Weather based rule

[robert2]

Looking for some guidance on a rule for weather based actions.

Live in the Northeast, get a bunch of snow/ice.
Bought a GE outdoor zwave plug and a heating mat for my front stairs.

What I want to do is if a storm is coming, have the heating mat turn on about 6 hours ahead of time, giving it time to heat up and the deck beneath it.

This way no ice/snow, then I want it to shut off once the storm has passed…any ideas?

[terminal3]

You could try this driver. You setup an openweather account and then create a virtual device using this driver.

OpenWeatherMap-Alerts-Weather-Driver

OpenWeatherMap-Alerts Weather Driver UPDATE - 12/01/2020: You now can choose either OWM or weather.gov as the source for Weather Alerts. weather.gov only provides alerts for the United States while OWM provides global weather alerts (see link below). UPDATE - 10/20/2020: OpenWeatherMap now provides global weather alerts. As of version V0.2.8 this driver uses OWM for all of it's data and no longer polls weather.gov (NWS) for weather alerts. This means that weather alerts are available from…

[robert2]

I do have this installed, the new driver is better than the much older one I had, so that's great.
My issue is which parameter do I select to predict ice/slush/snow?

Anyone else doing something like this?

[robert2]

Made some progress, I can use the forecast_text :
And have it contain Ice or Snow, or Slush as text to look for.

I used the outdoor GE Z-Wave switch for my lights around my pool fence as a test, it picked up the correct snow text and turned my fence lights on, so it works for sure. (which I am happy about) but I need to figure out a way to have it start and turn off as needed.

For example, snow is coming, it sees the forecast text, but if its two days before the actual storm, i don't want it to turn on, I am looking to have it running about 2-3 hours before snow or ice starts to drop.
When the snow is gone, i would want it to stay on for some amount of time ti make sure things are clear, but not continue to run if it sees snow in the forecast text.

Thoughts?

[Matthew]

@robert2

Anyone else doing something like this?

See this post:

OpenWeatherMap-Alerts-Weather-Driver

Anyone have a enough time in the saddle to know which OWM alerts to set to look for Snow? I have the outdoor HeatTrak heating mats on my deck to keep the path to the hot tub clear. However, HeatTrak says the mats will damage the composite decking boards if I leave the native thermostatic sensor to control the mats (turns mats on if outside temp is below 40...which basically means the entire winter in Minnesota). Thus I'd like to remove the thermostatic adapter and instead have the OWM driver tri…

[robert2]

So that looks to be perfect, but I have no idea how to create this rule using the expressions, I hate to say but it is a bit of gibberish to me, unfortunately.

I am trying to mirror what he has created in that thread, but i just dont see how.

[robert2]

I think (think being the key word) i have it working correctly.

So i decided i want to expand the condition text variable and have it include three scenarios:

Snow
ice
Slush

Here are my on rules and varibales:

And I created an off rule to look for the same variables:

Does this seem right?

[kahn-hubitat]

After missing a few times and getting ice dams i just have a app i wrote that turns on from date ie DC 1 to Apr 1 between 30-40 degrees

Haven't seen much increase in expenses.

But roof coil heaters are diff than storms you can get an ice damns anytime it starts melting then refreezes not just when weather is coming through as I found out the hard way.

[robert2]

Nice! I was looking at roof heaters as well but we haven't had any issues in 10 years with ice dams (fortunately)
I updated my rule above to add a list of OR statements so that it checks for SNOW or Freezing Rain or Sleet.
As noted above, I wanted them running when i choose, not when the internal thermostat saw it was less than 40 degrees, didnt want my composite decking to damage.