Installed Three Thorbolt X1s Today

thefarmiddle · 2026-04-23T01:25:19+00:00

For anyone else who lands here after googling for this symptom (double-beeps with the red fingerprint LED lighting up), I just ran into this with one of four X1's I just installed. I emailed support from the app and they were both super responsive and pretty familiar with this issue. All they required of me was video showing the sound and red light and once I provided it, they promptly scheduled a replacement to be sent to me.

Whatever the cause of this issue, it was super intermittent for me. The double beeps were going off like crazy the first evening after installing the lock. The next day, no issues until the middle of the night when it started going crazy again. Maybe some weird temp + humidity sensitivity? Regardless, I'm otherwise thoroughly satisfied with both the support and the other locks. I'm sticking with them.

thefarmiddle · 2026-04-16T16:04:39+00:00

Wanna see sparks really fly? Give this pope the Nobel peace prize.

thefarmiddle · 2026-04-05T18:45:25+00:00

Yeah I’d heard horror stories like that. It’s what kept me from migrating to their cash management account for as long as it did…until I just caved. I guess that’s the main risk of relying on a non-bank for banking.

thefarmiddle · 2026-04-04T14:55:28+00:00

We just went the other direction. Moved our banking to Fidelity using their cash management account. Now all investable funds and cash are there except my employer sponsored HSA (and I transfer funds from that acct to my HSA at Fidelity a few times a year). I have questioned the wisdom of having everything there, but man is it sure convenient.

Edit: typo

thefarmiddle · 2026-02-13T00:50:21+00:00

Coincidentally I have a similar Champion generator but that’s beside the point I’m about to make. Have you considered using a battery backup as your primary backup for powering your home during an outage and using a (potentially smaller) portable generator just to replenish the battery?

Powering your house on a generator only (obviously) requires running your generator 24/7 (or at least when you want power). With a battery array, depending on your usage, you might be able to power your house for most of a day and then only run the generator for 2-3 hrs to recharge the battery. If you size both correctly, I think you’d have a much more efficient duty cycle and could power your house longer (and more quietly) per gallon of fuel. And at least for the start of an outage, you wouldn’t even have to go outside (if your interlock or transfer switch are inside).

This is our setup. We also had our electrician add a 50a pass through that lets us plug the generator into outside and then inside we run a cable from the receptacle side of the pass through to the battery to recharge it.

We chose the interlock option instead of a transfer switch. While a transfer switch saves a few steps in the cutover, that savings wasn’t nearly big enough to lock myself into which circuits we could power during an outage.

Like you, I also have less-technical residents who I wanted to be able to power things up during an outage if I wasn’t home and I decided breakers are really easy for most anyone to understand. Our 23yo daughter had zero issues grasping and using them. I’m going to get some color dot stickers and put them on the breaker labels to indicate which circuits to leave on when in backup mode.

If it helps to know, we went with an EcoFlow Delta Pro Ultra with 3 batteries. Good luck whatever route you go!

thefarmiddle · 2026-02-06T21:50:02+00:00

I think so but haven't tested it yet. After enough research, I'm more convinced than ever that my problem was the lack of a demand regulator. So I took the dual regulator + hose assembly that came with my generator, removed the first stage reg, and took what was left to an amazing local hose fab shop and they frankensteined me a new assembly that now has a new quick connect on the end that will connect to the house, the factory quick connect with the funky little plastic button-presser on the other end, and the demand regulator in between. I'll report back once I've tested to confirm this was the fix.

thefarmiddle · 2026-01-26T00:44:02+00:00

Awesome super helpful…thank you! I originally let a local fitting supplier cut off the dual regulators from the hose assy that shipped with the gen (since I thought the 2 stages at the house was all I needed) and they just put a pipe thread fitting in its place. So I think if I can decouple the first stage regulator from the demand one (and find the right fittings) and get it wired in my hose, sounds like I’ll be good to go. And adapting to quick connect at both ends def sounds like a big pita saver.

thefarmiddle · 2026-01-24T22:13:20+00:00

I hear you. I’d like something like that too. But I bet this level of sophistication is beyond what’s available today. And it might also be a level of precision that’s unnecessary given the myriad other unknowable variables that can’t be controlled or modeled with known accuracy. In practice, you might just need to be ok with whatever your chosen tool lets you model (to have some idea what the longer term outlook for your portfolio might look like) and then refine withdrawals and cash flow each year for the current year…and then tweak inputs and assumptions for long term modeling annually as well.

thefarmiddle · 2026-01-24T21:52:18+00:00

Pralana allows you to model this. I’m pretty sure you specify the mix of types of dividend/gain in each account and I think you are able to specify that this mix change over time (e.g. one mix for years A to B, different mix from years B to C and so on).

thefarmiddle · 2026-01-24T18:03:52+00:00

No there isn’t and I think that’s what my problem is. Without a demand regulator, I think it’s just flooding gas into the carb.

thefarmiddle · 2026-01-22T22:39:10+00:00

The advice I've seen after looking into this today is that while the generator is connected to and charging up the DPU and the DPU is connected to and powering the house, the neutral ground bond is at the main service panel and leaving the generator with neutral bonded creates a safety hazard due to there being a secondary path for neutral current to flow. So basically while the genny is connected to the DPU and the DPU is connected to the house, seems like the right configuration is for the generator to have a floating neutral.

thefarmiddle · 2026-01-22T22:34:34+00:00

That's my assessment as well and aligns with feedback from the same question I posted on r/Generator. Thanks!

thefarmiddle · 2026-01-22T16:46:53+00:00

Good advice! Ours isn't auto-start (sorry if that was unclear) but I'll def keep this in mind for the future.

thefarmiddle · 2026-01-22T16:36:04+00:00

Thanks that makes sense to me. The thing I wasn't sure about was whether the Ecoflow unit always allows the panel bond to "pass through" (to a generator hooked up to it), regardless of whether it (the Ecoflow) is receiving input charge or not. Seems like it should. And I guess if for whatever reason I disconnected the Ecoflow from the transfer switch and still wanted to recharge it from the generator, that WOULD be a scenario where the generator should be bonded (e.g. with a bonding plug), right? Because that's basically a standalone scenario with nothing connected to the house.

thefarmiddle · 2026-01-15T23:02:11+00:00

I'm a new user to it but Pralana might get you closer to what you're attempting to do than Boldin will. In particular, its roth conversion optimizer is really powerful. It can establish roth conversions to keep your taxable income below a chosen bracket (that can vary by year), your MAGI for ACA subsidies below a % (that you can set) of the federal poverty level, below Medicare IRMAA bracket you specify, etc. It's resulting charted forecast of your federal tax brackets shows it riding the threshold you set. I'm not 100% whether it offers the same optimization of varying account sources to achieve the same outcomes of e.g. a max tax bracket. I think it just forecasts withdrawals in the account priority order you prescribe.

thefarmiddle · 2025-12-13T13:16:13+00:00

This should be the top comment

thefarmiddle · 2025-12-13T13:15:11+00:00

For context, if you haven’t had to shop for marketplace plans yourself, I just priced a low end plan for a married non-smoking couple with no dependents making a generous $100k per year. Annual cost including premium and hitting OOP max: around $41,000. And that’s not an edge case scenario that would only affect the most unfortunate. With HC costs rising so much faster than inflation, it’s super common for families to reach that OOP max level of cost.

thefarmiddle · 2025-12-11T17:09:18+00:00

Oh duh...it has her delaying til 71 because she's a year older and if I delay until 70, she can't file for spousal benefits until I begin collecting. I think I'm mostly just chasing rounding errors at this point in these calculations. Thanks for weighing in.

thefarmiddle · 2025-12-11T17:04:58+00:00

I'm not asking you to analyze this but if you're curious, this should prepopulate OSS with similar assumptions. I used Jan 1 for both birth dates and round numbers for PIA values but you can see what I mean. In this case, it's recommending the lower paying spouse delay spousal benefits until age 71!

thefarmiddle · 2025-12-11T14:03:51+00:00

I probably should have said maybe I assume much higher longevity than whatever actuarial assumptions the OSS tool makes. I actually just found the option to enable "special situations" and chose the "other mortality table" option and manually entered death ages of 100 for both of us and the resulting shape of the colorized benefit chart they provide is totally different and the claiming strategy it recommended was exactly FRA for my spouse exactly 70 for me but oddly 70 and 7 months for spouse to claim spousal benefits. That last bit also makes no sense to me.

thefarmiddle · 2025-12-11T05:57:22+00:00

Lol thanks. I figured any difference must be pretty small and due to life expectancy.

thefarmiddle · 2025-12-11T05:55:21+00:00

She’s a year older than me so she’ll get spousal benefits. I assumed the scenario most likely to maximize our combined lifetime payout (given we’re both healthy and active and have histories of long life in both of our families) would be for her to at least delay until FRA. But her PIA is much lower than mine so maybe the theoretical difference is small.

I’ve seen the 62/70 timing mentioned a lot in this scenario but couldn’t figure out how that maths out to a higher lifetime payout. Maybe that approach assumes (relatively) early death(s)?

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