the bill · part two
Resilience
Four shelter trips this season. This part exists so the fifth one starts with a calm sentence spoken in every room, lights that are already on downstairs, and a crate that has what Walter needs. And so that the house can actually tell us if it's on fire — which, as of this audit, it can't.
The Rundown
15 items · ≈$1,700 · updated jul 18 2026
- ◆ decided Wireless-interconnect smoke/CO alarms, six units, ~$250–300 — the house has zero detectors today; this is first, ahead of every other line on this bill.
- ● running The alert pipeline stays log-only until the word is given, and now has its own heartbeat — a silent poller that pages a second box if it goes quiet.
- ◆ decided UPS now (~$320) for kara and the network gear; the generator ladder waits for next year (~$1.5–2k).
- ◆ decided A panel SPD (~$60–150) and a Zigbee valve actuator (~$60) ride along with the attic/panel work already on the books.
- ◆ decided Leak sensors, a freeze sentinel, and hourly radon watch cover water and air — there's no sump in this basement, so the sensors are the whole floor's defense.
- ◆ decided The shelter kit gets a door sensor: a shelter stay is also a feeding clock, and now the log starts itself.
Fire & CO
the gap the audit found · zero detectors today · fix before gadgets
Every other line on this page is an upgrade. This one is a floor that doesn't currently exist: the house has no smoke or carbon-monoxide detectors — none, anywhere, full stop. Not expired ones, not one per floor. Zero. That outranks the weather station, the UPS, and the shelter kit combined. Fixed first, before any of the rest of this page gets a dollar.
◆ decided UL-listed, wireless-interconnect battery alarms: one unit trips, all of them sound — no rewiring, no hub, no app. Placement follows IRC R314/R315 for a 1955 single-story-plus-basement: a smoke alarm in each bedroom (×3), a combo smoke/CO in the hallway outside the bedrooms, one in the main living area, and a combo smoke/CO in the basement near the gas pair — six units total. Pick: the First Alert wireless-interconnect family (e.g. SA511B smoke 2-pack ~$60, SCO501CN combo ~$55) or Kidde's 10-year sealed equivalents — either way, ~$250–300 all-in for the full set.
◇ someday Layer 2 — how the house finds out: Heiman HS1SA-class Zigbee smoke sensors (Z2M-supported, ~$25 each) in the hallway and basement, as EN-certified supplements to Layer 1 — never the code layer itself. The payoff: fire joins the tornado polygon as the only other event allowed to wake the house — every Sonos at volume, every light on.
Sonos repeats the alarms. It never replaces them.
The Alert Pipeline
● running unarmed · the sirens answer to city dispatch — this answers to us
NWS warnings are storm-based polygons; Sugar Creek's sirens fire at city discretion. So the
house checks for itself: a poller on the hub asks
api.weather.gov/alerts/active?point=<our rooftop> every 45 seconds and
drives the Sonos announcer by tier. It's deployed and watching now — log-only until the
word is given, then a daytime test before it ever speaks at night.
| Trigger | The house does | Wakes us? |
|---|---|---|
| Tornado Warning polygon contains the house | Every room, full volume, repeated — canned audio, zero dependencies | Yes — the only automation allowed to |
| Tornado Warning within ~10 mi, or a Watch on our county | One moderate announce, kitchen | Not at night |
| Severe T-storm over us, tornado-possible tag | Normal-volume notice | No |
| Other warnings over us | Log + dashboard | No |
- Latency, honestly: issuance → speakers in ~15–90 seconds. Slower than phone WEA by moments; faster and infinitely more targeted than discretionary sirens. Its job is waking the house with words.
- The offline floor: a Midland WR400 SAME weather radio (~$90, the current DSP-receiver model) on battery — the only layer that survives an internet outage. It over-alerts (county granularity); that's its nature. Place it near the shelter door — reception inside six sides of concrete is poor.
- ◆ decided The heartbeat: a dead-man's switch — the poller pings a local healthcheck on a schedule, and a second box (or a phone) pages if it ever goes quiet. Free, and it closes the "what if the poller itself dies silently" hole.
The Weather Station
local data for tornado country
WeatherFlow Tempest — $349, no subscription. Multicasts full readings onto the LAN every ~3 seconds (official local HA integration), detects lightning to ~25 miles, has no moving parts to die in hail, and keeps reporting when the internet is down — which in this county is exactly when it matters. Known flaw, accepted: the rain gauge undersells violent downpours; fine for trends and cook planning.
Beyond storms it earns its keep daily: the mini-split and whole-house fan automations key off its outdoor temp and dew point, the exterior lights can use its actual lux, and the pit gets wind and ambient for run-sheet planning.
Value alternative: the Ecowitt Wittboy GW2001 bundle (~$200) — the local-HTTP darling, solid HA support; lightning costs a $56 add-on sensor and reads coarser. The Tempest earns its premium on lightning and the native UDP feed; the Ecowitt earns its price.
Power
the outages already voted · UPS now, generator ladder later
CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD (pure sine — the hub's PSU requires it) for kara, wired into NUT → HA for graceful shutdown and outage telemetry, plus an APC BE600M1 ($100) for the ONT and router — network gear sips 15–30W, so the internet and the alert pipeline stay alive for hours through exactly the storms that cause the outages (its USB port also charges a phone in a pinch). Optional add, not replacement: a 12V DC router UPS (~$65–100) in series — no inverter loss, more runtime per dollar — if the ONT/router take 12V barrel input; check plugs before buying. (Hub-UPS peer alternative: APC BR1500MS2 ~$230 — pick by price on the day.)
| Rung | What | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Next year | Dual-fuel inverter generator + Eaton BR interlock kit + inlet — fully DIY, covers blower, network, kitchen, bedrooms, and the mini-split (whose inverter compressor soft-starts on a modest generator where central AC never could — and at 120V it runs off any inverter genny's household outlet, no 240V inlet needed) | ~$1.5–2k |
| Someday | Natural-gas standby + critical-loads subpanel (Spire is the gas utility) — automatic, unattended, runs as long as the mains do | ~$8–12k |
| Noted | The Rinnai's freeze protection dies with power — the generator protects the plumbing too. Its WiFi module (RWM200) is cloud-only; low priority. | — |
- ◆ decided Panel SPD: a Type 2 surge device (Eaton BR-class, ~$60–150 installed) goes in during the attic/panel window — the panel area is already open for the new circuits anyway — and protects everything else on this bill from the surge that takes out a $349 weather station in one afternoon.
- ◆ decided The freezer gets a witness: a ~$15 Zigbee temp sensor in the chest freezer closes the outage loop — the UPS keeps the network alive through a storm, and this is what tells us if the food didn't make it.
Water & Air
silent failures, made loud
- Leak sensors ×3–4 (~$15–20 ea): water heater, laundry, under sinks — the best $/disaster-averted ratio in the whole bill. Plus a $12 freeze sentinel for the mini-split line set.
- ◆ decided The valve closes itself: the main is already a brand-new, accessible quarter-turn ball valve (confirmed) — so a ~$60 Zigbee bolt-on valve actuator (Tuya valve-robot class, Z2M) turns it when any leak sensor trips. The manual handle keeps working underneath it; this is a bolt-on, not a replacement. Promoted from someday once the valve itself turned out to already be the easy kind.
- No sump, by design: this basement doesn't have one (confirmed) — the leak sensors plus a someday RH sensor are the floor's whole defense, not a backstop to a pump that isn't there.
- Radon, watched properly: the mitigation system works — until its fan dies silently sometime in year seven. A RadonEye RD200 (~$180) gives hourly readings over local BLE, and a $20 metering plug on the fan turns a wattage drop into an immediate announcement. The manometer stays as the visual backup. (Bonus: if the whole-house fan ever depressurizes hard enough to tug soil gas, the RadonEye is the referee.)
The Shelter
light at 2am is not a gadget — it's morale
Layer 1 — light that turns itself on: a UL 924 twin-head emergency fixture with LiFePO4 batteries (~$40), plugged into a basement outlet. These are engineered to float-charge for years and auto-illuminate the instant power dies — the exact 2am moment, no fumbling. (Skip the NiCd versions; LiFePO4 holds charge and lives 8–10 years.) Layer 2 — the grab light: a Goal Zero Lighthouse Mini Core ($50) — with one honest correction from the audit: no consumer lantern at this tier documents safe indefinite float charging (they're all standard Li-ion; it's an industry blind spot, not a Goal Zero flaw). The house's answer is better than chemistry anyway: the lantern lives on a Zigbee smart plug and HA tops it up one day a week — always charged, never cooked. Plus two headlamps on Eneloop AAs (~$25), which genuinely do hold ~70% charge after years untouched. Layer 3: a $12 dark-activated nightlight on the shelter stairs, because hands are full of baby.
◆ decided The door logs itself: a $15 Zigbee contact sensor on the shelter door timestamps every entry and exit, no phone required mid-crisis. A shelter stay is also a feeding-interval clock, and now the log starts itself. (Built into Noctling with the same app-grade care as everything else it tracks.)
The crate — actually gasketed, no modifications
Ready-to-go options with real seals (gasket evidence or IP rating, not "durable" marketing), sized for the load. Config either way: bulk tote(s) + one steel can — because a gasket stops water but not a motivated mouse, and anything food-scented (the formula) plus docs and meds lives in metal.
| Tier | Model | Why | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best | YETI LoadOut GoBox 60 | ~60qt, certified IP67 — genuinely submersible, buy-once-forever. (Runner-up: Pelican Cargo BX55S, MIL-STD rain/dust tested, ~$320.) | ~$300 |
| Value | IRIS WeatherPro Gasket Box, 62.4qt | True compression gasket + six latches; sold as a 3-pack (~$32/each) — two for the kit, one spare. (Sterilite's gasket tote is cheaper but reviews report seal lottery; Husky/Ridgid "pro" totes are overlap lids, not gaskets — skip.) | $95 / 3 |
| Docs · meds · formula | Steel .50-cal ammo can | Rubber-gasketed, draw-latch, and the only truly rodent-proof body on this list — the formula, meds, and paper go here. | ~$20–38 |
The config: two IRIS 62qt totes + one ammo can ≈ $95 total (or the single YETI + can at ~$330 if buy-once wins). Restocked twice a year at the DST changes — water dates, formula use-by, diaper size, meds, battery-bank charge.
| Group | Contents |
|---|---|
| Light & comms | Lighthouse Mini · headlamps + spare Eneloops · Midland ER310 crank/USB radio · phone battery bank (charge-checked at rotation) |
| Walter | Ready-to-feed 2oz nursette bottles + sealed sterile nipples (in the steel can — food scent draws rodents) — RTF is the CDC-preferred choice for young infants (sterile, no water needed mid-shelter); rotated on the use-by date · diapers/wipes one size up · any prescribed meds · a comfort swaddle |
| Water & food | Bottled water (1 gal/person, 6-month swap) · shelf-stable snacks |
| Adults | Meds list + spares · old glasses · whistle · sturdy shoes · work gloves |
| Docs | ID/insurance copies · USB with document photos · small cash |
Feeding supplies in the crate matter more here than in a generic kit: a shelter stay is also a feeding-interval clock. The crate keeps that clock unremarkable.