Issues with a Square Card Reader

 Most of our holiday cottage business is via Sykes Cottages, but occasions arise when we need to take payment directly from our guests. We generally eschew the use of cash, as there is no automatic paper trail. So we use a card reader obtained from Square.com.  This usually works well and connected to our account via our Smartphone. It also ties in with our Xero.com accounting system.

However a couple of weeks ago the Square Reader suddenly became incompatible with our smartphone which is a HuaWei P20 Lite device. The App software and the operating system is fully up to date. It was working one day and not the following day.  We contacted Square support after trying all the suggested remedies, we even purchased a replacement card reader for £19, to no avail.  Square support have admitted they've had quite a few reports in respect of the Huawei P20 Lite and have gone away to investigate.  Meanwhile the Square card reader still works fine via our Samsung smartphone.

The bottom line is that the Smart Card Reader, at present, is no longer compatible with the P20 Lite.

Edit: 9th December 2020

The P20 Lite now recognises the Square Card Reader. No update from Square support.

Cooker hood broken.

When we purchased the cottage seven years ago the kitchen had fitted kitchen furnishings already installed. This included a cooker fume extraction hood above the cooker position. We found the the last guest had managed to break the controls for the extract fan and hob light. Of course, she neglected to tell us of the damage, we discovered it during cleaning the cottage after her stay. 

Sadly the rather ancient hood is obsolete and we cannot find spare parts. It will require the purchase and fitting of a new hood. By the time the work is complete, probably £150 plus some more redecoration costs.

Unsurprisingly the guest had left negative comments about trivia in her subsequent online review, but no direct comments to us. All the more reason to increase our prices to cover the cost of damage by careless guests. 

Am I too damp in the Cottage?

 In the previous post I told some of the story of fitting an environment sensor in the Cottage to remotely monitor the temperature to help compliance with insurance requirements during Winter periods of non-occupancy. 

An unexpected side effect was that I discovered that the humidity levels in the cottage are a bit too high with a reading of 67% relative humidity. The is probably because we keep the windows closed while the place is not occupied during lockdown, but there is a certain amount of damp in the Victorian solid brick walls at the front of the house.

So to address this issue, I've rented an electric dehumidifier machine. Within the space of the first 12 hours, this relatively small box has brought the humidity down to 55% in the cottage. It extracted a 600 ml of water from the air. At present I've set the machine a target parameter to switch off when humidity around the machine is below 50%. It is located in one corner of the cottage, so it will take some time to evenly spread the humidity across the building. If the project shows good results I'll purchase a dehumidifier.

The machine is rated at 500 Watts, though when it is running it initially has an average power running cost of about 2p per hour (£16 month). However, the energy used in dehumidifying will offset the heating demand on the gas central heating. At the moment it is removing about 1 litre of water per day from the air, walls and contents of this one bedroom cottage. It will be interesting to see whether those figures reduce as the cottage "dries out".

The recommendation is that humidity in the room should be between 40% - 60%; if you read the adverts/articles from air conditioning suppliers, they suggest 40%, but I rather suspect a vested interest there. If you make the atmosphere too dry it can cause discomfort for guests.

Update 22nd Nov. 

Yesterday, I reset the target humidity on the machine to 45% Relative Humidity, rather than 50%. At this setting it created 2 litres of condensate water, in 24 hours, while slightly increasing power usage. As the capacity of the condensate tank is just 5.5 litres, I'd need to visit the cottage once every two to three  days to empty the tank. So I've just ordered a condensate syphon tank. I'll make arrangements to have a continuous condensate drain via the syphon into the kitchen sink. The syphon tank releases the condensate in batch amounts, rather than a steady trickle. This is much better on very cold winter days as it reduces the risk of the external drain pipe of the kitchen sink from freezing.

The dehumidifier we're using is rated at a maximum 20 litres extraction per day, but that is with an ambient room temperature of 30C. The extraction rate is reduced at lower temperatures.

The air volume inside the building can carry about 1.5 litres of water.  Hopefully this will reduce in a few days, but in theory it could amount to 40 litres in a month.

Despite the higher extraction rate the Relative Humidity around the monitoring sensor remains around 54% (at 15.7C) which suggests there is some way to go before we reach stability.

Am I freezing in the cottage?

 The time has come for the annual renewal of insurance for our holiday home. One of the conditions raised by the insurer is that when the property is not occupied, we should maintain a minimum temperature of 15 degrees celsius. Presumably the logic behind this is to  prevent water pipes freezing in the winter and causing water damage when it thaws.

As a matter of course, we leave the gas central heating running on a low setting when there are low temperatures around. We've also insulated the condensate pipe from the gas central heating boiler and installed an electric thermostatic heating wire under the length of the external condensate pipe. This heater is triggered if the temperature drops below 5 celsius, preventing a build up of ice in the condensate pipe.  If the pipe becomes blocked with ice at the drain outlet, water can back up the pipe causing the central heating boiler to turn itself off.

Generally the insurers insist the property is inspected once a week during periods of low occupancy. One of the companies was looking to have daily inspections, which in our case is not feasible. There's a risk that a fault develops in the central heating leading to a loss of heating while the building is not attended. This would lead to the temperature dropping below the 15 degree threshold. 

We decided we needed to find a solution to this risk. After some research we found a temperature monitor/sensor which can provide alerts via the cottage broadband internet. The result is fairly low cost and we can check the health of our premises via a web browser or on a smartphone App. It also  can raise automatic SMS/Email alerts if a threshold is crossed.

The details shown in the graphic are: 

• Temperature (Celsius.  Fahrenheit is possible), 
• humidity (percentage), 
• Light level (lux), 
• supply battery voltage, 
• WiFi signal strength. 

The sensor we are using can also monitor vibration affecting the device, so it can detect people causing vibration. These readings are monitored every 15 minutes (variable) and we can produce analyses over a time period. This data is held in a central database and can be interrogated via a web browser or smartphone app. If necessary we can prove to the insurance company that remote checks are performed.

We can also advise guests on the actual temperature/humidity during their stay at our cottage.

We now offer this as a rental service, to ourselves and others, at a modest cost of £10/month. It is a fraction of the cost of a single visit from our home to the holiday cottage. Alternatively people can buy the sensors, and register/sign on to the Internet of Things (IoT) to monitor their properties. There are more expensive versions which can report via GSM service. If you to buy one here's a link to an Amazon page, we have no financial interest in this link.

Edit 14th Nov 20

After a couple of days trial, the results are looking good. No cabling is necessary to install as it can be battery powered and connects via WiFi. It was just a matter of downloading a phone App and setting up the WiFi Router password on the sensor. The following images give a snapshot of some of the data available remotely via a web browser.

The monitor is sensitive to fractions of a degree. In this case I can spot when a door adjacent to the sensor is opened letting in cooler air from an unheated room.

In this example you see the relative humidity around the sensor. On the web browser you can move the crosshair cursor to check information at any time.

The sensor contains a light meter (Lux) and you can detect the amount of light falling on it at any time. I was able to detect when people come into the room at night and switch on the lights. I also ran a test to automatically send an SMS text message to my cell phone (mobile) when a light level threshold had been crossed.

It is possible to see the strength of the WiFi signal in the room. In our case we get occasional interference from vehicle mounted WiFi servers on the nearby roadside (A6 main road), which cause momentary dips in signal. Studying other monitors I can see it is the sensor losing contact momentarily with the network access point, not a genuine dip in available WiFi.  They look worse on the graph than reality because of the plotting method.

It is also possible to share a "view" of the device with other people. So one person can operate as an administrator, perhaps settings up and maintaining such devices whilst others (clients) can freely check the temperature, etc. of installed devices. The clients have the capability to set their own alert thresholds and create warning messages via email (free) or SMS texts ($0.18 in UK). Clients cannot configure the device parameters settings from their account.

Edit 16th Nov 2020

Today I decided to end the bench testing and to deploy the sensor out in the field for testing. I had to do a little work to have it recognise the WiFi  at our holiday cottage. I re-read the instruction leaflet, but had it operational within less than 10 minutes. I noticed that the cottage was a bit cold and discovered that despite us leaving the central heating running, the previous guests had turned off the radiators at the thermostatic valves. Visiting each radiator soon had them warm and toasty.  I also turned on the boiler condensate pipe heater. Someone had unplugged the trace heater..

This configuration certainly gives me an increased level of comfort that I'll be able to spot any heating problems remotely when the property is unoccupied, particularly during winter weather.  A spin-off is I'll also get a feel for how the guests use the heating in the cottage.

I also discovered today that the sensor monitor can be powered by a main USB power source while the internal batteries are also in place. If the main power goes out, the sensor will continue to record, using the internal batteries, and then when the power and Internet is restored, it will be able to automatically upload the backlog readings to the central database in the "Cloud".  Incidentally, the monitor device (set at 15 minute sample reporting intervals) seems to transmit about 2 Mbytes/day of sensor readings to the central database. The "free" allowance for data is 1 Gb/month per monitor.

 

Unrealistic expectations

 In these days of Covid-19 lock-downs, and the extended cleaning protocol between guest stays, we heavily subsidise each guest who stays in our cottage. Hopefully this is temporary and some equilibrium will return to the self-catering market.  This year the armchair warriors leave sniping complaints on the review websites, when in previous years the same property and services has received praise. These moaning guests don't have the courtesy to raise any issue with us during their stay and the rental agency Sykes are unconcerned as long as they get their 20% + VAT + booking fee. At times they even give discounted prices, reducing our take, without asking us first.

The latest moan was the "property seems pricey." Let's be clear about this. We are lower cost than the price of a single room at the local Premier Inn, and for that you get a whole house. In fact our pricing is similar to a private room in a youth hostel. 

We allow pets to stay, the Premier Inn doesn't. We don't charge extra for pets (at the moment),and that alone saves a minimum of £105 per week in pet boarding fees. We don't charge for our labour in cleaning/maintaining the cottage (£40/week). We don't charge any notional interest on the capital tied up in the cottage (£45/week). The extra cost of Covid-19 cleaning is around £25/rental.

At current rates we've not achieved break-even over seven years. So we are going to increase prices by at least £150/ week. We've had enough of guests who expect Ritz services at Poundshop prices. If that scares away guests, we'll just move the property to private rental which would give the same or better return but a lot less work. We see no reason to continue subsidising guests.

p.s. The latest moaning guest failed to comply with Covd-19 regulations, despite them being clearly documented in the welcome pack. The cooker hood controls in the cottage were found damaged after her departure, but not reported to us. She also complained in the review that the paintwork was dirty, I don't suppose she'd have realised we had completely redecorated the interior of the cottage a couple of months previously.