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The Real Estate Addicts (REA) podcast is for anyone interested in developing real estate. The podcast covers a comprehensive range of topics related to real estate and investing and features interviews with savvy and successful entrepreneurs who share their career path, failures, successes and the stories behind the incredible companies they built. Listen in for big personalities and great conversation.
Co-hosted by Ray Hurteau, Dan Rubin (Instagram @dan.and.ray) and Marc Savatsky (Instagram @choose_boston)
Follow Real Estate Addicts Podcast on Instagram: @Real_Estate_Addicts
I don't know if I
Dan:should say this on on there.
Ray:Let's say it. Just don't mention names or brands or anything. Just talk about That's fine.
Dan:Yeah. I I got I got hooked up, and I got a free water heater for my new house that I built.
Marc:And the whole point, we're gonna we're gonna talk about I'm a I'm a judge for the Good Housekeeping magazine, Home Renovation Awards.
Ray:Yeah. How'd you get that distinction?
Marc:Don't don't treat me any differently. I'm the same old Mark Savasky.
Dan:But
Marc:no, truth is one of mine.
Dan:Martha Savaski.
Marc:Yeah. One of my good friends from high school was an editor at Good Housekeeping magazine and connected me with the gentleman who manages this process. It's really incredible. They have a laboratory. They put these things through all different paces, and one of the things is they get professionals.
Marc:It's like consumer reports, essentially. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So but there's all these different products that get submitted, and I thought we could go through some of them.
Marc:And Yeah. Dan was installing a water heater when a water heater was needed to be tested, so we went over there and did it. And you can talk name names. I've it's all it's fine.
Dan:It's a We'll just go Yeah. Yeah. AO Smith.
Marc:AO Smith. Sorry.
Dan:AO Smith 80 gallon heat pump water heater. It arrived, and, you know, the box was a little dinged up, but overall, looked okay when I unboxed it, installed it. I was very lucky because I my plumber filled it and turned it on the day of my inspection. And the inspector came and went through and signed me off. And then about two hours later, the thing started leaking around.
Dan:It did well, it wasn't leaking just like at the bottom into the pan. You know how there's like that black ring or the it's like a black Kinda
Ray:like the top cover. The top
Dan:cover that sits on top with the control panel and everything? It was leaking, like, around that from around that cover. So I called the 800 number on the side, and they were like, yeah. You need to replace it. We're not gonna even bother trying to fix it.
Dan:So they're like, okay. You can bring it to any Lowe's to to swap it out. Because I was like, I have no I was like, oh my god. How am I gonna do this? Because it came, like, direct from A.
Dan:O. Smith. Mhmm. So the woman on the phone was like at A. O.
Dan:Smith was like, bring it to Lowe's, and and exchange it. So I went to Lowe's. Of course, they don't have any 80 gallons in the store.
Marc:Didn't even have Lowe's in Boston. You have to drive, like, thirty five minutes.
Dan:I had to drive to Norwood. Yeah. There's a Norwood.
Ray:So what do they do? They just give you, like, an RMA? Because wouldn't Lowe's say, like, where's your receipt?
Dan:They so so A. Smith emailed me an RMA that I gave to Lowe's. And so, of course, a, they don't stock 80 gallons in the store. B, they were like, oh, this is an older model.
Ray:Oh, good.
Dan:We don't sell this model anymore.
Ray:So hold on. Hold on. So, Mark, you gave you got this water heater to test, but they're not even selling them anymore?
Dan:Yeah. So they were like, we don't sell this anymore. It's an older it's a it's a discontinued model. Jeez. So no.
Dan:But the but this the ending is good because they were like, oh, the replacement we can give you the replacement model. We have that in stock at a store, like, Uber or something, and we can have it shipped. We can get it to you tomorrow. The new but they were like, oh, the new water heater replacement model is $400 less than the
Marc:so they gave me they gave me
Dan:a $400 store credit to Lowe's.
Marc:Dude, nice.
Dan:You're Hang on a new water.
Marc:Hey. You're winning.
Dan:I'm winning. Go. Thank you, Mark.
Marc:God, Slider.
Ray:Hey. So sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. And in
Dan:that case, A little stressful.
Ray:Came out ahead. I had it came ahead. Did the replacement work out okay?
Dan:The replacement works great.
Marc:Did they pay for I guess they didn't pay for labor on the replacement.
Dan:My plumber didn't charge me.
Marc:Nice. He's like a nice guy. But sent you a list of of the products.
Ray:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Let's look at specific ones that you guys wanna get into, but I'll give you my biggest surprise to start.
Dan:Did you you actually got and reviewed every single one of these?
Marc:Yeah. Everything you're looking at there, I've gotten and reviewed. Oh. But I'll I'll give you the the downside surprise first, which was which was kind of unfortunate. But we got a robotic lawnmower.
Marc:Think like a a Roomba.
Ray:I was just gonna tell you. We talked about this a few episodes ago. It's back. The one I've seen is back. Yeah.
Ray:Yeah. It's it's working and cutting their lawn at
Dan:whatever Is that is that the Husqvarna one?
Marc:Yeah. Read it.
Dan:Husqvarna Automower four ten IQ. Yeah.
Marc:I don't wanna dish on anyone, but frankly, used it, and we've got a lot of tree cover. It's a quarter acre lot, and you need, like, a GPS satellite to to pick up on it. So you we mount that thing way up on the the ridge of the house. But the lawnmower, when it's running around the perimeter with the tree cover, it's like losing the GPS signal. Interesting.
Marc:So, like, my feeling is it's not quite there. Like, you kinda need to run it by wire. I think it's a bad a dog fence.
Ray:It's probably just a bad GPS because your cell phone, if you're using Google Maps, you don't lose
Marc:But I don't know. Maybe it's not GPS, maybe satellite, but suffice to say, like, it even mentions in the instructions that
Dan:Yeah.
Marc:Trees can screw with it.
Ray:So I mean, you shouldn't feel bad saying there's issues with something just because you put the product for free to That's probably what they you know, they don't wanna hear it, but if you identify issues, that gets it Mhmm. Sooner than later.
Dan:So how does how does this work? So it's like it says it says, like, Pella lifestyle windows casement window with integrated room darkening shades. So they just give you one window to test?
Marc:In some in some instances, the Pella one, I happen to have experience with because I've installed that before. And I've been to Pella in Iowa. So that's one that I didn't get a physical window, but I've Got worked with the product, so I can speak to it.
Ray:Got Well, one stands out. You gotta tell me about Tushy.
Marc:Tushy. Tushy's a great aftermarket. If you want a Japanese smart toilet, but you don't wanna pay for, like, a Kohler Leap.
Ray:It's a whole toilet. It's not like a bidet edition.
Marc:No. It is a bidet edition.
Ray:Okay.
Marc:That's right. And it but it what's nice is it provides hot water.
Ray:Oh, that's cool. So it has, a tank or something?
Marc:Yeah. My my critique on all those is the heater the dryer doesn't work. I think that the dryers are just, like, gimmicky. Oh, really? Yeah.
Marc:I don't know. Maybe it's maybe it's a meat problem.
Ray:Supposed to be like a like a car wash? Like, like, velocity and Yeah. Like, very adjusted. Way.
Marc:And there's different settings. What do got next?
Dan:I mean, I I I I'll admit, I got a bidet.
Marc:Yeah. The Japanese toilet is where it's at. I'm putting I put outlets in every primary bathroom behind the toilet.
Ray:Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's where it's going. Absolutely. Tell me about the Schlage Wi Fi deadbolt.
Marc:It's a cool product. So, like, the Schlage Encode is the typical one, but this one, the improvement on it is as you approach it, it lights up. Like, it sees you coming, and it gives you like, if it's it's good for security and just to, like, see what you're doing to find the keypad.
Dan:How did the natural grass food perform?
Marc:I use that on my rental. Do you? Yeah. A little more expensive than a typical fertilizer. It works a little better.
Ray:I thought Scott's had all of those.
Marc:The step one,
Ray:two, and three things?
Dan:What's an Enbrighten Outdoor Eternity Accent Light?
Marc:Love the Enbrighten Outdoor Eternity Accent Lights. Really? No. I really do. We have a screened in patio in Florida, and we put Jesse and I put these things up.
Marc:But they're like
Ray:Is it like a strip light almost? Like, low voltage?
Marc:They're like Christmas lights, but instead of, like, candle candles, they're just like little round LED lights, and you can string them around the perimeter of the room and So it's like a rope?
Ray:Yeah. Or does it have stuff hanging off of the rope?
Marc:No. It is like a rope. And the interesting thing is you can just trim them. So like when we got to the fourth corner of the room, we're back, and I had like 15 feet left, you just cut it with a pair of scissors.
Ray:Yeah. They'll say, like, cut here because they that No.
Marc:You can literally cut anywhere
Ray:on this. That's cool. Yeah. And so what is it? Color controlled Wi Fi, all that sort?
Marc:Yeah. And I'm not, like, a big, big fan of LED lighting. I I think it's often overused, but, like, this was an area that I didn't have any lights.
Ray:That's cool. That's awesome. Yeah.
Dan:Did you did you install the Schneider Smart Panel?
Marc:Actually, we didn't. I was gonna do that with Douglas from Premise, but it became, like, kinda prohibitive. Mhmm. So that one
Dan:I've always wondered. I I installed I'm actually putting in smart breakers at my house for some specific Mhmm. Appliances and stuff like that, and I'm very curious to see how how it goes.
Marc:Yeah. I'm not really sure what you do that's actionable with that information.
Dan:Well, the the biggest thing is I can reset the breaker from my phone. I don't have walk Oh. I can I know, like, I can be lazy and not walk all the way down to my mechanical room and reset the breaker? But I also heard that you can if it trips, you can it's kind of smart in a way where you can tell it that, okay, the like, I guess the voltage or amperage that tripped it is a safe appliance, like a vacuum or something like that. So it won't do it again.
Marc:See, that's awesome, because every project we finish Oh,
Dan:you get that annoying callback. That's the big one of the biggest warranty callbacks we
Marc:get All the time.
Dan:Is is just it's obnoxious.
Marc:It's because the arc fault breakers
Ray:It's the common
Marc:the AFCXDF. With so
Dan:many They're so sensitive. Yeah. It's just they just hop all the time.
Ray:Yeah.
Dan:Yeah.
Marc:I've taken I've heard Yeah.
Ray:Oh, I was gonna say, I've heard that they're they may actually be changing the electric code to relax it because it's been such a problem in the industry. Yeah. Really. Just even normal operation of brush motors inside appliances will trip it, and it, like like Like vacuum Right.
Dan:Will trip it. It's a standard vacuum.
Ray:Tell me about the T Rex ferociously strong tape.
Marc:It's a it's a step up from duct tape. It is super sticky. It does leave a residue on your
Dan:Flex Seal tape?
Marc:It's it's pretty similar. Yeah. I'm not really sure it's water.
Ray:Application just to put something like you're you're putting it on, you're never taking it off kind of thing?
Marc:Yeah. Yeah.
Dan:What's moisture shield stratos? Decking? Oh, it's decking?
Marc:Yeah. Some of the composite decking's gotten really good, though. It
Ray:does does look look color now,
Marc:or It's really resistant to scratches. Like, the good products, it doesn't get hot underfoot.
Ray:Because that's always the problem, is you get like this tiny little veneer. Mhmm. And then if somebody drops something on it, now your decking
Dan:is Or like going you were saying, it becomes molten lava hot
Marc:in Yeah. Yeah, I tested a couple decking products. We we did some densified hardwood, the robins flooring. My mother and father-in-law want to redo their bedrooms, so we did that. And the stuff is awesome.
Marc:I think I've I post this online. That is the next iteration of flooring. We went from natural hardwood to engineered, and now we're gonna gonna go to densified hardwoods because it is so durable.
Dan:What's the Yeah. Run the bias. Difference between engineered and densified?
Marc:So a densified hardwood goes through, like, a chemical process at the end whereby they, like, really they heat it up. They densify it. They're they're they're putting it through Like compression. Weighted compression, yeah, thing, and then they're giving it, like, a commercial grade finish. So if you drop a pot of water on it, you're not gonna get a call from that buyer that, like, it's swelling up at the edges.
Dan:Oh, interesting.
Marc:That's You drag a refrigerator across densified, maybe you'll scratch it, but pretty good chance it's gonna be okay.
Dan:Interesting.
Ray:Yeah. So, Dan, your your exterior is not densified, but it has to thermally modified.
Marc:Thermally modified.
Ray:Similar.
Marc:Yeah. Similar where they put
Dan:it in a build yeah. A big kiln, and they suck all the moisture out of it so it doesn't rot. Have
Ray:you noticed
Marc:What's funny is that's like that's there's a Japanese tradition called shishuki ba. Yes. And they used to just hit it with a torch back hundreds of years ago. Blackened. Yeah.
Marc:And this is like the modern version of that, but to make
Dan:You can still get, like, they make Yeah. Fookie Bond versions Oh, of the the wood that you could put on. It's really expensive. Definitely.
Ray:Have you noticed if you're siding from day one install to now, is the is it supposed to hold the color better as well, and like, keep it from
Dan:No, weathering? No, it's not. It weathers. Basically grays. If you don't treat it, it will gray.
Dan:It's similar to, like, if you go down to the cape, and you see all the houses with the shit, like, the the They have the cedar shingles that basically gray over time. It's similar to that.
Ray:But what do they spray on that? They just spray spray, like, chlorine or something. Right? Don't they just spray, like, a mix that brings it back?
Dan:Well, I don't know. With mine, all I have to do is put like a Q Tech type sealer on it, and it will bring the natural color back. I do like a light sand.
Ray:I was gonna say, you have to sand it. Yeah.
Marc:Okay. I'll give you a couple really cool products, like good surprises.
Dan:Yeah. Yeah. In a good way.
Marc:Kuhl Inverter Heat Pump, KUHL plus. Mhmm. So so think of like a window air conditioner, a double hung window like you you had in your dorm room in college. But instead of that being just a compressor for an air conditioner, it's a heat pump. So it will do either heating or cooling, and it's way more efficient.
Dan:Oh, I've seen those. It's like a window unit. Yeah.
Marc:It just looks like an old school air conditioner, but it's doing both.
Dan:And I bet it's way quieter too.
Ray:Yeah. What is the spelling on that again?
Marc:K U h L plus. It's the very last one.
Ray:U h l. Okay. Oh, so that so the application for that is you sit it in the window frame of a traditional Double hung. Double hung.
Marc:Or or, I mean, you could case an you could frame an opening, a rectangle opening in the exterior wall.
Dan:And it just plugs
Ray:and sit in there. Yeah. 15 amp. But it looks like the traditional air conditioner.
Marc:It does. It's a little bulky looking But you won't be able to tell. Yeah. I mean, it's got a smart smart app to it, which is always nice.
Ray:That's interesting. Yeah. That's very interesting. I mean, as a as a operator for, like, rental properties and, you know, some of the older housing stock, you think, well, if you include the units, could you technically say that AC it's got AC now. Right?
Ray:That's the biggest I
Marc:mean, we have a trash room, and it's on the 1st Floor, and all the heat pumps are on the roof in my new building. And I think in July, that trash room's gonna smell, and it'd be nice if it had air conditioning. But I don't wanna run a line set, I don't wanna bring the power all the way up there. So this was a great solution.
Ray:Yeah. And just plugs into a regular outlet too.
Marc:Yeah. We just framed an opening in the wall.
Ray:That's cool. Actually, I was gonna ask you about the the Moen Instant Hot.
Marc:Love the Moen Instant Hot. So, we put that in my own kitchen, and I don't know, I make tea a lot. It's just like one of those small things that can save five to ten minutes out of your day frequently.
Ray:Yeah. That's cool.
Marc:We took a broom under your sink. That's your only
Dan:We were debating doing that. Yeah. I wanted I like we we have like filtered water in the sink, and we were debating doing cold and hot, and we just
Marc:elected to do to do the Yeah. Cold, because we were like, I don't You don't need filtered water in Boston. Boston has the best water in the country.
Dan:Yeah. Know. It does.
Ray:It does. It does. Actually, Dan, real quick question. Weren't you gonna install, like, some kind of, like, espresso or coffee thing
Dan:Yeah. In your cabinets?
Ray:Did that get mixed?
Marc:No. It's there. Did you
Ray:get there?
Marc:Oh, that's a splinter. How'd
Ray:Yeah. That
Dan:That's Nice.
Marc:What's that one? $3? North. You pay $4.05? 6?
Marc:Really? Okay.
Dan:Yes. But what is espresso? The Miele building software
Marc:people. I wouldn't I wouldn't know.
Ray:But this is top of the line espresso and It
Dan:does espresso it does everything. Espresso, coffee, latte. Latte.
Marc:Can I come over? Absolutely. Alright.
Dan:I know you love coffee.
Ray:Let's do the next podcast.
Dan:Could do the next one at
Ray:Dan's house.
Marc:I'd like to.
Ray:And all And just play with all this stuff on caffeine.
Marc:It'd be the second time we've done that.
Dan:Oh, yeah. We did it in my
Marc:living room? Forget with who. Dining room. I forget who it was. Anyway
Ray:Long time ago. Gonna give you one
Marc:more pleasant surprise. Bosch power tools. It a brushless Starlock Max oscillating tool. So it's it's your typical oscillating saw
Ray:Like sander?
Marc:Sander saw, vibrate, you know, multi tool kind of thing. But it it ramps up power automatically. So, like, when you're first starting, it's, like, mellow. And as you start to push more, it senses it, and it send and it turns the speed up. And the changing on the heads is really, really easy on it.
Marc:It's like two clicks,
Ray:and the battery life was awesome. How was the Milwaukee m 18? I I mean, everybody that's like the de facto for contractors, or I mean, if
Dan:you're not using the Circular saw? Yeah.
Marc:Yeah. Six and half inch? It's a great saw. It's powerful. You get a lot of cuts out of it.
Ray:Nice. If you're not doing festivals, you
Marc:know?
Ray:Right. Yeah. Because isn't that kinda like the Cadillac of them? I didn't see that in your list here. They didn't give you that.
Marc:I don't know if they make a just a typical Skill Saw.
Dan:No. I don't think they do. What else?
Ray:What else do guys have here? What else?
Dan:Do you like any of the smart stuff? I I think it looks like they have like some There's a cool dimmer. SATA smart shade and some smart dimmers and stuff.
Marc:We did we did some Lutron shades. What I'll say about the Lutron shades is that I think you you do not need to wire your windows anymore for motorized shades. I think the lithium ion batteries have gotten so good that you charge them two times a year.
Ray:Oh, interesting. Oh, that's pretty cool.
Dan:You actually don't even you can buy solar little solar panels now, and if you you're you get a lot of sun, just plug it into the USB C, and it's probably like the size of your phone.
Marc:Mhmm.
Dan:You stick it to the window Mhmm. And then
Marc:it charges it automatically. They make it super easy to charge them. They give you a really long cord, or you can just swap a battery, but the the Lutron shazers
Dan:I think the only I agree with you, But if you have really tall windows and you have to, like, schlep, like, a six foot ladder up your stairs and stuff to just to charge it and stuff there, that's the only Okay. Potential. If I could just get on a step stool to charge them, fine. Yeah. But if they're taller windows and you need a ladder, then that could be a pain in the ass Yeah.
Dan:To to hard mower.
Ray:Just hard mower. Had So the Husqvarna mower, but you also got a a still one?
Marc:A walk behind, s t I h l steel. Yeah. Still. So the steel one's cool because it's battery powered, and Oh, it's electric. It assists as you walk, and it really lasts.
Marc:Like, the the the power on it. We also got a battery operated shop vac that's The thing I mean
Ray:It's really? What was the width on the mower?
Marc:Just out of curiosity. I wouldn't off top of
Ray:my head. Like, 18 inch?
Marc:I'm actually I could look it up in a second, but
Ray:The only downside with those, because I've seen actual, like, zero turn mowers that are electric too. I think a lot of the major players make those, but I've never seen a landscaper
Marc:No,
Dan:show any I don't think a strong
Ray:gonna gas powered. But there are one
Dan:like 10 lawns a day,
Ray:so it's like I will tell you this. Was in Connecticut, near the Greenwich area, not long ago, and I saw they have an ordinance now, no gas powered leaf blowers. Newton has that. Do they really? Bunch of assholes.
Ray:No offense. But what's the
Dan:Landscapers can get them. You just have to get a permit.
Ray:Oh, it's a homeowner thing. Landscapers are gonna lose their mind.
Dan:No. Landscapers are allowed. You just have to get a permit for it.
Marc:Well, I
Ray:guess we're gonna have to become a our maintenance arm will have to have a landscaping division.
Marc:Yeah. So takeaways, the battery powered large appliances now are getting really good.
Ray:Interesting. Yeah. You would
Marc:think The they would shop vac? I wanna I wanna find that quick.
Ray:I think battery technology in general is getting much better. Yeah. You also had an Anker portable power station. Was that thing pretty cool?
Marc:You know, I've had that for two years now, and I've never used it because my power's never gone out the city, so it's almost disappointing that way.
Ray:Is it supposed to power your whole house, or is it more just like regular, you know, laptop, cell phone, go camping kind of thing?
Marc:No. It's supposed to do your whole house. At least the key generator. It'll keep your refrigerator going. It'll keep a couple lights.
Marc:You can't pick every circuit, but it does pretty good for a while.
Dan:How do you how do you tie it into your
Marc:System? Yeah. Immune electrician. Okay. Yeah.
Marc:No doubt. But the cool thing about it is it does have wheels like a suitcase, kinda like a handle, and you could bring it to your job site. And if you don't have temp power yet, it can really manage the whole job each day.
Dan:Oh, interesting.
Marc:So I've done that.
Dan:That's kinda cool.
Marc:Yeah. And it has a solar array. So if we get, like, doomsday, you can bring it to your backyard and keep charging it.
Dan:Doomsday in your backyard?
Marc:Well, yeah. Like, you know
Ray:Like, if the power grid's down for a while, just throw set up a solar array.
Marc:You gotta come out of your bomb shelter, though.
Ray:I do see that becoming more more Yeah. Commonplace. We went camping this year in Maine, and I saw somebody, actually, they had a couple solar panels, and I was like, that's a little wild for just a weekend. Mhmm.
Marc:No. My favorite TV we got this was an awesome one. But Samsung frames sent me a 75 inch. Oh. The new frame, which is super cool because the knock on the frame, and it's valid, was always that, like, the brains lived elsewhere.
Dan:Correct.
Marc:And you had to connect the brain to the TV with, like, a huge cable. So you couldn't pull it through a wall. You had to have a huge conduit. Anyhow, they now talk to each other wirelessly. Oh, interesting.
Dan:So So the
Ray:TV is a display, and it gets its signal from another source?
Marc:Yeah. I mean, the the thing is so paper thin.
Dan:That's why how they're able to get it so thin.
Marc:Because they're all the, like, real processing power is elsewhere.
Ray:That's pretty cool.
Marc:And and when it's off, it looks like a picture. So you could pick, like, a Monet or, like, you know, Dan Rubin in landscape. That's what's in my room, my living room.
Ray:I mean, they've already gotten pretty thin. Don't know if you remember the old plasma TVs that were like 600 pounds, and
Dan:Yeah.
Ray:So it's wild to think back to that.
Dan:The frame TVs are cool. You can't use sometimes, can't tell the difference between if it's a TV or if it's actual artwork. Yeah.
Marc:I'll bitch for a second, but I tested a number of electric hot heat pump hot water heaters.
Ray:Okay. Yeah. Let's go. What did yeah. What didn't make the cut?
Marc:All of them.
Ray:Of them?
Marc:And it's not anyone's fault. It's just the, like, the fact that
Ray:In what way, though? In what way?
Marc:Okay. They all make noise.
Ray:The compressor. They do all have compressors that make noise.
Marc:Yep. And the compressor puts off cold air.
Ray:Yeah. Well, that's how it You
Marc:can get you know, just Exactly.
Dan:You can get vent tips for them.
Marc:Yeah. That's a that's a great tip. Yeah. That's a pro tip. So so put a vent on your on your electric heat pump hot water heater.
Marc:But, like, in my heart of hearts, if you have gas in your home, it's just better for heating hot water. The problem is
Dan:for any new construction, they're not gonna let you put them in. Right.
Marc:That's right. So we're stuck now. There is a button that turns off the heat pump and makes it just an energy hog. To the nice thing about them is they do sense if they're leaking on their own, most of them now.
Dan:That's good. Yeah. Yeah. It has the whole leak sensing
Marc:And they last for a long time except Dan's.
Ray:You're saying that when the when used in heat pump mode, they will last a lot longer than the traditional anode rod.
Marc:Yeah.
Dan:Yeah. That And would they're smart now, so you can I have an app, and you can set schedules? So, if I know that, you know, my wife and kids and myself are all gonna shower back to back to back to back at one time
Ray:You can put it on, like, high demand.
Dan:Put it in high demand mode, schedule it, say, okay, every Tuesday morning from 6AM to 8AM. So it's it's good in that way, and it'll of kick it into like, it will probably do it's like called hybrid mode or something.
Ray:Yeah. I mean, we so we use the heat pumps over in Lynn, and I think we had 50 gallons. We wanted to oversize it just in case we weren't sure about the the quality of the tech. The one thing I don't like about that particular model, I don't know if it's the ProTerra, but we they lost the Wi Fi, and they took forever to connect to it. But, yeah, the compressor was an issue for some tenants, and the cold air was also unexpected.
Ray:Yeah. And, I mean, you get it because then you don't have to worry about venting or upsizing your So, electric in a way, you kinda need to be strategic as to where you put it.
Marc:Yeah. You also don't need to worry about carbon monoxide. Yeah. You know?
Dan:Yeah. We also if you didn't wanna do the vent kit, another way around it is what I what my mechanical engineer designed was, I have a return in the same room, in the mechanical room that the water heater is in, so when it's putting off its
Ray:Cold air.
Dan:Cold air, my return is just sucking it in and conditioning it into my heat. That's good.
Marc:That's cool. How about GE sync keypad? So this is you asked about smart home features. But the g GE makes this keypad dimmer that has, like, a couple extra buttons on it. So it's kinda futuristic looking.
Marc:But the idea is that it's gonna give you a few scenes Yeah. That you can also program. That's cool. Yeah. I think it's fun.
Marc:Like, the challenge is a guest comes over, and you they go to turn on the lights or something, and all of a sudden, they hit, like, go to bed.
Ray:Yeah. You have no it's not super intuitive. Yeah. Yeah.
Marc:That's right. But no no hub required, which is always good. I I think that's a pet peeve of mine, is when you buy a smart switch and it needs its own, like, plugged in central hub. Mhmm. Yeah.
Marc:That's a loser.
Dan:Why is because that is that Wi Fi? Yeah. Yeah. The only downside with the Wi Fi stuff is, a, it it hogs up if you have a lot of the devices, it kind of can bog down your WiFi, and two, if your WiFi goes down, you can't use any of them.
Ray:I will give you a pro tip on those things. So, most, you know, routers or mesh network device now, they'll have multiple networks. You know, the one we use even has, like, an IoT Internet of Things subnetwork. Put all of those devices on there because to your point, if you have even one device that's, like, you know, a generation behind on the Wi Fi, it's gonna slow down the whole network because of it. So if you put them all on the the subnetwork that you don't use and you stick to yours, then you should be good.
Dan:That's not a bad idea.
Ray:Pro tip. Now you gotta reprogram everything in your house.
Dan:I don't have a lot of Wi Fi stuff. Not yet. No.
Ray:What so what's the output on this? You've gone through this. You've tested the products. Do they require you to write, like, a I do a 500 page report? Or
Marc:No. I complete a survey for each product. I talk about what I liked, what I didn't like, rank it on a number of different metrics. It's really cool.
Ray:Do you
Dan:do this every year?
Marc:Yes. The third year I've done this. Nice. It is incredible. It's like Christmas and July and August.
Dan:They send you everything all at once? Well, like
Ray:because you could be overwhelmed.
Marc:At one day, but it comes over maybe a month and a half. And every day I get home, and it's like, my neighbors must be like, what are you doing?
Dan:Guy is spending a lot of money.
Ray:Yeah. Yeah. How many people participate? And so they have like enough data to determine.
Marc:You know, they've got a handful of judges, but they have their lab. And they've got like true testing engineers who are also looking at things, but some innovative stuff. It's fun.
Ray:Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Cool.
Marc:Anyway, I think that
Dan:was a good episode. Yeah. Talking about new products. Yeah. New everyone.
Dan:Thank you for listening, rating, reviewing, subscribing.
Ray:Loving, loving the love, bringing the love. If you haven't commented yet or given us a review on any of the platforms, better yet, all of the platforms, go ahead and do that, and then why don't you go hit that bell and subscribe.
Marc:Thank you. Thank you. See you guys.
Dan:Later. Cheers.
Ray:We need to queue up a couple more episodes.