Home building/living suggestions wanted.

Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

I think you just need conduit through the whole house. Whatever electronic and automation stuff goes in now will be obsolete soon. But if there's conduit, it's easy to snake new wires through later without breaking up walls. Figure now everything is Cat 5, or whatever the standard is. In a few years it will probably be fiber. Then after that it will be... Everything wireless?
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

If you are going to do a large combined living space (Kitchen, dining, living room all together in the same physical space) you are going to have a sizeable room and it will have areas "defined" by how you organize your furniture. Put a couple sizable floor boxes in with power and conduits so you can put in surround loudspeakers, network jacks, or whatever may come in the future. Also, a few smaller floor boxes in other places may be a good idea. This way you can avoid running lamp cords under rugs and the like.
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

It is difficult (impossible) to completely anticipate future technology needs/desires. I recall a similar conversation with a friend who was building his dream house, when he asked me to predict what he would need... After discussion we determined that he had access using the attic (or crawlspace) to run future wiring, or whatever. I couldn't even be comfortable suggesting fiber optic cable since that will probably be different 20 years from now and obsolete.

The best advice I can think of is anticipate change and be as flexible as possible about later enhancements.

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One interesting news tidbit is that modern high efficiency LED lighting is not being embraced by industrial users as fast as the LED industry hoped. More of a "pay now for reduced maintenance costs later" trade-off. Odd in that some businesses are cash rich holding back future investments. But the outcome that relates to this thread is that the big LED makers (like CREE) are pivoting to focus on consumer applications, hoping that will influence business to get on board from worker adoption at home.

There may be more consumer choices coming for LED lighting, but probably still relatively expensive in initial investment.

JR
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

John Roberts said:
One interesting news tidbit is that modern high efficiency LED lighting is not being embraced by industrial users as fast as the LED industry hoped. More of a "pay now for reduced maintenance costs later" trade-off. Odd in that some businesses are cash rich holding back future investments. But the outcome that relates to this thread is that the big LED makers (like CREE) are pivoting to focus on consumer applications, hoping that will influence business to get on board from worker adoption at home.

There may be more consumer choices coming for LED lighting, but probably still relatively expensive in initial investment.

JR
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A new casino opened near us and we are doing their "cabaret" entertainment until the casino's arena opens in early fall. Talking with the electrician, he mentioned that the high output LED lighting inside was failing at a surprising rate. It's the heat from the electronics that make them work that makes them fail, he said. The part of the facility we were in at the time has been open about 90 days... and he was changing 'lamps.'

I suspect that commercial/industrial users are waiting until the their 20x investment will last longer than Edison-style incandescent bulbs .
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

Tim McCulloch said:
It's the heat from the electronics that make them work that makes them fail, he said.
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Sounds like he's using poorly designed fixtures. Heat is the biggest challenge in designing an LED fixture. If the LED is getting too hot, its usable light output will decrease quickly over time, effectively decreasing its lifespan. That's why the largest part of any fixture, even the retrofit 'light bulb' fixtures, is the heatsink. It's extremely important to get all the heat away from the LEDs.
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

Tim McCulloch said:
A new casino opened near us and we are doing their "cabaret" entertainment until the casino's arena opens in early fall. Talking with the electrician, he mentioned that the high output LED lighting inside was failing at a surprising rate. It's the heat from the electronics that make them work that makes them fail, he said. The part of the facility we were in at the time has been open about 90 days... and he was changing 'lamps.'

I suspect that commercial/industrial users are waiting until the their 20x investment will last longer than Edison-style incandescent bulbs .
Click to expand...

Yup, sounds like an application/contractor implementation mis-fire.

I experienced way too many early CFL failures, and after the design stabilized and I didn't let them overheat, I get closer to expected (longer) life.

I suspect we will still some more advancement with LED technology.. every extra drop of efficiency they squeeze out of them, is more light and less heat.

It is remarkable what they already do, but always room for more improvement.

JR
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

Jack Arnott said:
One thing I like about where we are is there are four grocery stores within a mile, so biking distance. And UPS store near one of them.
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One thing I especially like about where we are is that the closest grocery store is 25 miles away... and it's a glorified convenience store (really high priced... we rarely shop there). Any "real" services are an hour drive one-way away. This geography situation forces us to plan ahead and reduces impulse buying to basically nill... as well as reducing eating out to like never. When we go shopping (which happens every couple of months), we have a shopping list, and a route planned. I figure over the past 3+ decades, this has likely saved our household $100 - $200 per week on average ($150K - $300K total), and reduced our solid waste stream and stuff piles to almost nothing, and has likely kept some-odd inches off my belt line.

The down side is that I suspect we're not very hip... we likely have no idea what the latest style is.
 
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