Comments on: Home Performance Tools on Amazon Prime Day

By: RoyC

RoyC — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 16:00:06 +0000

For anyone that is considering a home weather station, here are some warnings and suggestions. If it has a rain gauge, you will have to clean it periodically to get rid of the bird crap and bug nests that like to plug it up. If you want wind speed (anemometer) and you live in Oklahoma, don’t go cheap. The anemometer on my first cheap weather station wore out in about a year. My Ambient Weather station is working fine so far. One of the other nice features of this station is that not only does it measure solar radiation, it uses it to power the outdoor unit so that you don’t have to replace the batteries nearly as often.

By: Allison Bailes

Allison Bailes — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 15:13:22 +0000

In reply to RoyC. Roy, we do a lot of the same things. I haven't gotten a weather station for my home yet, but it's on the list. Ambient also has a nice thermo-hygrometer with graphing that's on my list, too. For anyone interested, here's the link to the Ambient store on Amazon. (Both links here are affiliate links.)

By: RoyC

RoyC — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 14:54:42 +0000

Allison, I am a bit of a data nut too. I have lots of different sensors and controls around my house and lots of replacement batteries too. I keep an indoor/outdoor hygrometer in my bathroom so that I know if I should turn on the exhaust fan during and after a shower. If the indoor humidity is low during heating season, I don’t bother using the exhaust fan so that the shower helps humidify my home. If the outdoor temperature and humidity is high during the cooling season, I also don’t use the exhaust fan since the AC is running quite a bit and is probably more effective at removing this humidity than an exhaust fan that also sucks in hot humid air from somewhere else in the house.

I also like having my own home weather station for outdoor temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed, and pressure. We can all get weather information from nearby weather stations via the internet, but there is a lot of local variation, especially with rainfall. I like the Ambient Weather devices that allow you to see historical plots as well as instantaneous data.