Dodged a bullet
 

Our son flew down here last Wednesday to enjoy the warm temps for a week. He was going to stop by our house on the way to the airport to see if we got any mail that was important. He decided to go over on Sunday instead, good thing. House was down to 40 inside, thermostat was set to 53. Found the igniter had crapped out. Luckily I had a spare one and talked him through replacing it, not too difficult. It failed years ago so I bought an extra as a spare. With the temps up there last week I'm sure we'd have had a mess if he hadn't stopped by. Just have to remember to pick up another one when I get home.

A buddy has a thermostat in his home that he can monitor and adjust with his smart phone...regardless of where he is.
I've been looking into this.

It is called "Nest" and I have one that can set and monitor the house from anywhere and it will alert me at set temps, and change the temp from anywhere I also have the carbon and fire alarm system set up....nice system.

Wonder if my flip-phone can do that too?

I registered for Frankenmuth today. #56.

I looked at some of those systems and a security system. Will probably get something, until now our son was there when we were gone.

Look into the Skylark app (cost something minimal like $4). Works nice with my Nest. Allows you to Geofence so it will auto-away when you actually leave/return. My schedule is not 100% routine but this ensures I am not excessively heating/cooling the house when we are not home (both my wife and I have it installed on our phones so it knows if just one person is home.)

Nice Eric, I will look into that as it sounds what I need.