The Latest in Home Tech: Keeping Your Home Safe and Secure

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[00:00:28] Eric Goranson: And basically the flame detector sensors aren't activated by burnt toast, steam, dust. And it sees the whole room. So there's 130 degrees of flame detecting coverage and the three double a batteries run for over a year. So you can easily add other flame detection units for whole house protection. I'm going to have these guys on the show here one of these days, and we're going to talk about it.

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[00:01:11] Eric Goranson: If you are looking for a killer barbecue that's affordable, check them out at Monument. com. Today, we're going to be talking Home technology that makes your home safer. And this is stuff out there that you can add. Most of this is super easy. Plug and play. You might have to hook it up to a wifi at your house and then plug it in the wall or put some batteries in it.

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[00:01:55] Eric Goranson: This is an interesting product. It's from ID tech flame [00:02:00] detector. Yes, this is something that detects open flame. It's not a smoke detector. It is a flame detector. So the home flame detector, a game changer in fire detection. So this is a little unit that you hook up to wifi in your house. Put it on the wall, takes three AA batteries.

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[00:02:46] Eric Goranson: So this sensor will detect a three quarter inch flame at 20 feet within two seconds. It gives you notifications on your phone as well as a loud local alarm. [00:03:00] And basically the flame detector sensors aren't activated by burnt toast, steam, dust, and it sees the whole room. So it's 130 degrees of flame detecting coverage and the three AA batteries run for over a year.

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[00:03:31] Eric Goranson: So this is really a cool thing. So what's cool is in theory, I'm going to test this yourself. You could have a child on the backside of a couch, sit there and light a match. And it's going to catch the reflection of the light that that puts out the infrared light. And it is going to detect that from my understanding.

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[00:04:18] Eric Goranson: So seconds count on this and it works really good smoke alarms. You know how they work. They actually detect small particles of smoke or combustion and they got to travel in the room in front of the smoke detector. Along the, in front of those sensing chambers before alarming. So if it's not big enough, or if it's far enough away, it's not going to see it.

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[00:05:00] Eric Goranson: I'm going to play around with mine a little bit. I've got it hooked up, set up, took me literally 30 seconds, hit the button. It hooks up. You have an app on your phone and off you go. And it sits there and basically just scans the room 24 seven. Looking for open flame and I like that you put batteries in it, but it lasts for a year So you can get some of those really cool like coast rechargeable ones And put those in there and you're never going to be throwing batteries away You just put it in the usbc to recharge it and off you go So this is something cool something brand new on the market right now.

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[00:05:58] Eric Goranson: So what's cool is this is [00:06:00] electrical fire safety. Simplified is what this is. So what you do is you hook this thing up to your wifi, get in your home and you plug it into the wall and you've got your app. And this is simple proven protection. So if you have any hidden electrical hazards, maybe it's a loose wire in an outlet.

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[00:06:41] Eric Goranson: It literally plugs into an outlet and it's going to monitor everything from your house all the way up to the power pole. And again, this is super cool technology and exciting stuff. So what you do is you plug it in and, uh, it just monitors, you have an app. And so that app, you could open up [00:07:00] anytime. It's like having an electrician in your home, 24 seven.

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[00:07:20] Eric Goranson: So if you had, um, an ice storm or a wind storm and you're getting low voltage, it's going to tell you that before you burn up your HVAC system or your refrigerator or something like that. And here's the cool thing. Not all of the course, not all of these hazards require an electrician. However, they give you a thousand dollar credit for remediation so they can figure out what happened.

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[00:08:03] Eric Goranson: This is something you can literally plug in and to get more information there, go over to ting, T I N G fire. com. And here's one thing that I think that's really cool. And there's a lot of cool things about that that work. But what I like about it is, is that there are a lot of different, instead of you having to go buy it, There's a lot of insurance companies.

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[00:08:48] Eric Goranson: And this was a winner of the good housekeeping home reno awards for 22 and 23. And so it's a hundred bucks, but many times you can get that free with your insurance. And that is super [00:09:00] cool. And if you can do something like that, that is going to prevent an electrical fire in your home and make sure that you're getting quality electrical through the grid safety of this.

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[00:09:29] Eric Goranson: And I think that's, what's really cool about some of this tech, everything here between the flame detector. com. And of course here at Ting fire. Both of these are super cool for preventing serious problems. And I like that we're going to have more of these home technology that makes your home much safer.

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[00:10:09] Eric Goranson: What's up. This is Dixie Dania and Satchel from steel Panther. And you are listening to around the house with Eric G. We love Eric G and you should too. I'll show the next generation of home improvement presented by our friends over at monument grills. If you want to find a great grill for football season this year, if you're out shopping around, check them out at monumentgrills.

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[00:11:01] Eric Goranson: com. And of course our YouTube channel, which is around the house show where we've got a lot of video content as well as around the house, Northwest, our TV show here in the Pacific Northwest that we do every single week. Our next one here that we're talking about is home security. And this does make things safer.

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[00:11:39] Eric Goranson: Now, here's how this works. Basically uses artificial intelligence with a camera system around the perimeter. Of your building. So if you're a homeowner, you would put these around, uh, the entrances into your home, maybe four corners, depending on how your house is laid out, you would put these around the perimeter of your house or your small business.[00:12:00]

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[00:12:23] Eric Goranson: And that live guard can go, Oh, cool. That's a delivery driver dropping off a package. They'll send you a little notification that says, Hey, package delivered on your front porch, so you can get it. And then off it goes. Here's the difference. If someone else is walking up to your front door and goes peeking in the living room window or the side garage door or wherever you have somebody snooping around, now you have a guard coming up going, Deep Sentinel Security, how can I help you?

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[00:13:09] Eric Goranson: Now, if you come walking up to your house and maybe you drop your keys and it takes a minute, yeah, they're going to go deep Sentinel home security. Can I help you? And you go, Hey, I'm the owner. You give your passcodes and all that stuff. Not a big deal. And they tell you to have a great day. Now, the difference with the security as well, as if it's going out into your driveway, let's say, and you're worried about somebody sneaking up, pulling up and maybe stealing the catalytic converter off your car, or you're just worried about going to work in the morning or coming home at night in your neighborhood.

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[00:14:00] Eric Goranson: We've got people 30 seconds and some people that'll show up in 30 days. And it's just depending where you are at in between there and what city you're in. But really here's what it's about. If you're sitting there and they call, they have 140 decibel, I believe siren that goes off on it. So they know that's happening.

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[00:14:41] Eric Goranson: And it's probably a cat, a pet or something happened or somebody didn't get a door shut correctly or whatever. And that could be easily a false alarm. So with this, you really don't see that, that whole thing. Now, deep Sentinel security has taken it a completely new direction. And I think [00:15:00] this is super cool.

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[00:15:26] Eric Goranson: So this is going to eliminate or chase away most of those smash and grab burglaries, armed robberies, shattered windows, any of these things that happen around, it's really going to be seriously different if you've got a business, let's say. And someone comes walking into the entryway of it, and they've already broken in, the guard goes, Oh my gosh, this person's busted through the door, you could sit there and that guard can hit pepper blast to shut him down, and maybe that's going to work in that same space.

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[00:16:19] Eric Goranson: And I tell you what, it has been an amazing situation here with this. Don't have a lot of crime in my neighborhood. I do have a lot of expensive tools and things like that. Then even though they're Welsh insured, I do have a great security system around the outside for that very reason. And so that's why I think deep Sentinel is such a cool thing for people out there.

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[00:17:02] Eric Goranson: It's like watching your own TV show on there of stupid criminals trying to break in and these guys shutting them down. And, uh, them running away. So it's really cool. But if you want more information about them and none of these guys are paying me here today, guys, none of these people are sponsored the show.

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[00:17:34] Eric Goranson: Really cool stuff. I just absolutely love what these guys are doing and they keep innovating around your house. Now having a security system like that, I think is really smart. And if you pair that in with some of the other things that you have here around your house, you start stacking things on top of the house here as far as Maybe having your electrical security, the fire prevention, security there for people breaking in.

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[00:18:14] Eric Goranson: Not as serious as this stuff here, but really cool stuff that you can start adding to make life a little bit more secure, a little bit safer. And the things that can actually help you from having big insurance claims as well. And we'll get into that a little bit later into the show, but these are things that can really prevent disasters.

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[00:19:00] Eric Goranson: Hey, this is Ron Kiel, the metal cowboy from Kiel, the Ron Kiel band and Steeler, we are rocking around the house with Eric G. We're on the house show is brought to you by pyramid heating and cooling, serving in Oregon. Portland metro area and Bend, Oregon. They are your one stop shop for heating and cooling and indoor air quality.

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[00:19:41] Eric Goranson: Check these guys out at mom. com. All their grills are under 900 bucks, which means there's a ton of value packed into no matter what size of grill you're looking for. So check them out. Monumentgrills. com. We've been talking about home technology that makes your home safer. And we were talking about products in the last segment here.

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[00:20:24] Eric Goranson: Now, the next one here is an interesting product. If you are building a safe room, if you are in an area that has a little more violence in it, let's say we'll just keep it from being too negative. Have you ever heard of ballistic drywall or bullet resistant sheetrock is a wide range of bullet resistant materials that really have changed how people build safe rooms or maybe the front of their home if they have concerns about stray bullets in their [00:21:00] neighborhood.

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[00:21:21] Eric Goranson: So if you want to put something like that around a bedroom or the kid's bedroom or across the front or the side of the back of the house, It's probably going to be a little bit more expensive than drywall, but if you're trying to build a secure place and a little rougher neighborhood, I think it's pretty smart to have something like that if you're in the same at that same location.

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[00:22:02] Eric Goranson: So there's a lot of different materials out there. If you're trying to build something that is going to be more hardened as far as crime in your neighborhood. So something to think about, not for everybody by any means, but for somebody out there, I'm sure. It'll get you at least looking where I found out more about this.

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[00:22:42] Eric Goranson: These are plug in natural gas detectors. So you can put this in next to natural gas appliances, any place that you have, and they do like propane and all the different stuff like that. But they detect the presence of gas and so instead of having to worry about Maybe a dog that's [00:23:00] hitting the range and turn the gas on or the cat or anything like that Or the kids you can put these in the rooms and it will alert you That there is a natural gas issue or a propane issue or any kind of a gas like that that is flammable Depending on the ones you guy and some of these here Depending on the ones you have it could be 20 or 30 bucks for one of these to plug right in So it's not a bad little deal And so that's an important one out there for people to take a look at.

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[00:23:43] Eric Goranson: It's that kind of stuff that I've done for the TV show, but they work really well at detecting any kind of a flywheel gas. And you can go around, right? Walk around the, the, the range and the gas appliances, that kind of stuff. If you are worried about having a gas leak at your house [00:24:00] and you go, I think i've got one.

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[00:24:26] Eric Goranson: But, uh, one thing you can do if you're worried about this, you know, always have a place where that shutoff wrench is so you can get at it. I actually put on my house. I installed recently a earthquake shutoff valve. So if the house shakes, then it's naturally going to shut it off and I can go back and inspect the system and go back.

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[00:25:02] Eric Goranson: If you're in a seismic area is smart. I think that's really important to have, and it's really easy to reset it. So you don't have to worry about that. If you accidentally bump up against it or something like that, you can reset it. But really you don't want to reset that thing. If you've had a seismic event until you've inspected the home to make sure that it's.

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[00:25:42] Eric Goranson: This is, yeah, it's a hundred and something box, depending on where you get it. But it is a voice activated smoke and carbon monoxide detector. And what I like about it is, is it warns you audibly. You don't have to get a ladder to get up and turn it off. You can use your [00:26:00] phone to reset it. And it also tells you on the phone that you've got an emergency.

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[00:26:24] Eric Goranson: As well as it's going to give the audible stuff inside the home. And the thing that I do like about it is if you're cooking, for instance, it's going to say smoke detected saying, Hey, I'm about ready to go off. I sense a little bit. Are you cool with this? And then that gives you time to grab your phone and reset it.

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[00:27:00] Eric Goranson: And that's a great fix it for that. So take a look at that. That's a great system. Now, the 1 thing that I want to look for when I'm looking at carbon monoxide detectors. Is that some of these units on the market out there try to get the whitest range detected of carbon monoxide because no amount is safe for you.

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[00:27:40] Eric Goranson: If you're out shopping, you can't decide which one to get. Make sure you get the widest range possible. I want that thing to detect and go off as early as possible because I want to deal with it then versus dealing with it when I have to go around and go, Oh, wow. I didn't know it was this bad, but it wasn't bad enough to set off the alarm.

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[00:28:15] Eric Goranson: It's going to save on electricity. And of course, It's going to make it easier to move around your house, depending as we get in these days where it's getting darker outside. I've got the answer for you. More great household tips on around the house with Eric G right after the break.[00:29:00]

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[00:29:18] Eric Goranson: And this is something. It'll help save you money and give you an idea what's going on around your house is a home energy monitoring system called sense. And here's what's cool is this will tell you where your energy usage as far as electricity is going and what's costing you the most around the house.

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[00:29:57] Eric Goranson: Or if you've got a recirculating pump [00:30:00] or a, jeez, maybe you got a sump pump in the basement or crawl space. Maybe you've got something there and you go, wow, this thing's just on forever. Maybe I have a problem. So there's some cool sensing technology with this. It's going to tell you what's going on. Like for instance, last week, what did I do?

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[00:30:38] Eric Goranson: And those are things you see, that makes sense. But otherwise you'd go, what's, what's on in my house. Why am I using more electricity than the week before? What happened? So it really lets you think. And what this does is this actually goes into your electrical panel guys, and you hook this up and you can have an electrician do it.

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[00:31:11] Eric Goranson: And this is what's really cool about this. So it will tell you minute by minute, second by second, what's going on. And then it uses AI to listen to the electrical signals going on. Now, each appliance, light fixture, everything else. Gives a little feedback into that system, your electrical system to, to let you know, Hey, it's just automatically creates that noise.

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[00:31:58] Eric Goranson: My always [00:32:00] on is wow. 1064 Watts right now with my AC cranking lights on in the house, couple other things going on. I'm at 100 Watts right now. And that's because I have a lot of other things going on and I can go down and look and see that, Oh, wow, here's what my always on are and I can see what's being used.

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[00:32:37] Eric Goranson: And it tells you what is being used. And it goes through and really checks to see what's going on. So it's really cool how that whole thing works. This can detect things being on too much as well as help you understand what your next electrical bill is going to be if you put that data into the app. So no privacy concerns with this kind of stuff.

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[00:33:20] Eric Goranson: So that's super cool. Now, one of the things I wanted to talk about those teasing here is changing out some of your light fixtures. Or light switches really so that power the fixtures to go make them smart. Now I know there's people out there going, man, I don't want this. Here's where this makes sense. If you go around and change out the ones that control, maybe your exterior lights, maybe a garage lights, maybe it is the lights for a staircase or places that you would normally kind of work around in the house, you can have these set to automate and turn on what, what I mean by that is if you set these [00:34:00] things up, you can actually make it through a smart home system.

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[00:34:30] Eric Goranson: I can have it turn on stuff in the morning If you want a night light on it'll go to that setting and I set that up all through my smart things hub That I have in my house. And so I did that with my lutron casita switches. You can get them at the home center. You can get them on amazon They're an easy way to do this and they work with a lot of different lights You always have to make sure when you're putting in smart lights that you if you put in smart Switches, sorry that they control the lights.

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[00:35:18] Eric Goranson: And this is one of these smart water controllers for your home. Now hear me out before you go. Oh my gosh, something else. Smart. This can be cool. This goes in line. As water comes into your house, you hook this up. It is going to detect and look for broken water pipes. So with this, it detects pipe brakes, leaks.

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[00:36:00] Eric Goranson: And I think the growy one is probably the smartest one out there. And that is the growy sense smart guard water controller. Now it is, A little bit more money than the other ones, but I think it's really the smartest in how it works. And I think that's cool. So what they do is it basically just mounts in in line and if it detects things or if it goes, Hey, it's cold down here, it's getting cold.

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[00:36:45] Eric Goranson: If it's going, Hey, you're using a little bit more water than you should be. There's always water running here. We've got a problem. It detects unusual water flow. It has Aqua alarm. So you could actually put different sensors out there to make sure that if you've got a [00:37:00] water issue, it will say, Hey, we've got a problem.

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[00:37:25] Eric Goranson: And it also has a Aqua IQ, which is a self learning algorithm, ensures that all alerts and actions are perfectly adapted to match your household consumption. So these are all super important things for using stuff around the house here. So you can make sure that you don't have a big issue with your water like that, which I think is super cool.

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[00:38:12] Eric Goranson: And they went on vacation, were gone for the week and the water hose behind the washer failed. And guess what happened? That water garden hose ran for a week, destroyed the house. They were out of that house. With a flood all the way up to the top floor for just for almost a year. And that was one of those things you look at and go, man, that's crazy expensive for them to be out there.

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[00:38:58] Eric Goranson: com. I appreciate [00:39:00] every single one out there. Make sure that you are. Following us on social media. We now have a Tik TOK. We now have a better YouTube presence out there. Check all those things out. Thanks for tuning into around the house. We'll see you next week.