New App

Built a new app with our ThingWorx product.

All these years I never really tracked any of the data around our pellet stove usage. I couldn’t really say how much it cost us to heat our house for a winter or month or anything. I had only rough guesses.

First thing I did was create a Brand table to store information about the various pellet brands I have and will likely use this year.

Once the different brands are entered, I can track how much I bought, for what price and where.

This in turn becomes the basis for my pellet stock.

As I buy quantities of the various brands, my stock goes up.

Of course the main purpose for the pellets is burning them, so now I track that.

As I burn or encounter some other stock reducing incident (sometimes bags break or their contents are ruined), I record it and the stock levels are automatically adjusted.

I also created a table/entry for my thermostat settings.

Don’t get excited. Where the thermostat is located (upstairs) it doesn’t get anywhere near those temperatures. Plus, the calibration of the thermostat seems a little off.

Now I can track exactly what I burn for which month or the entire season and figure out exactly how much it cost.

Using my thermostat settings and correlating weather data (Yes. I download local weather station data for each days/months too.) I can do more accurate comparisons from year to year.

Other benefits is now having my own pellet performance data. There are sites like www.woodpelletreviews.com, but there are so many opinions and different environments in which they’re used it’s hard to tell what would work well for me even if it was a complete disaster for someone else or vise verse.

I have some other fringe recordings like stove temperatures for different brands at different stove settings, but I’m not sure that data is entirely accurate yet. Burning the same brand at the same settings I’m getting wildly different temperatures, so that’s not very useful.

In addition to tracking what I buy and burn, I’m also buying samples of more varieties to increase my brand knowledge. I used to be very particular and stick to only what I knew, but I’m branching out and buying 3 bags of whatever I come across wherever I come across it. Three bags insures I get a solid days burn without having to burn the stove down to empty between brands.  Though in the shoulder seasons, when I’d actually do the testing, burning it to empty isn’t as big of a deal. Who knows maybe I’ll come across something cheap somewhere that works great for half the season saving me more money.

The only thing missing, besides the analysis charts/calculations/graphs which will come after I get at least a months worth of data, is lot tracking. As you may have noticed I have a rather large inventory of specific brands ,which will probably last till next year when I’ll probably buy more of those brands at different prices, thus mixing the costs. With lot tracking I could specifically identify “lots” of my inventory at specific prices when I stock and consume it. Figuring out heating costs would then be more accurate, but all that can wait till later in the year when I start buying in large quantities again.

Yeah. Besides raising the kids, there isn’t a whole lot else to do around here.

– b