On and off topic... recovering a pine table and when Home seer failed...

["Mark Hetherington" <mark.egroups@xxxxxxx>]

Although some of this is off topic, the prevention is very relevant so I
thought I would share this with everyone.

Today I had to fly to Denmark for a meeting. The flight was due out of
Luton
at 8.30 am so the boss had the great idea of meeting at work at 5am to
begin
the journey. I guess it made sense because of traffic and that but it was
the first factor in this sometimes stupid, sometimes tragic story and yet
lucky story.

I went to bed earlier than normal, and as is always the case when you
*have*
to get up on time, sleep was more than usually elusive and the hours ticked
by with me getting none. The (normal) alarm clock was set for a 4am wakeup.
Since I was up when the house began it's auto nighttime modes I was aware
of
the fact that the HA PC was no longer in control of the house. What it was
doing who knows so this merely adds to the jumble of thoughts running
through my mind. I plan to reboot Holly when I get up so it will be back to
normal.

Anyway, at some point I finally managed to drop off and awake to find the
alarm clock attempting to play a none existent radio signal. I had made the
mistake of enabling buzzer and radio (which isn't tuned) and the radio
decided to take priority. Now I have minutes to do everything I need to
before leaving the house but it is still doable... just.

As always when in a hurry I couldn't find things and had to rush more... my
mum saying 'more haste less speed' runs through my mind but is neither help
not comfort :)

The only decent trousers I can find desperately need ironing so sleepy,
rushed and well I guess a little panicked, I decide to try and iron
trousers
at 4.30am. The iron wouldn't steam didn't seem to get up to it's usual
temperature and made very little impact on the trousers... yet another
'what
else can go wrong already' and me praying this was not a sign for the day.

....

The ellipses are important since it covers the rest of the mad panic
between
me ironing and the rest of the day. It will make sense later.

I am finally ready to leave and when I come to start the car, I find that
we
had a night of freezing rain so the windscreen is covered in a thick layer
of ice. So now I need to find de-icer and scrapers. OK, I know, everyone
has
done that so I won't go into the pain of it... lost the best part of 30
minutes to the damn stuff.

So finally I arrive at work to meet up with the others and we begin the
journey. I should have wondered why I didn't have that usual forgotten
something feeling but didn't.

Part way down the M1, "did I turn off the iron" springs to mind.
I had no
way to check and there was nothing I could do about it for a long time and
amazingly I managed to put it out of my mind.

While waiting for the plane to be de-iced, I thought about it again and
mentioned it to someone, joking that I hoped the house would not catch fire
but inwardly hoping that being a reasonably modern iron, the iron would
fail
before any serious damage could possibly occur. The guy I was talking to
laughed at my "joke" but was no reassurance.

Best get to the point I guess <g> ...so we get to Denmark, come back
and in
the end it takes me another hour before checking the iron.

Now the ellipses come into play :) It was left on. I had imagined that I
had
left the iron on it's end but either I didn't or it fell over. In my rush I
was using the dining room table rather than getting the ironing board out.
I
lift up the iron to find a perfect iron shaped black burn on the
tablecloth... removing the tablecloth shows a seemingly very effective iron
shaped burn in the solid wood pine table that was my dining table. The wood
was very hot but for whatever reason had not reached flashpoint, so I guess
the happy ending is that a combination of sleep, stupidity, speed and
laziness for the sake of speed did not lead to the potential disaster it
might.

Why do I share this "I am a twit" story with you all?

Well, a few reasons to get us straight back on topic:

1) Had Home seer not crashed, locked up, given up, whatever it did... it
could have turned the iron off along with other appliances it had chosen to
ignore. (I am not sure exactly what it did since the first thing I did
tonight was a power off reset). If you know the controller crashed, reset
it
now not tomorrow.

2) To be honest 1 would rely on me having used an appliance module and
having a useful way to allow it to be turned on at an arbitrary time like
say 4.30am. This very socket has an AM12 sitting on the shelf nearby that
is
dedicated to it but rarely used due to lack of being able to have a decent
local method of turning it on and being able to forget it later.

3) Mini timers suck as alarm clocks since they are not very configurable
(i.e. no more than your average alarm clock) but would be a great way to
interface to the main PC from a "local" source if they were more
configurable. Separate weekend settings at a minimum (daily for best but
should be optional since most people need weekday/weekend differences), yes
this can be done with a more intelligent controller but the mini timer
seems
ideally placed to offer a local simple interface. A just for today/tomorrow
setting that would be lost after use. Throw away old alarms clocks in a HA
installation so you do not rely on even worse technology than that on which
you spent all this money installing.

Both of these show a major failing of HA either in my implementations or my
view of what is possible/usable within the house. Every advantage that I
want from HA that I can implement I have tried to, but I try not to
automate
something in such a way that makes it harder than a manual method (hence
the
lack of an active AM12 to prevent today's events. Even with an AM12 in
place, the HA PC crash unautomated my entire house in a single stroke. So
my
HA implementation requires more reliability and redundancy. Comments on how
others have achieved reliability/redundancy are requested.


My immediate (and OT) problems are a ruined table cloth which I know is
sort
of "irreplaceable" since it was an IKEA purchase and I know from
when I
tried to obtain a "spare", they had stopped doing the range as
they tend to
do for anything you want to have spares/extras of.

The iron is likely damaged beyond repair. I thank Morphy Richards for
whatever (if any) protection mechanisms cut in during the last 18 hours to
not burn down my home but since it did not seem to be working properly when
I was using it this morning, it could well have already had a fault rather
than it being a protection mechanism so maybe I am thanking them for it
breaking this morning but either way it seems part of what saved my house.

More importantly however, the table although not antique is quite old so in
the "indeterminable interim" and definitely not your modern
rubbish either
but is (or was) a *very* solid pine table (which probably also helped
protect me). However, the most important thing is it is not mine but on a
sort of long term loan. If anyone has any idea how to recover/restore the
damage, please let me know.

BTW, I have never claimed for anything on home insurance and only looked
into one thing that was not covered (garden fencing) but found things I had
paid for myself were covered (burst pipes etc). Any thoughts on whether the
house insurance will pay out (i.e. give me back some of my ongoing premiums
I have no choice about paying while never being able to claim even though
other people seem to get new carpets out of home insurance just because
someone sneezed three streets away in it's general direction) in
compensation for this event? If so, should it affect premiums?

If I ever pick up an iron again in my life (I hated it anyway and now
nearly
burned my house down with one) I have a few basic safety rules just based
on
today that I will never forget:

1) Obviously turn the damn thing off, but most of the list is how to
prevent
not doing so from causing too much damage.
2) Iron the day/night before... you won't get up and ironing sleepy is too
risky.
3) Always use an ironing board - even if not completely fire/burn proof
they
are more so than other surfaces and ultimately it is metal underneath.
4) Always stand an iron on it's end and make sure it always stays there.
(Not sure today whether it was me or a tipping of the iron that led to it
being face down.
5) If you want to break the rules, use a solid pine table and a possibly
faulty iron and you have around 18 hours of grace with minimal damage.
6) If you burn a pine table make sure it is your own.
7) When you are halfway to Denmark and know that someone has the ability to
go round to the house to check (key and alarm code), just ring them and ask
them, don't think it would be too much trouble or how foolish it would seem
if you hadn't. It would probably have saved me a table at least and in
worst
case the house.
8) Automate the iron and make it impossible to operate in any other way.
Even with the worst control system in the world, safety first.
....
The list goes on but I think it is obvious I am now paranoid about the iron
:)

Anyway, I think I have got it all out of my system for now. To anyone who
reads all of this, thanks. Comments and responses to my questions are very
welcome.

Mark.

P.S. Since it came up in the story, I did have a very good day in Denmark
but talking about it would take me even further off topic so I tried to
minimise such content.