Finding an In-Home Wifi Smart Water Monitoring Device - StreamLabs Control

This week, I got a surprise with my quarterly water bill.  The bill was over $2,200.00!!  Apparently, there was a leak somewhere.

First things first ... find the problem.  However, there was no obvious leak.  Good, I don't have to worry about another high bill in a few months.  I've spoken with the municipality several times over the past few days, and they've been very helpful.  My guess is that the leak originated with a toilet that I replaced three weeks ago.  The toilet was an older model, so I replaced it with a modern low-flow toilet.  We'll probably never know if that old toilet was the cause of the problem, but the town has verified that only a few cubic metres of water have been used in the past twenty days, so at least I don't need to worry that this is an ongoing problem.

  

Looking forward, I want to prevent this kind of situation from happening again.  For one thing, I don't want to waste natural resources.  On top of that, when it comes to insurance incidents, it appears that water damage is six times more likely than fires, and eight times more likely than theft!  Once website suggested that a staggering 98% of homes on a 25-year mortgage will suffer water damage at some point.  And the average claim for an internal flood or water damage event is now up over $10,000.  Many incidents are well above $25,000+ for repairs.

Needless to say, it is VERY much worth my while to do everything possible to monitor for leaks, regardless of whether the main concern is excessive consumption or preventing water damage.

I decided to do some quick interest research.  I already have the water meter that was installed by the municipality, but my was goal was to find an additional water meter or some sort of monitoring device that would let me monitor consumption remotely in real time, ie. online or through an app, without having to wait for a report from the town.

 

Here were my requirements:

1.  Price was essentially irrelevant.  Ideally, I hoped to keep the budget under $1,000 total, but in the end, the costs of a flood are so significant that investing in a professional solution should be well worth it.  My mantra is that if you don't pay up front, you'll pay in the end.  But you'll always pay.

2.  The device needs to be able to communicate digitally through a browser or through an app.

3.  Push notifications for special events (high water flow) would be fairly important.  Emails and texts would be even better.

4.  I didn't want to exclude devices which would need to be installed professionally by a plumber.  This will be an investment for the long-term.  There's no point saving a nickel to spend a dollar.

5.  I would prefer an in-line device rather than a line piggyback device, if possible.

6.  The ability to shut off water remotely would be a good benefit.

7.  I wanted a solution that didn't have a subscription model.  I really dislike manufacturers that expect you to subscribe to their apps with a monthly or annual fee.  I understand that there are costs for maintaining apps and the back-end server infrastructure, but I think that manufacturers should build that into the cost of the sale, and try to guarantee 10 years of access.

I thought that I'd be able to find an appropriate device pretty quickly, with a basic Amazon search.  I was very wrong.  This is not a mature field.  After spending six hours digging through hundreds of web pages, this is what I've learned:

- After looking at more than a dozen options from various manufacturers, I realized that many do not come close to fitting my needs.  Only five options came reasonably close.

- Many companies offer moisture sensors.  Do not confuse moisture sensors with water monitors.

 

Moisture sensors are fairly common.  I already have some of these sensors - these are basically small devices that you place in low areas that are likely to collect water if there's a leak.  When they get wet, they sent a push notification through text or email to let the homeowner know there's water somewhere.  Ideally, you'd place these in each corner of the basement, and if a pipe breaks somewhere in the house, the water eventually gets to the basement and trips a sensor, which alerts you that there's a problem.  There are a few problems with sensors.  The main problem is that by the time a sensor is tripped, you may already have $20,000+ in damages if a pipe broke inside a wall upstairs.  Batteries can die.  Wired-in sensors need to be within reach of a receptacle, and don't work when the power is out.  Also, many homeowners put these things under a sink, looking for a leak.  Well that's fine, but it's a burst pipe that will cause the most damage.  If you're worried about your sink's P-trap leaking, just look under the sink once in a while, because that kind of leak is not going to release 20,000 gallons into the home.

Here's what I've learned in my research so far, in case anyone else follows this same path.  First, I'll share seven options that didn't appear to be suitable:

Aqua Data - No useful homeowner solutions.  They have monitors from Neptune, Siemens, and vonRoll Hydro, but they basically just offer industrial equipment that is more appropriate for utilities.

Rachio - Discontinued in-home products, now specializes in sprinklers and irrigation.

Orbit B-Hyve - Only does irrigation and moisture sensors.

Belkin Wemo - Looked promising in 2015 with their Echo technology, but now discontinued.

Eve Water Guard - Moisture sensors only.

Home Wizard - Appears to mount on top of certain types of analog water meters (a screw-on or strap-on device).  It then does a visual reading that is somehow converted to digital (AI?) and then feeds to an app.  Perhaps an option for some homeowners, but that would depend on what type of meter got put in by your utility.

David DROP - This is a hub system with lots of individual devices, mostly moisture sensors.  The company focuses mainly on water treatment systems, and their monitoring hubs look good for that sort of application, but not appropriate for a whole-home application without water treatment.

 

I eliminated all of the above options pretty quickly.  Now let's move on to the most promising five possibilities:

Water Hero - This was the most expensive option that I found, and would cost around $1500 just for equipment.  Ok, that's pricey, but I wasn't going to eliminate this option yet.  However, I tried to find more photos, write-ups, or reviews, and there was nothing.  Thankfully, YouTube had a bit of info, including one short 2-minute from the company.  But I was worried by the lack of reviews.  Also, this product requires a subscription, which really annoyed me.

Phyn Plus - Don't confuse this with the original Phyn, when you're looking for info on the internet.  The Plus model is newer and better, but there's less info online.  This was the option that I initially thought looked most promising.  However, it had a lot of negative reviews re. manufacturing quality and poor tech support.  Also, this system takes several weeks to "learn" your home's water usage, which may not be good for people with erratic consumption patterns.  You don't want the system to shut off your water when you're taking an abnormally long shower.  Also, this unit only connects to 2.4 gHz wireless networks.

Flume -  Good reviews, and a low price.  Also, you don't need to hire a plumber to install it, since it's a strap-on rather than an in-line unit.  However, since it's not in-line, there's no shutoff control, and the sensor half of the system uses a proprietary battery pack.  Many people reportedly that the batteries last less than half a year, especially in cold locations.  Finally, this model now has an annual subscription plan.

Moen Flo - This is an in-line device with some decent reviews, but a concerning number of reviewers who said that the internal valve died within 2 years and they needed to replace the entire unit.  Like the Phyn Plus, the unit needs several weeks to learn consumption, and might not be a good choice for a residence with erratic consumption.  On a positive note, the Flo does not require a subscription anymore, although it did a few years ago.

StreamLabs - They have three devices, the Scout, the Monitor, and the Control.  The Scout is just a standalone water detector, so not what I was looking for.  The Monitor is the mid-range model, a full water leak detector, which uses ultrasound and is not inline.  Still not quite what I wanted.  The Control model is the most comprehensive device.  It's not cheap (around a thousand dollars) but it seems to be well-built.  My only concern here is that they seem to prefer that the owner have a subscription.  Argh.  You can apparently use the device without a subscription, but in that situation you only get push notifications instead of push/email/text, and your data access is limited to the current period instead of the two years of historical data that are visible with a subscription.  On a positive note, if you have up to five homes (which seems ridiculous) you only need one subscription to monitor all five locations.

 

Right now, I'm leaning toward the StreamLabs Control device, but I haven't made up my mind yet.  At some point, once I've picked a device, I'll update this post.  And then later, once I've installed it and used it for a bit, I'll do another update.

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Here are all of my updates since I made my original post:

January 29th:  I decided to try the StreamLabs Control, but they're out of stock at all the regular retailers like Home Depot, Lowes, etc.  I just ordered one direct from the company in California, so we'll see how long it takes to get here.  UPS is saying that it will arrive in three days.

Here's a good video that I discovered in my research:

February 5th:  It took 7 days to arrive.  Now I just have to find time to schedule in a plumber.  Also, UPS is a terrible company.  I had a total of seven misadventures with them, everything from a website that wouldn't let me create an account, to eventually getting a message that the driver had attempted delivery (when there was an inch of fresh snow on the ground and clearly there were no tire tracks in the driveway or footprints leading to the house).  But at least the package arrived, eventually.

 

February 27th:  UPS has been trying to tell me for the past five days that I have to give them money for customs clearance for "my package" coming in from StreamLabs.  After four attempts to deal with this, I finally got a phone call from a competent person at UPS, and I told them that I don't have any shipments expected, so I wasn't paying them to clear "the package" that was allegedly held up in customs.  After some discussion, UPS finally realized that the package they were calling me about was going to a completely unrelated third-party in Ontario.  I don't know how that company survives.

March 4th:  The StreamLabs Control has been installed!  Jon Phinney of Cory Allen Plumbing came in and installed it at the end of last week.  You can see the following two photos, and for reference, I built the wooden casing as a semi-protective measure, even though it wasn't necessary.  Jon is just getting started in the first photo, and the second is a close-up after installation is complete.

March 4th:  The Control may have already proven its value!  I have it set up to do a Drip Detect test each morning at 5am, to see if there is any leakage (pressure drop) throughout my home plumbing.  It does a ten-minute test when nobody is using any water (it aborts the test if it senses that someone has turned on a tap or flushes a toilet, to prevent a "failed" test).  Anyway, it's registering a failure for two tests in a row.  On the first test, it showed that 0.1 litres of water had been "consumed" since midnight, and since I didn't use any water, that means the system must have somehow lost between 51 and 149ml of water.  I'm going to investigate further over the next few days, to see if the 5am testing keeps giving "failure" results, and then I'm going to start digging around to try to find out where I'm losing the water.

 

March 12th:  I have Streamlabs Control devices installed in two properties now.  The app can see both of them, and I'm finding that the devices are giving me some VERY good insights about water use at each property.  I did end up getting the annual subscription to their app, so I could get email updates when alerts are triggered.  Texts still aren't working, but maybe that's because I'm an international customer for them.  Push notifications on my phone work great.  Also, I've learned that the water pressure is quite high (around 97psi) coming into the main entrance at each property, so I'm getting water pressure regulators installed shortly.  My intent is to dial back the pressure within the properties to around 65 psi.  I know that a lot of people like very high pressure, but anything above 65-70psi can be hard on pipes (more chance of eventual failure) and hard on washing machines and dishwashers.  Also, by reducing the pressure to a more reasonable level, people will be using slightly less water when they shower, and conserving water is a good thing.

By the way, here's a screenshot of one part of the app.  The app itself is pretty buggy, but functional if you are patient and play with it:

I've had a lot of interactions with Support at StreamLabs.  Not because of any major problems, just because I've had several minor questions.  They've been very good at responding to everything, so there's a big upvote for StreamLabs on that front.  I also learned that if I'm having problems with the app and opt to delete and reinstall it, I do not need to go to the physical locations of the Control meters to reconnect and recalibrate.  Simply signing into the app gets me back up and running without the need for a physical visit.

I'll make future updates here, any time that something notable happens...

March 18th:

I have my warnings set up for two different types of leaks, in Home mode or Away mode.  For Away mode, since I don't have water conditioners or anything that would come on automatically, I've set it up to give me a warning for pretty much any amount of usage, regardless of how minimal.  For Home mode, I have it set up so I get a warning if the flow rate is greater than 0.4 litres/per minute for greater than 15 minutes.  Obviously, a long shower or watering the lawn could trigger an alert, but I just have it set up as a message reminder, and not to actually turn off the water supply when this happens.  I got my first alert today!

 

The odd thing was that I was just sitting at the computer at the time, so there should not have been any water usage.  I thought about this for a minute, as I was concerned that the Control device was giving me a false positive.  Then I wondered if a pipe had burst, but that seemed to be an unlikely event.  So next I wondered if I had left a tap running while cleaning paintbrushes.  I checked that ... the tap was off.  Then I thought that I had used one of the toilets a short while ago, so I went up to check it.  Sure enough, the flapper inside the tank hadn't settled back in place correctly, and there was a very slow faint trickle of water when I listened closely!  I fixed the flapper, and I got a "warning cancelled" message just a minute later.  Very impressive!

I'm really starting to like this device, now that I'm getting accustomed to it.

State of the Industry, Early 2024

Where do I begin?  The last twelve months have been tumultuous.  We’ve had record-breaking wildfire seasons in BC and Alberta, inflationary pressures, and a provincial government in BC that is eliminating the use of bundle wrappers on more than fifty million trees.  All of these changes were obvious in retrospect, yet they have surprised us nonetheless.

 

Wildfires

The 2023 wildfire season radically changed the landscape in both BC and Alberta.  We were shocked in 2017 and 2018 by record-breaking wildfires that burned slightly over a million hectares each year.  In the years since, the industry has been busy trying to help repair the damage.  However, in 2023, nearly FIVE million hectares burned in BC and Alberta combined.  That amount of ground, if replanted at 2000 stems/Ha, would represent more trees than BC has planted in known history.  It seems unlikely that tree planters will be able to replant even a tenth of the ground that burned last year (assuming that funding became available for that type of effort).

One thing that I noticed while looking at burned ground in many parts of both provinces during the Fall viewing season was that a lot of the Alberta fires, and fires in northeastern BC, appear to have burned cold (or burned quickly).  Unlike the characteristic hot burns that we saw in the Elephant Hills fire from 2017, or a myriad of other hot fires throughout southern BC, the Alberta and northeast BC fires often didn’t completely destroy the ecosystem.  The grass was often burned away, but I also saw many wildfire sites in plantations and forests where a lot of grass or light vegetation survived.  My casual observations were not sufficiently detailed or diverse to validate any sort of reliable dataset.  However, my gut feeling is that a lot of the burns in Alberta and northern BC may be more challenging to work through than the scorched earth of southern BC.  We’ll know in a few months.

 

Eliminating Single Use Plastics

Plastic flagging tape has been banned in some regions for a few years now, especially in areas where cattle grazing leases exist.  Thankfully, these eventual bans were phased in over a period of a few years.  Initially, we were expected to use shorter piece of flagger.  After a couple years, the Cariboo-Chilcotin district banned polyethylene flagger for all BCTS contracts.  The ban on plastic flagger continues to broaden.  Unfortunately, the industry still doesn’t have a viable alternative to plastic.  Biodegradable flagger is still far too expensive, and in some cases, even biodegradable flagger is banned.

Tree chalk has been a good alternative to plastic flagger in certain circumstances.  However, at least one provincial district is concerned about the damage that this product does to the seedlings, and has banned the use of chalk.  That prohibition may also spread in the future.

Moving beyond flagging tape, the next two targets for elimination will be bundle wrappers and tree box liners.  The BC government, after several years of inaction by the industry, has taken an unexpected lead on forcing change upon the industry.  Allegedly, all of the trees being planted on all 2024 BCTS and MOF jobs throughout the province will come in boxes with no bundle wrappers.  Chaos!  Well, I admit that this decision will be good for the environment.  But at what financial cost?  Loose trees will be problematic in terms of box splits and partials, and inventory management will become more challenging both for planters and management.  During the Fall viewing season, all cries of despair by contractors were met with impassioned disdain by the government.  No pricing flexibility was given for existing long-term contracts, so a lot of option-to-renew contracts were suddenly dropped rather than renewed.

Let’s temporarily ignore the hit to production and subsequent increase in planting costs relating to unbundled trees.  That’s a problem for company owners and not for myself, so let’s think about other impacts.  The success of any plantation depends partly upon stockhandling.  I still scratch my head wondering how anyone could have ever thought that this sudden tectonic shift in packaging and processing could be good for the trees.  Granted, we plant tens of millions of unbundled seedlings on the east coast each year, and most of them seem to survive.  But there’s one key difference that I don’t think anyone in government considered … east coast seedlings [in full-size trays] are grown as "pods," not as plug stock.  Pods are enclosed in a tight mesh membrane to keep the rooting medium and seedling roots protected.  Plugs in western Canada have no such protection.  Last year, many BCTS and MOF contracts included requirements such as “don’t unwrap more than a bundle at a time, because it’s bad for the trees.”  This year, in a complete reversal of the previous mentality, we’ll be given giant bags of loose seedlings.  I assume that we’ll see a huge increase in culled trees, and a parallel increase in plantation mortality.  It makes a planter wonder.  But I guess the government can pay us to plant all the blocks again in three years, when they get identified as insufficiently stocked and need to be fill planted.  Please forgive my cynicism.

To top things off, I saw a photo this Fall showing an unbundled box being packaged.  There were no bundle wrappers, because single-use plastics are bad.  Yet the nursery was still using a plastic bag as a box liner, instead of a paper liner.  Does this mean that single-use plastics aren’t always bad?  Was this hypocrisy, or a missed opportunity?

On a positive note, we'll no longer be chastised for unwrapping too many bundles (at least not on those specific contracts).  And that IS a good thing.  Restrictions on unbundled plugs are an anachronism of the past, based upon the mentality of the time when we planted exclusively bareroot seedlings and any exposure to "the air" could legitimately dry out the fine root hairs on the stock.  If a forester wants to promote good stock-handling, they should focus on the moisture content of the plugs, not upon whether or not the seedling bundles are unwrapped.

 

Finding a Labour Force

I heard a lot of reports in 2023 from companies who found it very difficult to recruit as many workers as they had hoped.  In some cases, this led to contracts being pushed out well beyond their intended completion dates.  In a few cases, companies had to walk away from contracts entirely.  Not a good situation.

Is there a solution?  Yes, better pay and better working conditions will help.  Listening to one’s employees will help.  But a shortage of workers is not a problem that will suddenly go away.  Hiring is a challenge nation-wide, and when clients make the job more challenging (such as with the elimination of bundle wrappers), it may come back to haunt them in the end.  What will happen if a significant number of planters get fed up in 2024 and start spreading the word that the planting industry should be avoided?  That would be a disaster in 2025, just when the industry really needs to ramp up in order to start replanting the 2023 wildfires.  If we’re going to have a sufficient labour force in 2025, then 2024 needs to be stellar.

 

Pricing

What can planters expect from 2024?  I don’t have a crystal ball, and I’m reluctant to speculate at this point.  However, I do know that bid prices in BC (to planting companies) actually dropped slightly from 2021 to 2023.  This was followed by a large increase for 2024 government projects (in BC).  Keep in mind that public (government) work in BC only represents roughly 20% of all planting within the province.  Private work accounts for the other 80%, and the big increases that we’ve seen in the public sector are not always matched equally by price increases in the private sector.  Things are moving in the right direction though.  Many private contracts are also going up in price.  This is good for planting companies, at least on the surface.  There is no way to calculate the exact increase on an industry-wide basis of both public and private work, but my guess is that contractors’ prices are up approximately 10-12% overall from 2023 to 2024.

A 10-12% increase sounds great for planting companies.  But is it?  Let's look at more than just the past twelve months.  We saw that bid prices decreased slightly from 2021 to 2023.  Therefore, if we zoom out and looking at the full period from 2021 to 2024, bid prices to planting companies have only increased by maybe 8-10% over a three-year span.  In light of significant increases in almost every category of operational expense over the past three years, this is not enough.  Planting contractors, on average, are in a more challenging financial environment than they were three years ago, despite the recent price increases.

Let’s focus on planter pricing instead of company pricing for a moment.  Planters generally seemed to see better prices in 2023 than in 2022 (which only seems fair in light of the inflation that we all experienced) but those increases basically came out of owner’s pockets, not from clients.  Will there be further planter price increases in 2024?  Probably yes.

It seems like it’s a tough time to be a planting company owner.  They’ve been hit with numerous cost increases in the past few years, bid prices were stagnant until this past Fall, it’s getting increasingly difficult to recruit a labour force, and clients have been trying to cut away at the bottom line.

I think we’re in a bit of a do-or-die situation for contractors in 2024.  Prices need to go up.  In many cases, bid prices have gone up recently, but that won’t necessarily translate into an equivalent increase in planter prices, as most companies are trying to dig themselves out of a hole from the past few years.  Regardless, I believe that planter prices need to increase in 2024 to account for inflation and, in some cases, to reflect the challenges that we’re going to face with unbundled trees.  Even if planter prices increase by another 5% this year (on top of the planter price increases that we’ve seen over the past couple years), it may be tough for some companies to find enough planters to complete the 2024 season.

If any foresters are reading this and don’t think that planting companies are struggling, let me remind you that some contracts did not get completed in 2023.  Nobody likes to talk about this, as nobody like to hear about a contract failure, but hundreds of thousands of trees were mulched or taken to landfills.  I’m aware of at least one company that has simply decided that 2023 was their last year for planting.  I’m also aware of two other major companies that are scaling back significantly.  Are these companies the so-called canaries in the coal mine?

 

Bears, and Safety in General

Our industry is small enough that when there’s a major safety incident, everyone sits up and takes notice.  Unfortunately, one company had such an incident in early July, when a planter was attacked by a bear while planting near Tumbler Ridge.  Thankfully, she survived.

The previous year, the helicopter company that I was using had one of their staff attacked by a bear at a staging site close to where I was working.  That person was doing logistical support work for another planting company at the time.  Sadly, she didn’t survive.

We didn’t sign up for planting with the expectation of getting hurt or becoming a fatality.  We like to spend our summers thinking about what we’re going to do with our money in the Fall and winter.  We deserve to enjoy our earnings after the season is safely over.

There are a lot of safety topics that some planters see as a remote threat – like having a tree fall on you, getting hit by lightning, or being attacked by a bear.  Sure, it’s possible, but it’s not likely to happen to you, right?  Yet I’ve personally known planters who have been victims in all three of those types of situations.  Remember, if anything can go wrong while planting trees, it eventually will.  Don’t put aside common sense thinking that something is unlikely to happen to you.  It seems that the planters in all of these situations did absolutely nothing “wrong” to bring about the incidents that they were involved in, but playing by the rules doesn’t mean that external events can’t work against you.

I’ve sometimes said, “Maybe you should slow down a bit,” to a driver on a gravel road.  And sometimes they respond, “But I’m not even going the speed limit, and I’m in control.”  Sure you are, until nature throws a curve ball at you and a deer jumps out in front of the truck, or until you hit some washboard and the truck goes sideways.  Expect the unexpected, no matter what you’re doing.  The hardest part of my job as a supervisor is thinking about all the things that can wrong every day, and how easy it is for someone to get hurt.

It may be beneficial for more crews to have bear spray available at the truck in protected Pelican cases, or in a Kozy Tote.  A lot of planters don't have an interest in back-bagging a canister of bear spray, and there are real risks based on accidental discharge, but a protected canister that is stored at the truck with the first aid gear may come in handy.  Expect WorkSafeBC to be asking more companies what their bear deterrent plans are in 2024.

Let’s move on to some more cheerful topics.

 

Starlink Internet and … Cell Phones?

I’m certainly not a Musk fanboy, but I’m impressed with Starlink.  I’ve used their systems for a couple years now, and while they’re still not ideal in a camp situation with several dozen simultaneous users, they’re a huge step up from previous options such as Xplornet.

Within two years, we may see something even more useful.  Starlink is working on satellite-to-cell technology which would allow cell users in any part of the globe to remain connected for SMS, voice, and data, even when traditional cell service is not available.  The drawback is that Rogers is the first company they’ve partnered with in Canada.  I say that’s a drawback because Rogers currently seems to be one of the least reliable networks in rural British Columbia.  Or maybe that means that Rogers will be a great fit.  Either way, the good thing is that once the system is operational, we allegedly won’t need to trade in our phones for a special Starlink phone.  The system is supposed to work with all existing 4G and 5G phones.

Let’s hope that this technology doesn’t fail like a few of Musk’s other projects.  I’ve been following this story for about half a year, and the first six of Starlink’s direct-to-cell satellites were launched just 48 hours ago, which will allow initial testing of wide-scale operational viability.  Widespread satellite connectivity for cells phones would be a huge positive development for the planting industry, if they pull it off.

 

“The Cache”

There’s a new website available for the planting industry:   www.cachelife.ca

It’s still in the development phase, but the goal is to make it a very rich resource for planters and other industry stakeholders.  If you want to check it out, I’d recommend starting with the “Culture” or “In The Field” sections under the Explore tab.

 

Kerri Dunsmore

Kerri is an Athletic Therapist.  She was a planter for several years, and she’s long been a frequent and welcome presence on planting-related social media.

Kerri is based in Williams Lake, but her outreach extends well beyond that thanks to some of the pre-season training programs that she has put together for planters.

Kerri deserves a shout out, so here’s a link to her website:  www.kdathletictherapy.ca

If you’re working anywhere near Williams Lake and have any issues, reach out to her.

 

Future Changes to the Industry

We’ve heard some rumours about upcoming changes to the industry.  There is going to be a complete overhaul of how we classify workplaces and assign first aid.  This all comes into effect in November of this year, so it won't affect the upcoming planting season.  However, it will matter for next year.

Hi Vis – High vis clothing may eventually be required for all planters working in British Columbia.

ETV’s – Current rules (simplified) dictate that if there are 16 or more persons working on a planting site, an ETV is required.  That threshold will be reduced such that crews of 10 persons will be required to have an ETV.  This requirement would also be triggered by two six-pack crews working near each other.  Related to this, ERP's will need to be improved.  The industry may have to reconfigure fleets quite radically for 2025, and this will be a very expensive situation (a single new crew cab pickup with ETV capabilities can cost more than $160,000). 

OFA3’s – Not only may the number of ETV’s eventually need to be increased, we may also need more crew members trained with the full OFA level 3 first aid certification.  To be honest, this is a fabulous course, and having more OFA3’s available would be good for the industry.  For the November 2024 changes, it looks more likely that there will need to be more Intermediate first aiders in our workplaces (formerly OFA2), and the duration of the Intermediate course is also being shortened.

Injury Management - There will be changes in how injury management is conducted (Bill 41), with greater responsibilities placed on both workers and employers to cooperate in helping people recover from injuries.  This will likely increase the workload of OHS coordinators, although it also has the potential to help save money on claims.

If there are any further developments on any of these issues, we can rest assured that Jordan Tesluk, our official industry Safety Advocate, will share the information widely.

 

Artificial Intelligence

AI is an odd topic for a tree planting article.  Or is it?

Many people will think I’m a bit crazy here, but I believe that AI presents an opportunity for significant improvements to the planting industry.  I’m not talking about AI robots designed to plant trees, or AI-powered drone planting (yet), or anything futuristic and hi-tech like that.  I’m talking about more mundane administrative stuff.

I’ve been paying very close attention to this field for almost a year now, and the change of pace is stunning.  The AI field has evolved more in the past six months alone than the planting industry has evolved in forty years, and that’s saying something.  Artificial Intelligence offers a lot of risks, and it offers incredible opportunities.

So far, I’ve thought of about a dozen areas where AI’s can assist management at planting companies.  To generalize, small companies will probably see the most benefits from being able to leverage knowledge that they don’t possess in-house.  Large companies will probably see benefits from extremely powerful data analysis.

Don’t worry, AI won’t take away our jobs.  But AI’s, LLM’s (large language models), and ML (machine learning) will have the potential to improve a lot of things that we take for granted.  We’re going to see improvements in everything from weather forecasting to delivery logistics to mapping.  Or maybe we won’t even notice.

 

Conclusions

Ok, that’s enough for now.  Get some rest.  It’s already 2024.  The planting season will be here before you know it …

 

 

Links to Previous "State Of The Industry" Posts:

Fall 2022:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2022/10/state-of-industry-fall-2022-tree.html

Fall 2021:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2021/10/state-of-industry-fall-2021-bc-tree.html

Spring 2021:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2021/04/state-of-industry-2021.html

Fall 2019:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2019/09/state-of-industry-2019-bc-tree-planting.html

Fall 2018:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2018/09/state-of-industry-british-columbia-tree.html