was number one. Number two is I got a, as a gift, somebody kind of as a thank you, they gave me something that they knew I’d been wanting. I had, I had a good buddy of mine. were talking about coffee and he’s telling me he’s got this instant hot water dispenser that sits on his counter.
You know, you can buy those hot water dispensers that sit underneath the sink and it gets kind of wired in and plumbed in and you can get near a boiling water right away. Well, this is this is kind of the same thing, but it’s maybe a little bit cheaper version of it where it just sits on your counter and it holds maybe a gallon or two of water. You just you refill it and it keeps the water at whatever temperature you set it at. I’ve got it set at 208 degrees.
Tessa Murry (09:12.184)
Yeah. Yep.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (09:25.006)
I like that better.
Reuben Saltzman (09:37.004)
And so anytime you want tea or coffee, you know, I do the pour over coffee. So I only make a cup at a time or wanna like my daughter loves to make ramen. Don’t judge.
Tessa Murry (09:43.491)
Yep.
Tessa Murry (09:48.206)
huh.
I love ramen. So does Andrew. He cooks it all the time.
Reuben Saltzman (09:52.398)
It’s so bad for you. Yeah, I’m not saying I don’t like it either. But anytime you want some instant water, it’s a it’s a hot water dispenser. And so I got this set up on my counter. Of course, my wife’s first thing and I was like, well, how much is this thing going to cost? You know, what are we going to pay? And it’s like, it’s a good point. You got you got this thing that’s keeping water hot all the time.
Tessa Murry (10:11.578)
you
Reuben Saltzman (10:18.23)
Is this going to be 20 bucks a month in electricity and is it worth it? And so anytime we’ve got questions like that, I like to have a good answer. said, I don’t know, but we will find out. And a long time ago, maybe 10, maybe, no, probably 15 to 20 years ago, I bought this thing online. It’s called the kilowatt EZ. And it’s just this little thing that plugs into an outlet.
Tessa Murry (10:23.268)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (10:45.208)
It’s got a digital display. It’s got a few buttons on the front and then it’s got a receptacle. So this plugs into your outlet and you plug whatever you’re using like your hot water dispenser into the device. And it’s got a few buttons on here. You can adjust what your current energy use, your current electricity cost is. And in my area during the winter, we’re paying 11 cents.
per kilowatt hour, it’s something you can easily find on your electricity bill, or you can probably even Google it for your area. You can figure out what you’re paying per kilowatt hour. You put that in, and then this thing will just tell you how much you’re spending on electricity. I had to, I plugged this in, and then I plugged my hot water dispenser in, and then I just kind of let it go, and then I come back after a week, and I see, okay.
Tessa Murry (11:29.562)
Cool.
Reuben Saltzman (11:40.352)
I have spent 57 cents in electricity over a week to keep my water hot. I can afford that. It’s not that big of a deal. I’m a yeah, so I’m a huge fan of this, but I knew I wanted to test this out and I was thinking I’ve had the same energy monitor for the last, you know, whatever I said, 15, 20 years. And so I thought I should get online and I should see what else is out there. So I had
Tessa Murry (11:47.764)
Wow.
Wow, very cool.
Reuben Saltzman (12:08.126)
all of these and Tessa I’m holding up to the screen now. I’ve got four of them that I stacked together and I even used a fifth which I’m not holding in my hand here. I bought a whole bunch of new home energy monitors, point of use monitors to track and compare. I’m kind of a geek about this and I’m gonna.
Tessa Murry (12:26.596)
I love this so much.
Reuben Saltzman (12:34.114)
You know, I’m not ready to share all the pros and cons of all of them, and I don’t think you really need it. I’ll just give you my advice. Here’s I’m going to I’m going to cut through all the clutter and I’ll tell you if if you want a home energy monitor, I think the best way to go is I wait. Let me let me pull it up on my phone because I’m going to forget what it’s called. It’s made by TC. Is it TC link? They’re the ones who make the routers.
Tessa Murry (12:38.458)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (12:42.858)
Yeah, that’s great.
Tessa Murry (13:02.882)
I think so.
Reuben Saltzman (13:04.012)
Yeah. Yeah. They make routers. and this, this line is called TAPO T A P O and it’s basically just a smart plug. It’s, it’s a small device that plugs into a receptacle. It’s a tiny little box, and then it’s got a receptacle itself for you to plug a device into. And you can, I’ve got these all over my house for things that plug in and you can program them to turn on and off.
Tessa Murry (13:06.052)
Sounds familiar.
Tessa Murry (13:29.562)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (13:33.41)
For instance, all right, I have Alexa devices all over my house. I’m going to unplug this one so it doesn’t hear me talk. And when it’s time for me to go to bed, I say, computer turn off Ruben’s light. And there’s a lamp plugged into my, to my nightstand and it’s plugged into the smart switch. And then it’s paired with my Alexa and all that. And you can control all of these devices with your voice and they’re very inexpensive. And
This this line that tapo makes I went on Amazon and I was able to buy a four pack of these that also offer energy monitoring so you can go in the app and they give you graphs and Everything any way you want to break it down. It tells you how much you’re using in electricity I was able to buy a four pack of these for like 20 bucks so I’m paying five bucks each for both an energy monitor and a smart plug and It made me wonder
Tessa Murry (14:23.354)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (14:29.252)
Crazy.
Reuben Saltzman (14:30.51)
Why have I ever bought any smart plugs that don’t have a built-in energy monitor? It’s so cheap. So I bought a four pack and I’m very happy with this. And I actually set this up so that my instant hot water dispenser turns off at a certain time in the evening where we know we’re not going to use any more water. And then it turns back on again in time.
Tessa Murry (14:36.506)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (14:46.65)
Well.
Tessa Murry (14:56.676)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (14:59.886)
for my water to be scalding hot when I wake up in the morning. So I’m cutting out about eight hours of use every day. It just automatically turns it on and off. So.
Tessa Murry (15:00.018)
no.
Tessa Murry (15:08.16)
Wow. So can anybody control these devices through Alexa for you? Like they just speak and, hey, Alexa, turn this off or whatever? is this an app on your phone that you’re controlling everything with?
Reuben Saltzman (15:21.838)
Well, yes to both of those. For this particular one that I’ve got plugged into my hot water dispenser that I’m using to control the time, I don’t have it paired up with my Alexa device. I don’t think. I easily could, but I see no reason to.
Tessa Murry (15:23.927)
Okay, okay.
Tessa Murry (15:35.374)
Okay, so you, yeah. So, okay, here’s another question then. So it’s cool that you’ve got these different devices that are smart devices in your house, but does it get overwhelming having all these different devices that maybe don’t speak to each other? Do you have to have like 20 different apps to control each one, like your garage door opener and these little outlets and certain lights on your house? Like, how do you manage all of that?
Reuben Saltzman (15:59.426)
Yeah, yeah, it’s really overwhelming, Tess. I was actually just thinking about that today about how obnoxious this is for all of these different devices. I mean, I’ve got so many smart devices and I dedicated one page on my phone to the apps that control smart devices. And I’m holding up my phone to the screen for Tessa right now. And there are exactly 25 different apps on my phone that control smart devices in my house.
Tessa Murry (16:05.409)
Hey.
Yeah. Yes.
Tessa Murry (16:25.912)
Hey, I was gonna…
Okay, so you were at the point where I imagined it would be and the whole point of like having technology and smart home stuff is to make your life easier, right? But for me, I call me old school. I like to just flip on a light. Like walking because I don’t having 20 different apps I have to go into and manage and download and all that is just it’s too much for my brain to handle. I I yes, I’m a millennial, but I’m an elder millennial and I can’t handle
Reuben Saltzman (16:45.43)
No.
Tessa Murry (16:59.116)
all these different apps and technologies.
Reuben Saltzman (17:00.802)
Yeah, it’s ridiculous. And you know, actually, let me be fair as I’m looking through it, some of these apps, I just kind of categorize them. It’s just apps that control things. So they’re not all for my house. I’d say I probably have about 10 to 12 apps that control things on my house, but still that’s a lot. And it’s, doesn’t make things easier. It makes them tougher. Yes.
Tessa Murry (17:10.336)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (17:18.468)
Do- Well, like, what happens-
Exactly! Well, and what happens like, God forbid you get in an accident, you’re in the hospital, everybody’s at home, no one can figure out how turn on the light, or the boiler, or the w- they’re like, ah, dad has the- dad has the app, you know? Okay. How are they gonna get their hot water? Their ramen!
Reuben Saltzman (17:31.55)
They’re Yeah, yeah, they’re in trouble. They’re in trouble. No all of these all of the devices are easily defeated I mean like I mean I’ve got I’ve got smart switches in my house that you know I’ve got it programmed so that when I open my garage door I’ve got a smart garage door opener and I installed this applet called if this then that and it’s set up so that when my garage door opens It talks to the smart switch in my garage and my garage lights turn on
because I like it bright. If I’m not around, well, the switch on the wall still operates when you press the button. It’ll still turn on and off like any other switch. So it all still functions. It’s just not as smart if you don’t have me to operate at all. And I was just, yeah.
Tessa Murry (18:01.903)
my gosh.
What?
Tessa Murry (18:13.434)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (18:22.688)
No kidding. It’s the setup. Yeah, it’s the time and energy of getting all these different settings in place and then managing them. That’s what I don’t like.
Reuben Saltzman (18:30.572)
Yes, yeah. Yeah, you got to be a geek about it. You got to you got to take pleasure in being able to set this up. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (18:33.914)
Which I am NOT So so this this this on the counter hot water thing sounds really nice and I wish I had one because I just use an old-fashioned electric tea kettle, you know I can’t set the temperature just boils the water and I do whatever I want but it sounds nice being I’ll Know it’s sitting on the counter. So just a little switch on the kettle. Yeah
Reuben Saltzman (18:50.764)
Yeah. Does it sit on your stove?
Reuben Saltzman (18:56.363)
okay. All right. Free standing electric. Okay. Those are great.
Tessa Murry (19:01.206)
It serves its purpose and I don’t have any problems. There’s just a little switch. fill it up, turn it on and boom, hot water. But you do have to wait a few minutes, Ruben. So there’s that.
Reuben Saltzman (19:06.156)
Yeah. I know you got to be patient. Yeah. Okay, so all right. I do love that. But if you’re not into that, I do have an alternative for you. For you, Tessa, I have an alternative for you. This is another monitor and it’s just like the kilowatt easy. But it’s it’s a different brand. And it’s it’s it’s almost like a generic brand I found on Amazon. It was 10 bucks.
Tessa Murry (19:14.458)
Ugh.
Tessa Murry (19:19.223)
yes.
Reuben Saltzman (19:35.47)
And it does the same thing. You plug it in. The buttons are very intuitive. You set how much you use and it gives you everything you’d want to know. It gives you instant right on the screen. It tells you how many amps are being drawn. You can change it and you can see how many volts are coming out of the outlet. You can you can do everything that you would want to do. And it’s it’s 10 bucks on Amazon and this particular model. I mean, you’d have to go on Amazon and type this in. It says J.K. Dash.
Tessa Murry (19:35.662)
Wow.
Reuben Saltzman (20:05.102)
PM07-US. That’s all I can find. I mean, I’ve got the box right here in my hand and it’s so generic. It just says watt power meter monitor consumption. That’s all it says. And it’s got a barcode. That’s it. It’s so generic. I’m 10 bucks. So if you’re interested in monitoring energy usage, you know, how much is this heated toilet seat costing me?
Tessa Murry (20:21.489)
generic. Okay, love it. $10.
Reuben Saltzman (20:33.75)
Is it worth it to have a warm bum?
Tessa Murry (20:36.11)
Wait, are there different settings for different people? You say, hey, it’s Ruben, and it knows what temperature you like it at. Just kidding. We don’t need to get into that.
Reuben Saltzman (20:41.486)
The toilet. We’ve got no, you know what? We can we can touch on that. We’ve got a bidet and everybody ought to own a bidet. If you don’t own a bidet, you are you’re living in the dark ages. You’re you’re just you’re old school. I’m sorry. But they come with the heat setting. And we I insisted we turn it off because it turns your toilet seat yellow and it makes it look gross.
Tessa Murry (20:49.753)
Yeah.
They’re wonderful.
Tessa Murry (21:04.143)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (21:09.914)
Well, gross. You know, I’ve had some bad bidet encounters, but when they are working right and the settings are good on them, like they are wonderful.
Reuben Saltzman (21:20.396)
Yes, yes, we don’t need to go into more detail. That’s enough. But you said it nicely, Tess. They’re wonderful.
Tessa Murry (21:27.74)
my gosh. okay. Going back to this energy monitor thing, I do have a question. Ruben, so when you’re holding like all five of those in your hands, I was wondering, did you test them all on the same device to see if they had the same result?
Reuben Saltzman (21:40.874)
Of course I did. They were within a few percent. Yeah, they were all very close.
Tessa Murry (21:42.528)
Okay, what did you find? Are they?
Tessa Murry (21:48.12)
Wow, okay. Very close. Okay. And my next question is, I know that you had an energy monitoring device installed in your main electrical panel for a little while. Do you still have that? if so, how does that, can that measure that specific appliance on that circuit? Can you tell with the electrical usage or is it so small you can’t even really determine its usage?
Reuben Saltzman (21:59.658)
Man, you got a good memory. Yes. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (22:14.37)
Great question. And the answer is maybe. The device that I have installed is called Sense. And it’s just got these clamps that come on the two main conductors that come into my electric panel, the two hots. I think there’s one on the neutral too. I don’t remember. Maybe it’s, yeah, there’s gotta be one, one on the hot, one on each hot, one on the neutral. It’s gotta be like that. And it tells you what your whole house is using, but.
Tessa Murry (22:18.263)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (22:22.446)
it’s
Tessa Murry (22:39.311)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (22:42.89)
It’s supposed to be a learning model where it keeps figuring out new devices that you have on your house. initially when I installed it for the first month, it kept going, we found a new device. It’s this. And then you could label it and we’d say, okay, we think it’s a vacuum cleaner. we think this is a point of use electric water heater. And it would guess and you could program what it was. And it was…
Tessa Murry (22:50.159)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (22:56.41)
Okay. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (23:11.162)
It was great for the first couple of months. kept finding all these devices and I could track the usage of all these different devices. But after the initial learning, it just kind of stopped. And I thought it was going to keep figuring stuff out, but it wouldn’t. And it doesn’t. So, I mean, it has not figured out my new point, my new countertop, instant water heater, whatever you want to call this hot water dispenser. It never figured it out.
Tessa Murry (23:25.528)
Yeah, early.
Tessa Murry (23:36.696)
Okay. Yeah. Well, so that’s very interesting, Ruben, and I wonder, isn’t that thing a couple years old now?
Reuben Saltzman (23:43.758)
Yeah, I mean, I want to say probably over five years old. think I installed it pre COVID.
Tessa Murry (23:49.836)
Is it really okay? my gosh, time flies. Well, I’m just wondering with how quickly technology is changing. If newer versions work differently and if you can get one that just is constantly learning now, like maybe the first generation models were like, you know.
Reuben Saltzman (23:53.218)
and
Reuben Saltzman (24:05.582)
That’d be great, but this company basically, I think they went belly up. I got an email from them a while ago and I don’t remember the details of it, but they said like, we’re not offering support anymore. We’re not selling our products anymore and we’re moving over into this space or some version of that. So I don’t even think you can buy a new one of these. There’s probably different manufacturers out there doing exactly what you said, but I have not pursued it.
Tessa Murry (24:10.788)
Well, yeah.
Tessa Murry (24:18.938)
Yeah.
Huh. Yeah. Wow.
Tessa Murry (24:30.637)
Yeah.
Huh. Well, interesting. Yeah, because I mean, if you just want to measure one device, having those little, you know, specific monitors for an outlet is great. But if you’re like trying to kind of map out your whole house, having a device to install on your panel is nice.
Reuben Saltzman (24:34.83)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (24:47.63)
Yes, yes. And speaking of mapping out your whole house, that’s the latest project I gave my daughter Lucy, who’s 14. My electric panel is not very well labeled. My house was built in 2002. So there’s a bunch of circuits that just say lights, which is so obnoxious. mean, what does that mean? Lights where? So.
Tessa Murry (24:59.577)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (25:04.385)
Yeah. Yes.
Reuben Saltzman (25:11.746)
Her job right now is to map out every outlet and every light and make a nice chart and have it all figured out. And I’m paying her to do this, but you know, of course.
Tessa Murry (25:20.291)
my gosh, that’s awesome. Does she love it or does she hate it?
Reuben Saltzman (25:24.844)
kind of hates it. She kind of hates it. I’m having a hard time keeping her motivated to work on it. But you know, we we did it together at first. No, we’re just got a flat rate to get the whole thing done. Yeah. And I said, it’s going to take a while. And I helped her with it at first. But I realized what what you really need. And you know, this is what I used to do when I was trying to figure stuff out. You just plug a radio into an outlet and then you flip breakers until you hear the radio turn off.
Tessa Murry (25:31.45)
A dollar a circuit or like ten dollars a circuit?
Reuben Saltzman (25:54.286)
I’m like, let’s just do that. And she’s like, we don’t have a radio. She’s right. We don’t. We don’t have a radio.
Tessa Murry (25:59.45)
Oh my gosh. Yeah. I used to have like an old alarm clock that was a radio or boombox. I had a boombox too. You’re right. I don’t either. I use my phone and I hook it up to a Bluetooth speaker and listen to it. Yep. Wow.
Reuben Saltzman (26:07.478)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (26:14.296)
Same here. So I mean, it’s like, I’m telling her this great solution and then it just dawns on me. We don’t own a radio. So what do we do? So I bought a device that should be coming tomorrow. It was like 10 bucks or something and it’s a power failure alarm. So you plug it into an outlet. It’s got a little battery in there. And then when the outlet, if the power goes out to the outlet, it screams a loud alarm.
I guess the idea is you plug it in your garage freezer or your sump pump or something like that to alert you to a power outage. So I’ll let you know how that works. That was a total panhandle. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (26:46.67)
Wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, interesting. Yeah. Very cool.
Reuben Saltzman (26:54.486)
Working on it. Yeah. OK. Anything else we should talk about for those energy meters before I move on to the last thing that’s going on?
Tessa Murry (27:06.816)
No, I think let’s let’s move in. I can see it. I can see the fire in your eyes, Ruben. I’m excited for this last topic here.
Reuben Saltzman (27:08.428)
Okay. All right. Okay. This last one, I, you know, I was, I was messing around and I actually plugged in one of those energy meters to my under sink water heater, the one that failed on me many years ago and caused an insurance claim. And then after that happened, I installed a backups. Well, it’s, it’s a leak prevention system for my home. It’s basically this.
Tessa Murry (27:26.116)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (27:38.21)
this device that clamps on to the main shutoff valve for your house and it’s got a motor. So, and then you got these pucks that get installed in a bunch of strategic locations. It’s a little puck, looks like this. I’m holding up a little white thing that’s about half the size of a deck of cards and it’s got sensors on the bottom and on the top. So if it gets wet, it communicates wirelessly to the main shutoff device and it’ll
Tessa Murry (27:45.594)
yourself.
Reuben Saltzman (28:07.384)
turn off all the water to your house. This saved me from having a big leak in my kitchen the next time my point of use water heater failed. Cause I had my water heater installed in a tray, started leaking and it set it off and it saved me from another flood. Wonderful, wouldn’t live without it, but turns out I’ve been living without it.
Tessa Murry (28:10.17)
Wow.
Reuben Saltzman (28:31.884)
because the one that I’ve got, it’s made by this company called Elexa, kind of like Alexa, but starts with an E. Elexa is a company that makes it, it’s called Guardian. I bought it at Lowe’s for about 300 bucks and it was pretty easy to install and it worked really well for many years, but then some of the batteries on the sensors died and I ended up buying new batteries. It’s these specialized little lithium ion batteries, pain in the butt, and then they weren’t
Tessa Murry (28:40.506)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (28:57.658)
pain in the butt.
Reuben Saltzman (29:01.706)
I to reconnect it to my phone. spent way too long on this. Finally. Yeah, it’s so obnoxious tests, but I’m very persistent. So I reached out to the company. I had contacted them about something before. So I had the CEO’s email and the chief tech support guys email and the general email for tech support. And I emailed all of them and
Tessa Murry (29:03.585)
Ugh.
Ugh.
Tessa Murry (29:10.107)
Yeah, this is my worst nightmare.
Tessa Murry (29:22.91)
wow.
Tessa Murry (29:26.674)
my goodness.
Reuben Saltzman (29:29.858)
I did it several times. I called, I got nothing, no response whatsoever. And after months of this, I said, look, I can’t live without it. So I ditched it and I bought a new one. So.
Tessa Murry (29:45.444)
Same company, different company. Good, okay.
Reuben Saltzman (29:47.446)
Different company. Yeah. The one, the one that I bought now, I didn’t do a ton of research. got on Amazon. I looked for something that looked like it was about the equivalent and it had good ratings. The one I happened to install was called Yo-Link as in Yo, let’s link up this and that it’s Y-O-L-I-N-K Yo-Link. I’m not specifically endorsing their product. It’s just the one that I happened to buy and the installation.
Tessa Murry (29:57.582)
you
Tessa Murry (30:04.312)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (30:11.588)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (30:16.47)
Was just as easy. made a video. I think that was actually in my blog post this week, or it might’ve been my blog from last week. Whatever it is, you can find it. If you go to the structure tech website, I made a video showing me installing it. I sped it up a little. It took seven minutes tests, seven minutes to remove the old one, take off the valve, put the new one on, clamp it down, plug it in. And then it probably took another hour to mess around on my phone and pair it to my phone.
impair all the centers to the thing. But bottom line is it all worked exactly as it should. It was fairly intuitive. And now I feel good about all of my most likely to leak plumbing fixtures. I’ve got sensors installed at the point of use water heater. I’ve got one under my dishwasher, one behind my refrigerator because ice makers are notorious for leak. And then one right next to the washing machine. So
Tessa Murry (30:47.0)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (31:10.03)
Yep. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (31:14.488)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (31:14.656)
If any of those things go unprotected, even if I’m not home, whatever. mean, I hear people talk about, you can, you can buy stuff by TAPO. That’s the brand I just mentioned who has the remote energy monitor devices. make remote water devices too. And it’ll set off an alarm and it’ll tell you on your app that you got to leak. My only problem with that is that if it starts leaking, I’m out of town.
Tessa Murry (31:18.99)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (31:31.807)
yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (31:43.753)
Well, it doesn’t do me any good. I want something that’s just automatic and that’s the, yeah. That’s what the Yo-Link did. And I guess my advice is if you don’t have some type of automatic water leak detection system in your house, I strongly recommend installing one. I would not want to live in another house that doesn’t have one. Sure. It takes a little bit of time to put it in and
Tessa Murry (31:45.816)
Yeah. Turns it off. Yeah, turns the water off.
Reuben Saltzman (32:12.59)
Yes, you have an initial investment. I mean, it was like 350 bucks or something for this new system, but it is far less expensive than one insurance claim deductible. And as far as I’m concerned, the deductible is the least of your worries. It’s just dealing with all of the mess and the damage and the disruption to your life. That’s the big cost. And I don’t want to have to go through all of that again. So
Tessa Murry (32:17.956)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (32:24.974)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (32:35.31)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (32:41.146)
Yeah, it’s a good.
Reuben Saltzman (32:42.348)
Like I said, would not want to live in a house without one of these.
Tessa Murry (32:45.946)
It helps to sleep good at night, hopefully. So, do the new sensors, do they have the same kind of battery that the prior version you had installed does? So, will they eventually die in a few years too, and do think you’ll have the same kind of problem?
Reuben Saltzman (32:48.939)
Exactly.
Reuben Saltzman (33:03.054)
Great question and no, this new one and I didn’t even look it up before I bought it. I just bought it. I thought I don’t care. As it turns out, it takes two AAA batteries and they say it’s supposed to last five years.
Tessa Murry (33:10.905)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (33:18.458)
Nice. Okay. Yeah. Triple A’s. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (33:21.25)
I don’t know how, but that’s easy. Now I’ve got the puck in my hand here and for the life of me, I can’t figure out how it would replace the batteries. I mean, it looks like this thing’s all glued together. I might need to get a saw to get this apart, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes. And if I have to replace the whole thing after five years, I’m not bummed. It’ll be worth it for the peace of mind or the potential one flood that it saves.
Tessa Murry (33:30.372)
Yeah. Geez. I was gonna say. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (33:48.548)
So how long did the first set last for? How long were the batteries good for? Roughly.
Reuben Saltzman (33:53.454)
It was probably two to three years, I’d say.
Tessa Murry (33:57.25)
Two to three years, okay. So it’s like a hundred bucks a year, basically. Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (34:01.462)
Yeah, yeah. And I’d say worth it or let’s break it down my month. Ten bucks a month. Worth it.
Tessa Murry (34:07.094)
Yeah, for peace of mind to save you from a water event. Yeah. Well, that’s cool. Well, I’m sorry you had that, that’s pain in the butt situation where you mean something fails and you can’t hook it up and reset. I’ve had that happen a few times on different devices and it’s so frustrating. You spend so much time and you don’t make any progress. It’s like, it’s the worst.
Reuben Saltzman (34:09.87)
Yeah. Yeah. Well worth it.
Reuben Saltzman (34:26.124)
Yes.
Reuben Saltzman (34:29.954)
Yep. Yep. Exactly. So if anybody wants my old one in your local, you can come to my house and grab it. You can try to get it to work.
Tessa Murry (34:38.778)
I’m sorry.
Reuben Saltzman (34:40.846)
You’re welcome to. It’s up for grabs.
Tessa Murry (34:42.17)
I can’t believe you didn’t get any rec- I can’t believe you sent all these emails to the top people of the company and never heard anything back.
Reuben Saltzman (34:48.672)
I couldn’t believe it either, Tessa. Very disappointing.
Tessa Murry (34:51.072)
Do they know you have a famous podcast?
Reuben Saltzman (34:55.214)
Should I give them, don’t you know who I am? I get what tens of listeners every week. Yeah. well.
Tessa Murry (34:57.86)
Dude, yeah, don’t they know who you are? You’re THE Ruben
Tessa Murry (35:06.952)
man, well, I would think, Ruben, with your influence you could maybe get some devices donated to you for free to test out.
Reuben Saltzman (35:14.99)
Yeah, I probably could have tried it but you know what? I’m happy to pay for it and just give my 100 % unbiased review of it. Not that that stops me from trashing the top-down infrared camera. You know what? I told them I’d be honest. I do that with all the stuff people send me. It’s like, that’s a top dog, sorry. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (35:28.442)
Sorry, top down.
Tessa Murry (35:35.658)
Not the top dog, top don. Yeah. Well, Ruben, that was a fun little episode. Thanks for all the updates on your little experiments around your house.
Reuben Saltzman (35:45.122)
Well, thanks for listening to us. You are a great audience. I sure appreciate you. All right. Anything else you got you want to share right now? You said you probably not. You want to hold off a little bit. OK. OK.
Tessa Murry (35:47.876)
you
Happy to be here, happy to be here.
Tessa Murry (35:58.658)
Yeah, I think we’re good. I think we’re good. Yeah, we’ll wrap it up. We do have another podcast scheduled for this year still don’t we? This is not the last one of 2025.
Reuben Saltzman (36:06.114)
I think we’ve got one more and then we’ve got a bunch of guests lined up for 2026 already. So can’t wait. All right. Well, thank you Tessa. And for our listeners, if you got any thoughts, any, anything, any stories about any of the stuff that I’ve touched on, you are welcome to write us. We read all the emails. can find us at email us podcast at StructureTech.
Tessa Murry (36:15.788)
crazy. I’m looking forward to it.
Reuben Saltzman (36:35.882)
and we will catch you next time. Take care.
Tessa Murry (36:39.192)
Thanks for listening.