It’s Getting Hot in Here

A father of two young kids races home from the hospital when SmartThings alerts him that his furnace is causing their upstairs loft to get dangerously hot.

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“We recently moved in to a two-level condo where the main living area is on the ground floor, and the furnace and washer/dryer are located in a room in our upstairs loft. We’ve been having some issues where the top floor is consistently about 15 degrees warmer than the bottom floor, so I’ve attached a SmartSense Multi sensor on the door where the laundry room and furnace are to monitor the temperature.

My wife had just given birth to our second child, so I left home one day at about 1:15 p.m. to go to the hospital to see the two of them. I was actively monitoring the temperature back home because of the heating issues we’ve had this winter. At about 1:30 p.m., I took a look at my SmartThings app and noticed that it had gotten dramatically hotter in the laundry and furnace room. I thought to myself that I’d have to leave the hospital if the SmartSense Multi reported that the temperature was still rising.

At about 2:30 p.m., I saw something that caused my heart to race: it was 96°F degrees in that room. Thinking that there was something extremely wrong happening back home, I left the hospital and drove straight home. [pullquote]At about 2:30 p.m., I saw something that caused my heart to race: it was 96°F degrees in that room.”[/pullquote]When I got there, I saw that the door connecting the laundry and furnace room to the rest of the loft was closed. When I opened it, it was absolutely sweltering inside and the furnace was on full blast. I quickly shut the system off, performed a few checks, and the room cooled down to a much more comfortable temperature.

Needless to say, had it not been for SmartThings, we would’ve either had: a) a massively expensive gas bill; and/or b) a broken/burned out furnace–since I was planning on being gone until at least 7 p.m.

#SmartThingsFTW, and you can bet I’ll have a SmartApp installed now to monitor the temperature!” – Garrett

Want to use SmartThings to prevent extreme temperatures from causing damage and danger to your home? Here’s how:

Go into the Damage & Danger category of the SmartThings Dashboard, click on the Extreme Temperature prompt, pick an area of your home to monitor and a SmartSense Multi sensor that you’d like trigger notifications, and then set the extreme temperature that you’d like to watch out for.

Tip: Getting a multi-pack of SmartSense Multi sensors is a great way to monitor extreme temperatures throughout your home, and it offers you a considerable savings versus purchasing Multi sensors individually.