What Did You Do To Your House Recently?

[RoyW]

What kind of configuration did you get? Considering one of those.

I got the base unit, key pad, two sirens (one inside, one outside), 4 motion sensors, 6 door sensors, 1 glass breakage sensor, 2 smoke sensor was the configuration I put together for my house. And, the monitoring service of course.

RoyW

[MicahO]

It was a busy weekend at the house. Friday the power guys started the wiring, and Sunday the panel guys arrived to wrap it all up. Now we've got some of this in the basement:


and some of this on the roof:


In process - I couldn't do the roof bits. It's not the height, it's the falling.

[Tammer in Philly]

Installed a SimpliSafe security system... took about an hour. Totally wireless, modular build-your-own configuration with many different devices to choose from, e.g. motion sensors, entry sensors, smoke sensors, etc., plus monitoring service... all at a very reasonably price. Tested it with their Support people... simple to operate, works great. Highly recommended... check them out if you need one or are considering such a system

-RoyW

I am in the market for something very similar. Ideally, I'd like something that can incorporate electronic deadbolts into the system - I travel a lot for work, and would love to be able to remotely lock/ unlock doors and for my SO to not be stuck if she locks a key inside, etc.

Obviously there are electronic locks of many types, and not all are remotely operable. Any opinions there from Roy or anyone else?


As for my house - recent work includes repairing some iron gates that had broken latches and painting the iron fences in front and back, repairing a wooden rear gate, and replacing garage and basement door and frames (house and garage had been broken into during the prior owners' tenure, and repairs were shoddy and not secure).

Next up is some organization of the garage and basement, followed by new upstairs carpet/ flooring and then, longer term, a re-finish of the wood floor downstairs. Also need to tear out and replace the deck and balcony, as the flashing at the house junctures is poorly done and minorly leaks in really heavy rain storms.

We bought a house in a great location, on a corner lot in a neighborhood that is building value quickly (estimates and comps suggest +80-100k in value since we bought in mid-2013). Unfortunately it was a developer-built home erected in 1999, so the quality of the work is pretty shitty and at 16 years of age, lots of stuff is going off. We will end up spending a lot to bring it up to what it should be, but I think it will continue to be a good investment.

-tammer

[Justin_FL]

Door locks are on my mind too (going to be doing a garage door and front entry door sooner or later). The electric deadbolts with NFC and key pads seem interesting, but most of them look ugly from the inside with the battery box.

[a]

I finished the clapboards on the front of the addition. I think I have enough stain to finish the front gable. Not too shabby being able to paint on the winter solstice Ow Whooo!!

[Rich in Tupelo]

Wife and I just laid new flooring downstairs, about 1000sqft in total... hard on the knees....... labor savings paid for her new table and my chair!



redoing the cabinets in off white and installing an island next...

[slack]

Designed and built a new shed this year to replace the turd that has been rotting in the back yard since we bought the house in 2003.
12'x8' "Modern" style. It went quite a bit over budget, but was still way cheaper than buying a comparable "kit" shed.

[RetiredDoc]

...Garage - the only walls that are finished are the ones attached to the house, the rest are open studs. I need to drywall those in and plan out some built-ins like cabinets and some benches. The lighting is also terrible, two bare 100w bulbs to light a three car garage in addition to e whatever light the door openers put out, which isn't much. My last house I converted those bulbs to outlets and installed fluorescent lights. Just went by Costco on Saturday and saw they have LED shoplights for $40 each, not sure if that's a great deal or not so I'd appreciate some feedback.

I was actually kind of bummed when I bought this place a few years ago and the garage was all sheetrocked, I lost lots of storage space for small spray cans, brake fluid and that sort of thing. But what I did do was paint the thing white, all white, semi gloss to leverage the lighting I was going to install. Which brings me to part 2, IMO LEDs aren't quite ready for prime time yet to replace the good old 4', T8 fluorescent. I wired up 6 2 lamp fixtures in mine to replace the single 40 watt bulb that was in the middle If you're not quite up for something like that I'd suggest a couple of 4 lamp wrap fixtures, they're cheap and put out a good amount of light. You can't have too much light in the garage, you really can't. And white paint helps a bunch too, it reflects lots of light.

When I bought my house 35 years ago it had a single ceiling fixture with a 100 watt incandescent bulb in the center of its 2 car garage. That single bulb socket over the years was wired into 6 fixtures. At first I used a 300 watt incandescent in each one. Then when fluorescents became more widely available I went to 250 watt equivalent fluorescent bulbs, each rated at 55 watts. Then I replaced each single bulb with paired bulbs. Now I have 12 ceiling bulbs plus two over the workbench which emit a total of approximately 50,000 lumens. It's decent lighting and uses 7 amps of my 20 amp garage circuit. I considered LEDs but for now they seem to be more directional, and the fluorescent bulbs emit light almost in a spherical shape, allowing reflection off the ceiling and walls for more even distribution. Unfortunately from the lighting aspect I'm moving to a newly purchased horse farm next month, and the house there has a 2 car garage with just a single 2 tube fluorescent fixture. On the positive side, I'll have a 500 square foot workshop attached to the barn.

[LandCruzer94]

It's so funny this thread came back up, I recently moved again and am reconsidering new lighting. I scored a set of 6 T5 HO lights from a parking garage demo and looking to write them up sometime soon. I have 12' ceilings now so the light output should be plenty for ~600 sq ft

[LandCruzer94]

This is what I have to work with, only 1 "60w" CFL...lol

[wkohler]

As far as LEDs go, the 4' LED fixtures from Costco kick the ass of any fluorescent. I have a couple of them and am almost thinking of replacing the two 4' T8 fluorescent shop lights I have with them since I guess I will never fix the ceiling.

[e28Sean]

I've got the same issue in my garage. It's dark as [censored]. I have a single fixture in there, which I want to replace with something that will provide not just brighter light, but more widespread light, as the current setup, well... sucks balls.

[Shawn D.]

In process - I couldn't do the roof bits. It's not the height, it's the falling.

I've been studying this stuff for a while and am considering going into that line of work. What's the orientation of the house? The shadow from the chimney is gonna kill the output on the strings where the shadow hits, if you didn't already know.

Great-lookin' shed! I wish I didn't have an HOA so I could do stuff like that.

[MicahO]

I've been studying this stuff for a while and am considering going into that line of work. What's the orientation of the house? The shadow from the chimney is gonna kill the output on the strings where the shadow hits, if you didn't already know.

House is oriented just East of South - not perfect, but close. The roof angle is nearly perfect for the latitude. Here on the shortest days of the year the sun's angle is definitely not optimal.

There were different panel layouts that would have optimized the return around the chimney shadow, but it would have ended up with a very choppy, irregular block of panels. As much as we do want to get a good return, we're also concerned about the aesthetic impact. We've got a neighbor that put in a solar eyesore a number of years ago (right out in the middle of the lawn, no landscaping - we are the only ones that can see it and to us it looks like the backside of the bleachers at the high school football field). We wanted to make ours as unobtrusive as possible, which is one reason we waited until these panels were available. (Sunpower X335, all black, non-reflective, relatively low mountings, ~21% efficiency, pricing was also good compared to other providers)

As a business line it's flying around here. Many providers, and not enough installers to keep up with demand. I don't know what the tax impacts are down your way, but in addition to the roughly 30% from the feds you see just under 10% from NY state. That plus the cost of power around here means it's attractive enough to a lot of people, and those benefits just got renewed for at least an other year.

[Kyle in NO]

How are these panels mounted? Are the brackets simply anchored through the roofing substrate?

[MicahO]

How are these panels mounted? Are the brackets simply anchored through the roofing substrate?

Basically yes, there is a plate that goes up under a shingle with a bolt through the roof, a sealing layer about 5x7", then aluminum L brackets that go perpendicular to the roof. Across that horizontally are 2x2 aluminum mounts that the panels are bolted onto. The roof is only 3 years old, and the work has a 20 year warranty iirc. A leak would be a huge pain in the ass, but it's a system that apparently works pretty well. Not a great picture, but the idea is there--

[Shawn D.]

I've been studying this stuff for a while and am considering going into that line of work. What's the orientation of the house? The shadow from the chimney is gonna kill the output on the strings where the shadow hits, if you didn't already know.

House is oriented just East of South - not perfect, but close. The roof angle is nearly perfect for the latitude. Here on the shortest days of the year the sun's angle is definitely not optimal.

There were different panel layouts that would have optimized the return around the chimney shadow, but it would have ended up with a very choppy, irregular block of panels. As much as we do want to get a good return, we're also concerned about the aesthetic impact. We've got a neighbor that put in a solar eyesore a number of years ago (right out in the middle of the lawn, no landscaping - we are the only ones that can see it and to us it looks like the backside of the bleachers at the high school football field). We wanted to make ours as unobtrusive as possible, which is one reason we waited until these panels were available. (Sunpower X335, all black, non-reflective, relatively low mountings, ~21% efficiency, pricing was also good compared to other providers)

As a business line it's flying around here. Many providers, and not enough installers to keep up with demand. I don't know what the tax impacts are down your way, but in addition to the roughly 30% from the feds you see just under 10% from NY state. That plus the cost of power around here means it's attractive enough to a lot of people, and those benefits just got renewed for at least an other year.

Good deal!

How are these panels mounted? Are the brackets simply anchored through the roofing substrate?

By code, they must go into structure, not just the roof decking. This is to account for not only module/snow load, but wind lift.

[Tammer in Philly]

This page is pretty interesting:http://www.solarpaneltilt.com/

[a]

I'mm, a victim of soy- cumstances. The Princess gave us a new dish washer. I was over confident. The last 2 were easy. The corian counter top's under pinnings and the end panel were a little mangled from wear and tear. So I tended to that after doing the plumbing changes yesterday. Put it in and test ran it. No leaks. The plumbing involved using a hose adapted to a male hose coupling. Non supplied of course. It wouldn't adapt to the existing shut off. I kept about 18" of 1/2 tubing. I'm not thrilled with that, but it is out of the way and tight on the first try.

[Mike W.]

Wife woke me up this morning saying it's cold and the furnace won't come on. Flashing lights gave me a code for flame failure, which a few minutes later translated to igniter failure. It's a common type, hot surface, I've replaced a bunch of these over the years at work on all sorts of equipment with burners in them. 40 minutes down to the wholesale house, 20 minutes in line, 40 minutes back and 15 to install. House is now up to 66F and rising.

[a]

Quick and dirty fix to that is a sheet of paper lit and stuffed into the fire box Then hit the re-set

[a]

Spent the day setting up the frame to a 12x24 storage tent. This is the 3rd time this tent has been erected I intend to use it as a garage to tune up my cars and OPE. The first time I built it , I didn't find the hardware bag and used all kinds of stuff to pin it together. I found it this time. I had left the bents intact from the last time. By the 4th bent I had the moves down . I got it located in a back corner of the yard, back in the trees. I had to trim a mulberry and I'm gonna lift a low branch with a come-along guyed to the main trunk. Then rig a home made sling to coax the branch to grow out of the way. The shed will be out of sight, but accessible from the driveway. The ultimate tenant will be Aaron's 83 533i.

[Mike W.]

The ultimate tenant will be Aaron's 83 533i.

Does that mean an M30 car is in your future?

[a]

The ultimate tenant will be Aaron's 83 533i.

Does that mean an M30 car is in your future? [/quote ]The car spent a long time in the Bay Area. It has little to no rust. It will need a head R+R to replace valve seals Any wrinkles, I'll swap in a super eta

[a]

Sooper Bowl Sunday. I shovelled the snow off the top deck staging and first coated the fascia and soffet within reach I came in for lunch and to cool off. Going out to sling and daub. When I'm done this afternoon, I 'm gonna tarp the deck to make snow removal easier. 3:26 EDT I came in to get a fresh hat. When I go out it will be buck up the fallen apple tree to regain turn around space . More snow/rain pedicted for mid-week. 5;15 sundown and done but to get a few gallons of gas for my snowblower .