Category: House Renovation

So, We’re still waiting to hear from the court. I’ve gotten word verbally that the Judge approved the amendment. That’s pretty darn quick. But we really won’t know until I get keys in my hand.

I went ahead and placed an order on Amazon. A lot of money, but I got some cool stuff that will make it easier to implement a smart home.

The first thing I thought was needed, was this Leviton Split Phase repeater.  If you’re in the position where you want to wire up the whole house, but you can’t wire up the whole house, you look for ways to exploit what is already there. In my case, I want to use my electrical wiring as part of my network.  Usually that works fine, but sometimes it doesn’t work, because the source location is on one leg of the power, and the destination location is on the other leg.  The split phase repeater connects both legs to the same communication ‘buss’ as well as repeats/strengthens the signal.  So any network over AC, X10 communications, or whatever, there will be no issues.

I’ve already spoken about the Intermatic Whole house Surge Protector in a previous post, but to recap, it allows the whole home to be protected against high voltage spikes. The advantage to this particular model is that it has replaceable modules that the homeowner can swap out, without having to get an electrician for the entire unit.

 

I also ordered a Lutron ‘Caseta’ Wireless Smart Dimmer switch (actually I got the starter kit, which comes with the “Smart Bridge” required for the devices to work. Theoretically the system only requires one bridge). It works with Alexa. It can control LED and florescent light, so I may get more of these, maybe one for each room.  They’re not the cheapest available, but they’re the most bang for the buck by a manufacturer you can trust.

 

I couldn’t decide on smart outlets, because I need so many, and they cost so much. So I’ve decided to get regular cheap outlets, and modify only those that need modification.  In addition, I bought two 8-packs of Sonoff Wifi AC in line switches.  These guys are kind of neat. The AC input powers them.  They connect to your local wifi, and can be controlled by Alexa or App.  It’s just on/off, but still useful.  I will use these in limited areas, such as exterior power outlets and such.

 

I’m strongly considering solar power in some fashion, either as a total replacement, or a serious augmentation. At the moment however, it’s secondary to the other issues of the home. Once those are sorted out, we’ll revisit solar.  It does look like a good deal though.  The way GPA is costing, it makes long term sense.  Using EmonCMS seems like the best way to output all the dots in a nice graphical display that’s easy to read and understand.

Some of the devices are rather pricey, to be honest. But the monitoring software is free, and the hardware required to run the monitoring software is amazingly cheap.  So stay tuned and lets see what all this can do once we get the green light.

 

So, we couldn’t ‘close’.  I’m still not exactly sure what the hell we did.  I went ahead and gave them a shitload of money. But that was primarily so I wouldn’t have to make another trip.

The summary is, this is a probate house. The Judges order (which I guess means something) had a different price than what the seller and I agreed upon.  So we can’t close the deal until the judge amends the price, so that all the details align.  I understand that.  But it’s annoying as hell, and I’m tired of waiting.

So we signed everything like we were closing, but we weren’t closing. We’re waiting for the amended order to come back from the Court. Who knows how long that will take.  I should start a pool.  I’m guessing about a month.  When my realtor hands me keys, I know I’m good. But I don’t know when that will be.  In the meantime, the condo is getting smaller and smaller because the things we’ve been buying for the house is coming in, and we’re running out of storage space.

Oh, and I looked at the contract. We made our offer on this house July 7th, 2017. It’s been 8 freakin’ months so far.

This may actually happen after all. I’ve been notified by my realtor that we have a meeting at the Title company on Tuesday to close on the house.  It’s a little hard to believe it’s actually happening. Primarily due to the fact that we’ve been waiting SO FREAKING LONG for this to happen. Our bid was accepted back in… August of 2017? So it’s been a little over 7 months of waiting.  But all good things come to those who wait. We still haven’t found a better house at a good price in the same area, so what the heck.

I’ve already gotten my ‘iotawatt’ power monitor, and am getting ready to pull the trigger on some other devices from Amazon that will assist in making my home both smart and secure.  Emphasis on secure, because a lot of Smart Technology isn’t very secure; particularly the ‘Internet of Things’ MQTT protocol.  But I have a way around that, and will still be employing that technology in my home. But it will be on it’s own autonomous closed network, with a custom application as a gateway. The custom app is mine, so I can decide what triggers and what to ignore.

I’ve also decided to add a ‘whole home’ surge protector, because on Guam, our Power company isn’t known for it’s stability in power generation. We often experience low power, high power, no power, and frequencies all over the place.  Most people are familiar with the concept of a surge protector; in case of any power surges, the components in the surge protector ‘clamp’ down on any voltage spikes over an allowable percentage.

What some people may not realize, is that if your surge protector blows, it will no longer protect.  This whole home unit uses replaceable cartridges, so in case any leg blows, you can replace the module without having to replace the entire unit.  there were other competing units, but none of them were user replaceable, and the entire module would have needed an electrician to replace. Forget that noise.

Anyway, our fingers are crossed, and we’re hoping for no more delays.

 

 

Now that we’re pretty sure we’re getting this house, I’m getting a little more serious about how to implement new features into an existing structure.   Of course everybody wants everything. But it really comes down to costs. How much am I paying, versus what benefits do I get for my money.

I had been thinking about a grey water system that recycled the water from our sinks and baths, into a different system exclusively for the commode.  But since we would need to break a lot of concrete to redo the drain system, we’ve decided to leave that alone for now.

We’re moving more towards the electrical side of the house, and how we can keep costs down while adding new features, such as remote dimming and monitoring.

I checked out a few different products, such as Sense, Curb, and a couple of others.  I finally decided that I would invest in the backbone provided by Open Energy Monitor by utilizing their ‘iotawatt’ energy monitor.

The way it works is that you snap a sensor over each wire that feeds a leg into your home.  The IotaWatt has 14 ports for sensors that you can use for each leg of your home.  If you need more, you can cascade additional units.

It all feeds back to a raspberry pi configured base station, that will eventually integrate with my ‘whole home’ monitoring system, to be discussed at a later date.

I gave serious consideration to having ‘smart outlets’ for each outlet of my home, but there were two challenges.  1) Most smart outlets would only let you control one of the two outlets and 2) They cost a freaking mint.  I’m hunting around for something I’d like, but I’m still not sure what I want.  I’d like to have all GFCI, but I want a few of them to have USB chargers.  What I think I’ll end up doing is having one GFCI be a ‘control’ for the rest of the outlets in the room, and have one or two USB, and one or two ‘regular’ outlets.  The kitchen will need more GFCI than USB… the bedrooms will want more USB than GFCI, etc…  So I guess I need to do a head count.

I’ll get back to you on that.

After waiting for over 3 weeks after the court judgment approved the sale of the house, we finally see paperwork from the court, with the approval, etc…

Interestingly enough, I thought it was a generic approval that was needed, but our names were specifically listed in the purchase request documents.  I suppose in the long run it’s nothing more than a detail. But I thought it odd. Still, as long as the sale goes through, my wife will be happy. And that means that I will be happy.

 

Wow. It’s been about 6 months. Yesterday, in probate court, the judge approved all the sale of the house. We can now move forward. The house wasn’t the only thing for sale, and all ducks had to be in a row, not just ours. So, the wait is over.  In the previous post, I published photos of the house. The image below is a hasty representation in Visio of the floor plan, and what will come of the house when we’re done.

 

 

The carport is a single, and located outside the kitchen door.  As we get going, I’ll keep you posted. I’m sure it keeps you up at night.

 

And it’s in crappy shape. But it has good bones. It’s been inspected by Electricians, Structural Engineers, and Plumbers. Everyone gave thumbs up but the plumbers, who didn’t seem to know anything other than they wanted more money.

Living Room:

Dining Room:

Kitchen Area:

Pantry:

Laundry:

Family Room:

Bedroom 1:

Bedroom 2:

Common Bathroom:

Bedroom 3:

Master Bedroom:

Walk Through Closet

Private Bathroom