This is episode number 197 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're so glad that you could join us for another episode of The Homeowner Show here in the studio. How you doing, Kev?
Well, this is, uh, tired Kevin, but, uh, you know, other than having a week hanging out with other people's children at camp.
You got to do camp. I got to do camp. Yeah, my camp was a little bit— my camp was a little less involved than your camp. Oh yeah, that was just because I was only there for portions of it.
Yeah, the one, the one that I go to, man, like this one specifically is, is heavily volunteer-led. Which is a really, really interesting model, and it's very, very good. But like, man, it's all day every day, and it's— it's— anyway, it's very, very, very good. But, uh, man, I come home just exhausted from it, which is— which is a good thing, um, in many ways. But I'm— I'm a little tired. But other than that—
You didn't get to sleep at camp? You didn't get to bring your blankie?
Oh man, that's, uh— I brought a blankie, I didn't get to cuddle with it enough. How you doing, man?
I'm doing good, man. There's a lot of stuff going on in our culture right now that I think is interesting. And one of them in particular is the new Lightyear movie just came out.
Oh, dude. Okay. I've actually been— I haven't seen it.
I haven't seen it either.
Because I don't think it's out yet.
Okay. Well, I haven't seen it. Um, and to be frank, I'm very intrigued because of some of the content. Right? Right. Yeah.
That's, that's the issue, right? Is they've made it very public, the kind of content that's going to be in, and like so much to go so far as to brag that they're doing it. And I'm not, I'm not making a judgment call one way or the other. I don't, I'm not trying to tell you like it's bad or it's good. You shouldn't watch this. Although I think if you have kids, you should be cautious. Sure.
That being said, have you heard anything about the Jurassic Park movie?
I haven't, but I— again, that's one that's like hot ticket item right now.
So here's, here's what's— here's what I think is going around the water cooler right now.
Right? I mean, is it, is it better than Jurassic World?
Because apparently it's like the worst. Like everyone's saying it's like the worst one they've ever made. And that includes like Jurassic Park 3.
Was that Jurassic World? No, Jurassic Park 3 was before Jurassic World, wasn't it?
Honestly, I thought Jurassic World was one of the worst movies ever made.
Was that the first one with—
No, that— yeah, that was the one where it was like a— yeah, it was like inside this small little aquarium type of thing almost. It wasn't a— it wasn't like a water aquarium.
It wasn't part of the new trilogy, it was part of the old trilogy.
Okay, I got you. I think that may have been Either Jurassic— that may have been Jurassic Park 3.
Maybe. I think so. I— that's what I was thinking. I thought it was the third one.
Okay. So, um, either way, it was horrible. Yeah. And there's lots of people that are saying that this is the worst one of all of them.
Here's what's interesting. Okay. So Jurassic whatever it is, Jurassic World 3 or whatever it is.
I don't know what it's called.
The newest one. The one with the dinosaurs in it. It premiered last weekend.
This previous weekend, Lightyear premiered.
Jurassic Park beat Lightyear this past weekend after it premiered.
Well, that's interesting.
And it barely, like by the skin of its teeth, beat Top Gun, which has been out for like 3 or 4 weeks.
Yeah. Like, it's a major flop.
Which, which is crazy because the whole talk of the summer was Top Gun and Jurassic World, right? Jurassic Park, whatever it is.
Well, no, they've been, they've been hyping, I mean, Lightyear.
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, like, most adults were going, I have to see these 2 movies in the movie theater. Like, that's a big deal. And Lightyear, yeah, I mean, for your kids. You know, it's kinda been one of those things we've been anticipating.
Well, I think that's the thing, man, is like, there's, there's been this— you, you've had Disney be so public about, hey, we're gonna push this agenda on your children.
And people are like, whoa, pump the brakes.
I'm not taking my kid to that.
Like, I can't, I can't, like— and, and so, like, I think you have some cautious parents who are going, I probably need to see that first.
Before I take— and so, like, I'm not gonna pay a ticket to go preview it and then pay another ticket to take my kid to it.
I'll just wait for it to come out on streaming services. Yeah, if they haven't already canceled that, right? Because the streaming services, they've said, hey, we're going to push this on there too.
So man, it's frustrating.
Yeah, it's one of those deals, especially with Disney, that, that for you and me who absolutely love the franchise and have for years, all, all of a sudden, like, it gets to the point where it's like whether— no matter where you're falling on, you know, whether they should be doing this and pushing this agenda or whether they shouldn't, the problem is their agenda is being pushed, right? And, and—
That's right. To me, that's the, uh, that's the biggest problem is like, you are expecting me to align with your agenda, or the alternative is just don't be involved with our her company at all, right? It's like what it seems. Here's the other thing, like, with— did you hear about the new Adventures by Disney, um, 7— what was it? 7 country— 7 countries in like 14 days or something like that that, uh, that they're doing right now? They've just, they've just promoted it. And, um, it's something like $110,000 for 2 people.
Yeah. Yeah. And, it's more than that if you wanna, basically wanna, even, even those 2 people, if you want your own rooms, it's like another $20 grand or something. And so it's like, it's like all this stuff where Disney's already, like, pushing dollar, dollar, dollar, dollar, right?
And then they come out with this in, in the moment where gas prices are, like, an all-time high.
And all this other stuff in the world's going on. And, they're like, oh, by the way, for $110 grand, can come on one of our tours.
All 5 of you that can afford it.
Exactly. I was like, what? I don't know. Like, that kind of stuff drives me nuts, man. Like, it's just who you are no longer. You don't care about—
you're not catering to any, like, large population of people.
You're just not. No. Like, and, and, and you don't care that you're not. Right.
It's interesting to me. And I, again, I'm not trying to fall on one side or the other.
As far as, as far as podcast goes today.
I definitely have a bent, uh, and a, and an opinion. But at the same time, I, I did not realize that Jurassic Park had flopped so badly.
No, no, no, Lightyear flopped.
Oh, oh, Lightyear flopped because Jurassic World, even though— or Jurassic Park, I don't know what it's called.
Yeah, even though, even though Jurassic Park sucks so hard, yeah, it still beat Lightyear on its opening weekend. Yeah. After it'd been out a week and everyone knew that it sucked.
Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah.
That's crazy, especially when it's like a Disney movie. Like, Disney movies almost always kill at the box office.
And, you know, and, and there's, there's people saying like, well, they're talking about doing the same kind of thing with the new Thor movie. And I'm like, okay, well, like, that's gonna be a different thing because it's not a kids movie.
And so, and so people are gonna point to that and go, well, see, everyone's fine with it.
And it's not that they're fine with it, right? It's It's that like everyone knows that like based off the last Thor movie, these are not kid-friendly programs.
And so they're adult. And so adults just, because adults are more discerning about that kind of stuff, they understand what's going on. They're not being propagated to like a kids movie is.
Yep. And it's not, it's again, we're talking about a 2nd or 3rd movie in a row that are for kids.
That are promoting an agenda that a lot of people just aren't comfortable with.
And what is— I don't even know if that— if it's like whether or not they're okay with it.
I think it— I think it has more to do with like, we don't want you telling us— we don't want you telling our kids what to think.
I mean, like, if you wanna— if you wanna start having, like, you know, characters have difficult decisions to make about ethical situations, I think that's fine. I don't think anybody's gonna, you know, Whether they make the right decision, wrong decision, you can discuss that in a film or a cartoon. I mean, that comes out in all kinds of different ways. But when you start talking about, like, people's sexuality, right, you know, people don't want you talking to their kids about that kind of stuff. That's, that's something people want to keep at home.
Yeah, I do. Yeah. Frankly.
So I think, I think it's kind of funny.
Well, it's— I, I think eventually it's gonna wind up, well, like this has, just biting them in the butt, you know?
I mean, it's just gonna What are you gonna do? I mean, that you don't just get a return on that movie once the box office is out. Right. Once it's out of the box office, you're not gonna get a return on that movie. Yeah. You're just not, especially with the droves of people that are canceling Disney Plus.
Well, and you have, apparently you have cast members from the movie that are, Chris Evans in particular, who's saying like, anyone that thinks differently than I think about this is just a dinosaur and doesn't matter. And it's like, Okay, fine. Like, you say that kind of stuff, but then, like, watch how your weekend box office numbers go.
And then let's see how you, how you feel about that.
Yep. Yep. So, well, the other big news with Disney is that, you remember they're moving Disney Imagineering to Florida?
Like, that was supposed to happen this year.
And, uh, I mean, it was all set to go, and now it's been pushed to 2026.
Which is a huge problem because part of the reason they were moving it was because of Epic Universe coming to Universal, like, in order to kinda get ahead of some things out there. Okay. And now Epic Universe is opening in '25. So, like, it's gonna be too late.
I actually don't know what Epic Universe even is.
Park they're, they're, they're opening.
Yeah. And so, like, it's got all this stuff that they're, that they're doing, which is kinda cool.
But, dude, I'm all for it, man. Anybody that can just, like, smack Disney upside the head right now. And I'm not saying, like, I want Disney to go under.
Like, no, but like, competition is good.
And, and so like, bring it on.
Like, I, I dig Universal. They do just some super cool stuff over there. Um, I'm all for it. So anyway, let's, let's get into this tonight because this isn't going to be a super long episode, but we got a box of goodies we want to go through.
And I know we've been, we've been teasing this a little bit. Um, and, and so we're gonna, we're gonna do some specific episodes on some of these, but there's just so much to go through in this box. One, we just want to make sure that you guys are aware that Lutron even makes this stuff because some of this stuff we've never even seen in the stores.
And so like, I kind of feel like we were getting a little bit of an exclusive on some stuff that like is not even necessarily out there in the public, right, for people to see.
So, so this is kind of exciting stuff. Do you want me to just like randomly grab stuff?
Yeah, just let's just kind of go through it and see what, what you— because we've got this box full of goodies.
We've got a box full of goodies. One of these that's in here, and I think it's this one, right? we've reviewed before. Make sure here, let's see what this one is. Um, no, we haven't reviewed this one before. So this is an outdoor smart plug that Lutron makes.
Yeah, and I didn't even know that they made an outdoor smart plug. Yeah, like this is specifically designed to be a smart plug that you can— a lot of people are going to use this for like, uh, Christmas time. Yeah, for sure.
You know, stuff like that. Halloween blowups and all that kind of stuff.
I mean, especially right now, man, like, it's expensive as— like, they're talking about, like, you know, brownouts and different things that are going to be happening in neighborhoods with, you know, power shortages.
So you need to be able to manage your electricity better, and this is a great way to do it. Um, let's see here. So this is, this is just a 1-to-1.
Yeah, yeah, it's just, it— you're not going to be plugging in multiple things to this. This is, uh—
So it's a 15-amp, 120-volt. And it just connects wirelessly to the hub.
So you can control it as a separate unit on the outdoors, but it can, it can manage the outdoor weather.
And it says— and there's, there's a, there's an on/off switch right here on the front. There's even like a QR code on it so that you can download like the install and all the, you know, the information that you need. But it's, it's good to operate outside in anywhere from -20 degrees Celsius to 50 degrees Celsius.
Yeah, that's, that's pretty impressive.
That's a pretty big range, to be honest.
But, and also, who knows Celsius?
Me, because I have to use them. Yeah, that's true. The, the air conditioning in the Homeowner Show studios is only Celsius. It's Celsius only. There's not a Fahrenheit converter.
I just bought a similar unit, but mine's Fahrenheit.
Did you get a ductless? Yeah.
Oh yeah, I didn't know you pulled the trigger yet.
Yeah, put it in the shed. I found a guy that would do it for—
It's already— dude, did it in like an hour.
No, no. Oh, the, the whole building?
The whole— yeah, the whole building's already insulated.
So, so anyway, there you go.
Let's see what we got here. All right, got another box. See what we got. This— okay, so Well, we've already done the episode on the hub.
So you can extend the distance, the distance that the hub can reach.
So it's— you just plug it in and it repeats the hub signal.
So, and what's— and a lot of people hear that and like, I gotta buy hub. Like, hubs are good. Hubs are a good thing.
And I think we— I think we talked about this on the Casa episode. Because, like, the Casa doesn't have a hub, which makes the pieces of it a lot cheaper.
But it takes up a lot more bandwidth on your network.
Yeah. And, and each individual device you have to do something with, whereas with the hub, it's all kind of there in one, one place. Right.
So yeah, it's, it's like a regular USB Jack.
Yeah, yeah, you literally just plug it in.
Plug it in the wall. It looks like it's got another plug, and I'm not really sure what that's for. I— oh no, it's a button. I'm sorry. Okay, it's just to turn it on.
It looks really nice too.
Yeah, it's just a little white square box. I mean, I can actually— like, because I have this system in my house, it actually looks really nice on the shelf. The lights on it are really cool looking, um, but it's, it's also very, um, discreet. Yeah, on the shelf. Yeah, because it's just got like one wire.
So anyway, all right, listen, so this is, this is kind of cool. This is an additional Pico. For those that don't know, Pico is just a remote control device, but this is an additional Pico for a ceiling fan, right? Which will make more sense in a minute because we have a ceiling fan switch in there somewhere.
Um, but again, it's a massive box of goodies. I didn't know this existed until they sent it to us.
I didn't either, but it's gonna go out in my house probably.
All right, we have a note.
Sweet note from the co-op.
Okay, so here's the big dog. This will be the most expensive thing if you wanna get in the set.
Which is the hub and the switch and a Pico.
And it does come with the plate.
Yeah, which that's actually important because it snaps on rather than, like, uh, screwing in, right?
Yes. Yeah, it's just a snap-on.
Um, and so it's just for like normal lights, right? I have them hooked up to the recessed lighting in my living room.
And they can dim, you know, and, and we end up using the Pico more than anything. Um, and then what a lot of people don't realize, one of the things that make this so cool is you can actually buy a wall plate for the Pico.
Yeah, which that, that is really nice because a lot of times those things, they're just They get lost.
They get lost. But like, the reason that you end up having 2 switches a lot of times is because it's, you know, you have 2 entrances into the room, and so you need a spot to turn the light on whether you come in this way or that way. And so you can have that without having to wire for a 3-way switch.
And so that, that changes the game completely.
So I would imagine things like this have to be an electrician's friend. Even though most of them are so used to wiring 3-way switches, wiring just a standard switch is so much simpler.
And most of the time where you're putting this, you're retrofitting it for the most part.
You know, this, this isn't something you'd have to go in and like rewire in order to get the 3-way switch to be in there. So yeah, this is actually the thing that, uh, probably— so we've got, uh, our, our living room has 2 fans in it, right? And it controlled by one wall plate, but it's very— it's, it's not the best. And, uh, so this is probably gonna wind up in my house, most likely. Yeah.
Well, let's go ahead and hand it off to you then, because you're gonna need that in order to put that fan switch in.
All right, let's see here.
Oh, that's a— is that just a box?
Well, look on the, uh, yeah, at the top there.
Here we go. It's a 4-speed quiet RF fan control.
Oh, I think you may have to have that for the fan to work, actually.
You've got some wire nuts. Yeah, this is, this is actually just the box for the fan control.
would replace a fan switch and allow you to control the speed of the fan.
So 1.5 amps. So it's just, it's just the switch. You could replace your fan switch with this.
And I say just, it's just like—
Yeah. But again, the thing, the thing you got to remember about these is these are smart.
Wi-Fi controlled, voice controlled with Alexa.
Um, or Google. Not Apple.
Because who has one of those?
Okay, so this one was interesting because this is a Lutron Aurora that works with Hue.
So it's a, it's a dial knob that you can put on top of an existing switch that's connected to bulbs that are Hue so that you can dim them. Right.
Yeah, it's actually, it's actually a dimmer knob that you put over a regular—
Do you see that? I mean, like, It kind of shows the picture of it.
Yeah, no, yeah, I can see it. I mean, it's literally just a knob that, that whenever you put it over your light switch, it allows you to turn it on and, and dim it. Yeah, depending on—
So I mean, this, this may be— I mean, for some people this may be a little bit overwhelming. It's saying that it has a 2-minute setup and that there's no wiring involved. Yeah, so I would imagine it has to have like a battery in it. in order to operate.
Well, I, I think one of the things, uh, one of the things that we discussed was, um, maybe putting it in here.
Yeah, I think we did. Well, we don't have any— we don't have any Hue bulbs in here. Yeah, we can get some.
Um, but yeah, this is, this is kind of cool, but you have to have like— so for people that don't know, like Hue is a completely different system from The cassette. The cassette, right, and has its own hub.
And, and so you would have to have that Hue— and I think that's still the case. I think Hue still requires that you have the hub, although they may have bulbs that operate independently of the hub.
we'll have to look into that because this is a really cool thing. It's cool.
If this works as easily and seamlessly as it says that it does, this is going to be really cool.
So, which, which is cool because, I mean, like, Hue is a Philips company, right? And this is not Philips stuff, this is Lutron, right? So, but very, very cool that you can even have that as an option, right? Um, so, I mean, I guess if you had like an overhead light, you could just put the Hue bulbs in there and then this would allow you to have a dimming function, a physical dimming function, right? Because one of the things with Hue is like they don't have any physical assets other than the hub and the bulbs.
They don't have switches like this.
So this is, this is cool.
So if you're already in the Hue universe and you want to have some additional intelligence to your lighting, that might be a good way to go. But again, you might have— you probably have to have a Lutron Caseta Hub, right, in order for that to talk. Okay, so anyway, let's see what we got here. This— oh, this is a motion sensor.
So you can actually control the lights in the room that are connected to the Lutron system via a motion sensor.
Oh, this, and it's, I mean, it's not, it's battery powered, so you don't have to wire it into the wall.
And it connects to the system. So super, super cool.
All right, let's put that away. Isn't this a lot of cool stuff, man?
There's still some stuff to go. Okay, so this is a wall plate bracket. Oh, this is what I was talking about. This is the Pico wall plate bracket.
So you have that that you can install next to a bank of panels or just as a separate panel or a separate switch on a wall, right? Um, I may keep that for myself.
Because my children lose— we have 2 Pico remotes in the house and they lose them constantly.
You don't know where they are? Nope.
This is another wall plate bracket, and this looks like it's a wall plate bracket. So like, this looks like if you don't have a switch for that Hue knob to attach to, that you can just set it up as its own independent—
Thing. Yeah, that's what it is.
Yeah, and so look, over the next— so we've got some episodes coming here in the pipeline leading up to the 200th episode.
Yep, so we got some interviews coming up, and after 200, we're gonna start doing some very specific ones about some of this Lutron stuff. But we wanna hear from you guys, which 3 Do you guys want us to review, like, dig down deep? And I imagine it's not going to be the wall plates, um, but which ones would you like us to do a deep dive on? We want to hear from you guys, like, what— which ones are you thinking about? Maybe you already got the Caseta system and you're like, well, I'm looking to add on and I want to add maybe the fan switch, or, or maybe that Hue thing is interesting. How does that— how did that go for you guys? Right, like, let us know. We'll install it
and give you guys a full review.
Yeah. Yep, that's right. And, uh, I mean, again, a lot of really, really cool stuff. We're very, very thankful to Lutron, uh, for sending us this stuff. And, uh, specifically Elena. Yeah, yeah, we're trying to, uh, to make sure that you have a good understanding of what these things are, what they do, what they don't do. Um, because, and just to be quite honest, and whenever we talk to them about their products, we told them like, look, we're gonna be honest with the things that we like and the things we don't like.
You know, that's just who we are. And so, uh, hopefully get a really good, uh, uh, a feel for, for what these things are and what— how they'll, they'll help. Because I mean, you remember whenever we— whenever I got the, um, the Ecobee light switch and I was very frustrated?
Because it wasn't a dimmer.
like, of all the things that this thing does, it won't dim my lights? Right.
Why? Like, what it— what good is this thing?
You know, I mean, and, and so, yeah, I mean, if we find things that aren't great, we're gonna let you know. But honestly, like, we've already used some Lutron stuff, and man, they put out a really, really good product.
Yeah. Um, so I've been nothing but happy with the ones that I currently have in my home.
The only thing they didn't send us that was the product that I like in my house, which is the smart plug.
Oh yeah, yeah, well, that has the dimming capability on it, right?
That's been my favorite thing.
Yeah. So which— so out of the stuff that we've got, like, what are you personally excited about?
Um, I think, I think the thing, uh, first of all, since I don't have the hub—
You're excited about putting that in your house?
I'm excited about putting the— having the hub available and the different products that it'll, it'll run, that sort of thing. The other thing is, um, I'm interested in the fan switch.
Um, just because we— man, my house is riddled with switches. And some of them I'm really happy to have, and some of them I'm like, it's really frustrating. But with all of them, I wish I had actually different switches. The functionality and the availability that they all provide is really, really great. But like, a lot of them are those slider switches.
And if you don't press them all the way down—
And, and one of the things that you don't, you don't realize, uh, but I was talking to my brother-in-law who's an electrician about this, is he said that at that lowest, that the most dim it can get before you click it off, it outputs the same amount of power as if it's all the way up. So I mean, you're— the dimming doesn't do anything as far as how much power is being produced, right? It's still that 110 volts or whatever it is. It's just the amount of throughput that it's, that it's actually putting to those bulbs. And so you're, I mean, you're paying for that if it doesn't, even if it's dimmed all the way down, you're paying the same
amount. So if, like, if my kids don't, like, it down to the end, like, it's just, I was like, well, still paying for that. Been paying for that for a while. I was like, the whole, we're not gonna air condition the neighborhood.
I'm, I'm definitely turning more and more into that guy.
Definitely that guy, man. I'm like, I'm the guy walking through the house turning the lights off and like, somebody's got to pay for this, you know? It is what it is. So what about you? Which, which ones are you interested in?
I'm really interested at— in the outdoor plug.
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm interested to see what, what that one can do.
Um, because I have a lot of outdoor stuff that I like to automate.
Yeah. So, yeah, that'd be awesome.
Like, if I could put that—
Skitty. Wow. Only one? Oh, there's never just one.
Snuck in. Little one snuck in right behind him. Yeah. No, I would love to be able to put my swamp cooler on the porch.
And sit in my swing and turn that on with my phone. That'd be To be doing. If I could do like that and just get somebody to pour me the drink and— It's not nachos. No.
Well, yeah, not, not nachos.
It's just not anyone in particular. I don't care who. I just want to turn the swamp cooler on with my phone and have somebody hand me a beverage.
Oh, man, that was a little bit of an inside joke, y'all. So sorry about that. But nevertheless, I understand your point very much. Well, all right guys, well thanks for, uh, for tuning in tonight. And, uh, it's not— I mean, it's night on YouTube and night on Facebook. Yeah, but this is coming out—
We're the late night Home Improvement show.
We definitely are. But thanks for downloading the episode. It's, uh, it's always great to have you guys with us. Um, you know, if you have not already gone, gone in and, uh, liked and subscribed to our channel, please do so and leave us a 5-star rating on iTunes, that really, really helps us as well. Or leave us just a 1-star, whatever. Be honest, right? Just be honest. And we thank you for being here. Until next time, we'll see you later.