Marc's Musings

Endless Pools Fastlane: Excellent until it isn’t

TLDR; Endless Pools’ Fastlane is GREAT, until something goes wrong with it. Then the resources available to troubleshoot and repair it are lacking.

I have spent over $2,600 trying to repair my Fastlane unit this year. Endless Pools support is limited to either people reading diagnostic flowcharts over the phone or “independent service providers” who can install units but, so far, are not up to the task of diagnosing and repairing them. I am completely on my own in trying to repair my unit.

So, my enthusiasm has waned somewhat, if you don’t mind spending around $20,000 on a swim current unit and then facing the prospect of wholesale replacing it after 10+ years then maybe go ahead and get one for yourself. Perhaps you’ll be tired of your pool by then and it won’t matter.

For some background, I am a computer-guy. I’m reasonably competent in doing smaller mechanical tasks (install after-market parts on my car, diagnose and repair issues with my Polaris pool cleaner). But I recognize my limitations and will absolutely hire someone more skilled and experienced than me to do certain jobs.

When we built our swimming pool nearly 12 years ago, it was always with the intention of having the Fastlane as a key feature. So, when my Fastlane began to act up toward the beginning of last year (it was becoming difficult to adjust the current speed smoothly), I reconciled myself to getting it repaired for the new summer season. The Fastlane ultimately failed completely at the end of the swimming season last year so I was forced to move forward.

Part of my original reticence in addressing my Fastlane repairs was the complete lack of familiarity any of the pool shops / repair people that I dealt with had with it. Beginning around year 5 of owning the Fastlane, I started casually asking folks if they maintained, or knew of anybody local who maintained, these units. The most frequent response was always, “What is that?” and, after describing a Fastlane to them they usually knew what I was talking about but did not deal with them in any way. So it was not until the unit started exhibiting issues that I really started getting serious about getting help. I honestly did not want anything to do with fixing the unit myself.

Anyway, in speaking with Fastlane’s support line last November, we agreed that it was probably the impeller motor that had seized and that replacing that, along with the hydraulic fluid, should correct the issues I was describing. I ordered the parts in February with the intent of doing the work as soon as the weather became agreeable enough to do so.

Well, after swapping out the old impeller motor and not only purging out the old hydraulic oil, but also opening up the reservoir and completely cleaning out any traces of debris or the older fluid, I topped up the device with fresh new fluid and installed the new filter and turned it on. The hydraulic pump made all the normal sounds it used to make, but … no movement whatsoever on the impeller motor. Which is where I was when the unit failed last fall. This was in March of 2023.

Since then I have been on the phone with Endless Pool’s tech support for HOURS over multiple sessions. These are hours where I had to take the time off work because, you know, I work for a living and the support folks are only available during business hours.

The main issue that I encountered is that there is absolutely no provision for any kind of video call with them so that they can get a real feel for the context of the issue. I had to resort to taking many pictures and the occasional video and sending these to the techs. Each one in turn (I believe I dealt with 5 different techs in total over those weeks) managed to latch on to some irrelevant aspect of my description and insist on performing whatever flow chart diagnostics they had in front of them.

“It’s your impeller motor it must be seized” – “It’s brand new as I have already said”

“Your hoses must have a leak in them” – “Well, when we disconnected the hoses we could see that there was a lack of pressure coming from the hydraulic unit, so pretty sure the hoses are not the cause.”

“Your Proportional Relief Valve is seized” – “You can see from my purchase history that I have already bought a new one and replaced it.”

“Your Pressure Relief cartridge is seized” – “Same as the relief valve, this has also been replaced”

And on and on. I know that these techs deal with loads of customer repairs each day but none of them seemed to be able to listen to what was being said. I can’t tell if they were really making notes on my file regarding troubleshooting that was done, but if they were, subsequent techs whom I spoke with were certainly not reading these.

I’m a bit gobsmacked, my teenaged nephews and niece all have access to any number of video calling technologies: Zoom, Facetime, Teams, WebEx, Bluejeans, etc.

Likewise, in the course of my job I regularly need to use most of these tools every single day.

Yet Endless Pools somehow feels this technology is either unnecessary or inaccessible for them.

If you’ll recall, shortly after installing the Fastlane, Endless Pools support were completely clueless regarding a rather basic issue I was having with staining of the Stainless Steel handbar on the unit. Frankly, anybody familiar with pools (which I was not at the time) should have been able to point me to the solution within 5 minutes. So I am not at all sure what to say about the folks manning the support line.

A couple of months into this process, I submitted my name and location to Endless Pools to get an “independent service contractor” to help me. The fellow whose name popped out was really nice and tried to be helpful, but it seems that his expertise is exclusively in installing nice new units and maybe changing out the hydraulic fluid for customers. But he was utterly out of his depth in trying to troubleshoot my unit’s issue.

I tried again in late June but the “independent service contractor” I reached was going on vacation for the month and wouldn’t be able to help until late July or August.

In my latest call to Endless Pools, the tech agreed that the symptoms being exhibited were not being addressed by their diagnostic flow charts and promised to have one of their engineers contact me as he was certain the engineer should be able to identify and help address the issue. Shockingly, the engineer never contacted contacted me.

I have since been out of the country and had several other pressing personal issues that prevented me from actively pursuing this repair. But it’s looking like the only solution will be to pay Endless Pools $20,000 for a brand new unit. Which seems to be the only thing they are capable of helping with?

It is now September as I write this. Pretty much the entire summer has now passed without being able to use this very expensive paper weight. And I am disappointed.

A Chaos of Cats

Just wanted to codify this as the proper way to refer to more than 2 cats. 🙂

A Murder of Crows, a Flock of Geese, if you’ve ever seen more than 2 cats in a group, I think you’ll agree that they are not what you’d call organized in any agreeable fashion.

As an homage to “Get Smart“, maybe I should change this to “A Kaos of Cats”?

Tankless Water Heater 16 years on

About 16 years ago we elected to install a Rinnai tankless water heater which I talk about in this blog post.

No Problems Whatsoever. We have never had to have the water heater repaired and we use it, as any family does, ALL the time.

Cold Water Sandwich Effect is a Myth. At least it is for us. I have to say that I have never encountered this issue. All of my hot water pipes run through the cement slab that forms the foundation of my house. Those pipes must be piteously insulated because the water between the heater and the faucet cools at an extraordinary rate. Some people have tried to claim that this is the cold water sandwich effect, but it obviously is not. We had this issue of needing to run the hot water for a while for the 10 years we had old-fashioned tank water heater so it’s not a new thing. I do not find that, when restarting, ANY cold water sneaks through the tankless heater as I cycle it on and off.

Use the hot water normally. A concern I had when I first started using this technology, was that there were a lot of moving parts: Solenoids controlling water flow, valves controlling gas flow, and a blower fan. Even the parts shared with tank water heaters such as gas valves, are used much more often and frequently when the tankless unit is in use. I decided to just use the heater normally without consideration for this difference. I figured that, if this caused a problem, I’d just have to get it repaired and then change how I approach using the heater. After 16 years, I am amazed at how robust it has been and I have absolutely no qualms about continuing to use it normally and not worry about the mechanics of my heater.

The middle dial sets the temperature. Once set the water temperature will not deviate.

Get a Thermo-Balanced faucet. For temperature-sensitive applications such as a shower where a swing in temperature might be unpleasant. This applies regardless of whether you have a tankless or tank water heater. When there is strong demand for either hot or cold water – such as a clothes washing machine, a toilet flushing or someone else taking a shower in your house – it can can change the pressure of one of the hot or cold supplies and leave you with a brief temperature swing. We are fortunate in that our water pressure is ample so that toilet flushing does not affect anything, but someone else starting another shower *can* have an effect. Basically the Thermo-balanced faucet will instantly (and I do mean instantly) alter the pressure for the other water supply to maintain the temperature. The net effect is that the overall pressure coming out of the shower will shift a bit but the temperature stays spot-on and comfortable.

Plan ahead if you want to recirculate. A number of years ago I heard about using a recirculating pump that I could add to my hot water system which, in conjunction with temperature-activated valves at the faucets of my choice, would ensure that the water at those faucets would be hot and ready to go instantly. The problem I faced was that I needed to find a recirculating pump that operated with enough force to trigger the Rinnai heater. This did not work out for me at the time. There are now tankless heaters with this kind of pump built-in. So if you want this kind of luxury, make sure your tankless heater supports it.

5-Gallon Bucket, Submersible Pump, and some hoses

Do the Annual Maintenance yourself. There is only one maintenance task that is needed for my water heater, that’s to annually cycle 4 gallons of white vinegar through it to clear out scale from the coils and valves. The initial outlay is for a 5-gallon bucket from Home Depot, a pair of hoses (the kind you use to connect a clothes washing machine), and a small submersible pump (I purchased mine from Amazon for about $62 – Simer 2305 Geyser II 1/6 HP Submersible Utility Pump). I’ve performed this task faithfully starting about 3 years after the heater was installed. It takes about 90 minutes on a rainy weekend day and is VERY satisfying to clear tout the gunk that accumulates over a year.

Would I do it again? Absolutely, when the time comes, or if I move to a new place, a tankless water heater will certainly be part of my setup.

Put Dates on Everything

This depends upon how fast you go through things. But, as a 2 person household, we can go through some things pretty slowly. That bottle of mayonnaise can be in the fridge for any number of weeks.

Likewise a bottle of brake fluid or a can of paint will easily sit half full for months, if not years. Knowing when it was opened or, if you really are looking ahead, predicting when it will be of questionable value is something that “future you” will always appreciate about “past you”.

Some things it’s just good to be aware of. I have a “disposable” water bottle sitting on my desk right now where I’ve marked the date that I first opened it on the bottom as January 6, 2016. I use it probably 4 times a week when I work out in my gym and it shows no signs of failing. Disposable indeed.

It takes maybe 10 seconds if you keep sharpies handy in your kitchen or workshop to jot the “opened” or “toss by” date on something. *That* is a tiny investment that yields dividends…

AAA Shady Automatic Renewal Practice

I like the AAA, I was a member of CAA when I lived in Canada and like having the safety net of having a trusted entity that can be called if I run into issues on the road.

With the purchase of my Tesla, I’m less certain the AAA will be helpful (they are still ramping up EV benefits) but there is a measure of comfort available for my wife having this resource available to her for her ICE car.

Also, there is usually some small price advantage available when booking hotels with the AAA rate.

This morning I received an alert from my credit card (you really need to set up these alerts) that AAA had charged it for the amount of my renewal. I was a bit surprised as I don’t need to renew until late next month and I ONLY renew things like AAA manually.

They’ve been trying to get me to join their auto renewal program for years with tiny incentives (“Save $4 if you set up auto-renewal!”). But I prefer taking a moment to consider if it is still worthwhile to me each year before deciding if I’m going to renew.

Well, last year, it seems they got tired of the tension and just went ahead and set me up anyway, without my knowledge or permission. Believe me, I carefully scan the checkout screen before I submit payment to prevent exactly this kind of nonsense.

I went back and checked my confirmation email from last year’s payment and, sure enough they have a blurb at the very bottom informing me that I’m now automatically renewing.

Paragraph at the bottom of my renewal confirmation email from last year

I checked on the website and the ONLY way to change this back is to now call them on the phone. I mean, who does that in today’s day and age?

“Convenience” Billing, unless you want to stop it

I did call (wait time was exactly 10 minutes with another 12 minutes after that on the call) and intended to get them to refund my payment and disable the automatic renewal. However, I was told that:

They could not disable auto-renewal with the charge pending
If I would give them my full credit card number they would put in a request to refund the already paid fee. But could not guarantee this would work.
I can always call back later if things don’t work as expected.

So I went ahead and cancelled my membership (confirmed by email) and I will dispute the charge with my credit card company if the pending authorization does not go away.

AAA, I am disappointed.

Shared iPadOS TemporarySessionTimeout Experience

I have implemented some Shared iPads at my company. These are to be single-purpose devices that are shared among the staff at particular offices and are used to run a single App that is important to them.

It should be noted that the app requires some permissions before it can be used properly and so these, while not amazingly hard to agree to, are just kind of annoying for the end user to constantly be challenged with while trying to get on with their job (Camera access kind of things). The app has its own security so locking down the device and then making use of the Guest (Temporary) session meets our needs.

I also have a need to keep the devices’ iPadOS up-to-date* and this requires that they are signed off of the device to work correctly.

Counting on the end user to reliably sign out at the end of the week so the OS updates can occur over the weekend is not likely to be successful, so Apple thoughtfully provided an attribute that I could use called TemporarySessionTimeout. The only problem is… it didn’t work.

But finally, after over 5 months working with Microsoft and Apple it seems the issue is now settled.

Here are my conclusions:

iPadOS 15.5 is required for the TemporarySessionTimeout attribute to work correctly.
Apple assures me that any value from 1 to 129,600 seconds (36 hours) will work. I am using this as my upper limit.
I have tested, multiple times now, 86,400 seconds (24 hours) and this works fine. This is the value I agreed upon with my business partner that should permit the session to persist throughout the week but then timeout on the weekend and leave enough time for iPadOS updates* to occur.
The timer is reset with pretty much ANY interaction with the device. In my earlier testing I was checking at 16 hours, 20 hours, etc. with the intent of catching if the device was timing out sooner than expected. But when I did this, it would also NOT timeout after 24 hours. Only if I left it completely alone and then checked after 24 hours was the guest session signed-out. All I did was press the power button to check if the “Sign out” button was still present.

* I keep mentioning iPadOS updates like they work. They don’t. I have cases open with both Microsoft and Apple on this issue. As of iPadOS 15.5, using an Intune iOS/iPadOS Update policy does not cause the update to occur successfully, at least on my devices. There is some kind of permissions error buried in the logs and the direction I’m getting from Apple is that we will need to wait for a future release of iPadOS to see if it’s fixed. Yay team!

iOS 15 Managed Pasteboard and Intune MAM/MDM Protections

I recalled reading about the Managed Pasteboard feature in the iOS 15 release notes but the full import of it hadn’t hit me until today.

If you are using an Intune App Protection policy to “sandbox” your managed apps and you are also using Intune’s MDM, you will find that Pasting from the clipboard behaves a bit differently after upgrading your devices to iOS and iPadOS 15.

Previously, in Microsoft’s Office 365 ecosystem you used App Protection policies to specify which apps are “Managed”. You would specify what kind of actions could be done with data with respect to those apps. Only certain apps were “enlightened” or compiled with the SDK that recognized Intune’s MAM requirements so you had a very limited ecosystem of apps you could use in this fashion.

Things like saving files from a managed app to local storage, or copy-and-pasting data from inside of one of those apps to another app would be controlled this way.

In my institution, we allow people to copy-and-paste into these managed apps, but not vice-versa.

I’m not an expert on other MDM solutions having only worked with MobileIron and BlackBerry in the past, but I understand Intune’s approach is a bit different in that, for the Office 365 primary apps (Outlook, Word, OneDrive, etc.), the apps themselves are primarily responsible for enforcing the MAM requirements imposed by the Administrators.

More so, each app discriminates between Corporate data and personal data on an account-by-account basis. i.e. You can be using Outlook to access your Corporate email AND your personal Gmail account. This means you can have emails side by side in your aggregated inbox and you can copy-and-paste from the personal Gmail messages to any other app you please on your device, but try to paste from any of your Corporate emails and all you get is “Your organization’s data cannot be pasted here.” pasted in any non-managed receiving apps.

This was fine and worked well enough. We were satisfied that our data was protected.

However, it seems Apple understood the MDM piece of the equation, which would allow data from managed apps to be pasted to non-managed apps to be a gap which they rectified in iOS / iPadOS 15 with the Managed Pasteboard. The issue here is that it cannot have the nuance of Microsoft’s App Protection policy solution. Apple doesn’t know about the contents of the Managed apps, it’s unaware that some data contained in the app is personal and some is Corporate. Basically, if the MDM pushed down the app, then it’s managed and you’re not moving ANY data out of this to any but another managed app.

I’m using cut-and-paste as my typical use-case, but this will affect any data movement from managed to unmanaged apps – saving files, opening files in other apps, etc.

I’m hopeful that Apple will introduce the ability to disable the Managed Pasteboard feature should we want to. I recognize that their approach is probably a bit more “standard” but I feel that usability suffers.

Android gets around this issue by having an entire area sectioned off (Work Profile) where EVERYTHING inside the work profile is work only – nothing leaves there, and everything outside is personal. The distinction is so clear that you will actually have two separate copies of any app that would be used for work purposes. So you can use Outlook for your personal Gmail account outside of the work profile completely unfettered and you use another copy of Outlook for your Corporate mail within the work profile under the limitations your company feels are appropriate to prevent the data from being exfiltrated in some undetectable fashion.

I recall that Apple seemed to be working on a similar scheme but I have not heard anything about it for a few years now.

Moving Back to Quicken from Banktivity (Long)

TLDR; I moved from Quicken to Banktivity a little over 3 years ago and now I’m going back. I basically don’t trust the Banktivity registers and it takes WAY too much time manually inspecting, auditing, and repairing to be worth my effort.

I have tracked my finances in detail since my university days in the mid-80s when I created a complicated set of macros in Quattro to handle the basics required to record, track, and reconcile all of my accounts. This continued until I got my first job and decided I wanted a more polished system, whereupon I migrated over to Intuit’s Quicken product.

I continued to use Quicken for a little over 25 years when they started faltering and appeared about to go out of business. Their support had gone very much downhill, updates to the product were unspectacular and, frankly, it seemed as if Intuit regarded the Quicken product as just an advertising means to push their TurboTax product.

I was disenchanted and looked around for a native MacOS product that could handle my personal finance needs. In late 2018 I decided that Banktivity (which had *just* rebranded from “iBank”) had the comprehensive set of features that I needed, and so I migrated to this platform.

Banktivity was still a bit rough around the edges, but it had just been overhauled and they looked like they were eager to build a world-class personal finance solution so I tolerated some of the fairly glaring shortcomings and found workarounds with the assistance of their support folks.

Sengled Window & Door Sensor Review

I picked these up for a decent price from Amazon. Most of my contact sensors are Z-Wave so this was my first foray into Zigbee sensors.

I was a bit uncertain about them after reading so many reviews that said the devices would report in for a while and then kind of stop.

As of this writing I’ve had these Sengled Smart Door sensors installed for just under 2 months and I couldn’t be more pleased.

Setting them up was simple, I took to heart the warnings that the battery protector tab might leave behind some residue which caused issues for some other reviewers, and just popped out the button batteries to remove the tab instead of just tugging on it.

I then popped the battery back in, put the case back together and then set my hub to “Zigbee Discovery” mode. After pressing the reset button with a paper-clip, each one of these sensors paired immediately.

Mounted on TOP of the door just under the slide

I have 2 of these installed on lesser-used hall closet doors (maybe used once a day), one on a much more used wife-primary closet door (half dozen times a day) and a final one installed on one of my most-used doors which leads to my garage / workshop (maybe 20-30 times a day). This replaced a previous sensor that was acting up. I just attached the Sengled and it worked fine. I didn’t immediately remove the old sensor bracket while I was evaluating the Sengled as you can see in the image, but I’ll clean that up next month.

Sengled Sensor on door to garage — Kinda messy temporary installation replacing an older sensor.

None of these have ever failed to report their status IMMEDIATELY and consistently. They are all used to primarily activate lights – 3 of them activate Philips Hue bulbs, and the garage one activates a GE Enbrighten paddle switch, all via Hubitat’s Rule Machine logic.

Even without being on sale (Currently $70 for 4 sensors), these are among the least expensive Door/Window sensors I’ve found. When I bought them in December they had a 40% off sale which made them THE most cost-effective sensors I’ve purchased. Combine that with their great reliability (so far…) and these are really a great deal.

You definitely HAVE to use a hub with these. I’m using them with a Hubitat Elevation, but I know that SmartThings’ hub also works with Zigbee. So that should cover a pretty substantial portion of the hub user’s demographic out there.

I will be buying more of these both for new projects and to backfill some less reliable older sensors on my property.

McDonald’s Rewards Best Redemption Value

McDonald’s is.. well, McDonald’s. Famous world-wide for, perhaps not the best food on the planet, but certainly among the most consistent food available.

If I’m ever traveling and have had just a *wee* bit too much local cuisine or, as I found on my honeymoon in Germany, that my high school German should not be counted upon to understand a menu and order when visiting that country, I find McDonald’s to be a reliable, familiar taste haven. More than once have I scurried to a local McD’s while abroad to erase the memory of a regretful food choice or just to reset my palate back to my bland North American expectations.

They are available almost anywhere I go. They are open just about any time I would want to eat. Their fries are “good enough”. Their hamburgers are “good enough”.
This is perhaps not lofty praise, but nobody is going to fast food restaurants because they are after Michelin Star level cuisine.

McDonald’s recently started a points reward program, presumably because of the success of other fast food chain rewards. One reason to switch from dollars to tokens or points is because the math can be annoying for figuring out the best value

McDonald’s point redemption is nowhere near as flexible as that of Chick-Fil-A (See my article on Chick-Fil-A Best Redemption Value here) in that, as of this writing, you can only choose a single item to buy with points OR you can use one of their other deals. But, Chick-Fil-A almost NEVER offers any deals so that does somewhat mitigate their reward offering.

So, as of December 8, 2021, here are some of my favorite McDonald’s rewards in order from best to worst value per point.

McDonald’s Rewards in Value per Point oder

Keep in mind that pricing can vary dramatically depending upon location. A quarter-pounder can cost as much as 30 cents more if I pick it up 15 miles North of me where I work vs near my home. But I’ll use this to guide my point purchase whenever they do not have a better deal on offer at that restaurant.