What did you do to your MINI today?

I created a couple of Alexa routines to streamline the use of the My BMW skill.

Somehow it escaped me that multiple trigger phrases could be assigned to one action. Because the car uses automatic climate control, ambient temperature determines the system’s output temperature. Having multiple trigger phrases helps with contextual logical association, and not needing to think about the trigger phrase, ie: needing to say “climatize” or “warm” in the summer or “cool” in the winter. So this routine is called “Warm or cool my MINI”; the trigger phrases are “Alexa, warm up my car,” (winter) and “Alexa, cool down my car,” (summer) while the action is the voice command “Alexa, ask BMW to ventilate my Cooper.”

I’ve set up similar routines that allow more natural flow, with trigger phrases such as “Alexa, what’s my charge at?” (“Alexa, ask BMW for my charge level”) and “Alexa, did I lock up?” (“Alexa, ask BMW my status”) and “Alexa, lock the car” (“Alexa, ask BMW to lock my doors”). I have also simplified checking my windows and what the charge is at. I also have a routine with several trigger phrases of variations on checking my range, using more natural language.

I don’t know why none of this occurred to me over the last six months or so.

 

My heat pump water heater is ducted to and from my heated garage, so (in theory at least), my MINI could heat my water. Technically, the Subaru’s latent heat after arrival does actually get transferred to the water. More so in the spring and fall, when opening the garage door doesn’t dramatically alter the temperature

 

I don’t think you can select the resistance heater, though. As pointed out above, heat pumps (really “heat movers”) draw thermal energy from one area and move it to another. They don’t add heat. Putting the evaporator and condenser coils in the same enclosed space (ie. the SE in a closed garage with its windows open) creates an equilibrium. You might gain a tiny bit of heat from needlessly running the system and warming up the battery and pump motor, but that’s terribly inefficient.

 

Yikes. My two-standard-door, two-car garage is under the bedrooms of a split-level, and in true 60s style, had two small registers supplying forced air along the duct/beam bulkhead across the middle. I used to keep them foil taped all summer so as not to waste cooled air, but open in winter to warm up the garage. A few years ago I installed a 5000W, 240V garage heater and have left the registers sealed all year. In an upcoming phase of my long-term garage rehab project I'll be opening the drywall on the bulkhead around those registers and removing them, and properly closing the holes with sheetmetal and duct mastic (right now I'm sure there's a ton of leakage around the duct joints behind the drywall). I have a Zwave relay set up on Hubitat to keep the heat as close to 10-16°C (50-60°F) as possible during winter, and above 5°C (41°F) when it's below -12°C outside and my electricity rate skyrockets on my dual-rate plan. But I have the smart home system set to shut off the heater if a door is open longer than one minute, such as when I'm shovelling.

 

Nowadays it’s against code, for one, and using the house’s conditioned air for a garage is terribly wasteful. I heat with a heat pump, so the registers would (and did) need to be open all the time. In the dead of winter, the 5000W heater ran for an average of less than an hour a day to maintain 50-60°F (I’m using a wide passband to avoid cycling too much). That’s around 20¢ a day.

 

Perhaps a separate heat pump for the garage, but not if fed from the central system for the whole house. Basically like running the central heat pump with an open window.

 

Some day. Lol

 

Phone is not heating noticeably, but running CarPlay on a 20-minute drive my charge only went from 73 to 75% lol. 20 minutes on a normal PD charge via lightning would get that 73% up into the 90s or even full.