Residential Heat Recovery

Huh, this is a neat idea:

Hot Spot Energy has a product that sits between the compressor and the evaporator in an air conditioner or heat pump. It extracts some of the waste heat and uses it at the hot water tank or even a pool heater.

So: Taking something that's entirely a waste product, and doing something useful with it. Makes a lot of sense. I'll have to revisit this if we ever get around to installing ductless heat pumps in our house (after the solar panels are paid off).

Household Cogeneration

The news that net metering may be going away at our utility a lot sooner than we hoped had me think about how we could make solar work without net metering.

The obvious answer is something like the Tesla Powerwall - adding battery storage to our solar panels. That would solve the problem of time-shifting the energy from when it's generated during the day to when we consume it in the evening. However, it does nothing to help us time-shift the energy from the sunny summer months to the dark winter months.

Winter has other energy requirements: namely heating.

In the power generation industry, there is a technique called cogeneration (I had to study it in college). Basically, you burn a fuel in some sort of generator to produce electricity, then take what would normally be waste heat and use it for something productive, like heating the powerplant facilities.

It turns out Honda and a couple other companies are selling household cogeneration units. They replace your central furnace and dump power into your electrical system - sometimes using net metering with the electric utility, just like solar power generation.

So, if money was no object, we could theoretically go off-grid (electrically) using solar panels and batteries in the summer, and a cogeneration unit and batteries in the winter.

Money is an object, of course.

The quotes we got for solar panels indicate we would have to pay roughly $26,000 (before subsidies) for 6kW of solar panels, installation, and the necessary electrical work. Tesla's Powerwall batteries have just about the best kWh per dollar price, but won't even be available til next year, at the earliest. Even then, we would probably need about $15-20,000 in batteries. I haven't found a price for a cogeneration unit, but equivalent-sized generators run about $5-6,000.

Pricey.

Anyway, I like the thought of going off-grid. Can't afford it at our current electric consumption, though.

Worx Landroid - Lawnmower Drone

Man, how did I miss this?! Worx has an autonomous, battery-powered lawnmower, and initial reviews are pretty positive. The price has really come down, too: list price is only $1000.

Sigh. On the other hand, I don't have a $1000 lying around for something like this. Also, previous experience with robot vacuums was very disappointing after the first year.

Guess I'll just keep my eye on it.

Tesla Powerwall

Last night we had a power outage.

I'm pretty sure it was due to Elon Musk sneaking around and tripping our circuit breaker to market his new Powerwall.

The Powerwall is a big, wall-mounted battery pack, available in a couple varieties. A 10 kWh version is optimized for long-term power backup - most of the time is sits around fully charged, then when your power goes out, the battery takes over powering the house for an extended period of time. A 7 kWh version is designed to pair with solar system - it charges during daylight each day, and powers the house after sunset each night.

I'm curious to find out if these 10 and 7 kWh numbers are the actual useful energy you can get out of the powerpack, or if that's the nominal capacity.

I'm also a little disappointed  - I thought this product might allow someone with an electric car but no plug-in at work, to charge that electric car via solar power stored in batteries at home over night - time-shifted solar power, if you will. But the smallest Tesla car battery is 60 kWh, so I don't think that's very practical. At least, not with just one battery.

Anyway, I'm going to write up a solar post one of these days. I'll probably talk about this battery product again then.

Samsung Induction Stove

Well, this is a neat twist on an induction cook top: LEDs surrounding the "burner" show you how high the heat is set:

I don't think I'd want a stove that looks more complicated than a VCR, though.

Here's the product page.

Future Projects

Now that I'm (personally) done painting the house and all major purchases from IKEA have been completed, I've gotten a couple questions about what is up next for me.

The immediate answer is that my evenings have now cleared up enough to go back to the gym on a regular basis, and to help Brianna study for the PE exam (for her Professional Engineer certificate).

Beyond that, plenty remains to be done for the house.

I'm still maintaining my public to-do list. Paying professional painters to paint the two-story areas of the house is probably going to eat up all of September's house budget. After that, I want to re-insulate the garage, and potentially blow in some more insulation in the attic - hopefully in October, before it gets really cold.

I have a lot of ideas for home automation, and I'm excited to have some free time to work on them. I don't want to list them in this post, or I'll jinx myself and never get around to them.

Other projects I already have planned:

• Install a range hood.
• Continue to baby-proof the electrical outlets throughout the house.
• Install a third exterior light, on the other side of the garage door.
• Replace the house address numbers with a back-lit plaque.
• Install a second pendant lamp in the Great Room.
• Build a self-drawing chalkboard between the kitchen and family room.
• Wire and automate the chicken coop.
• Do something to improve the tortoise's standard of living - a larger terrarium or something.
• Brianna wants to fill that new vase on the dresser with glass beads. I want to mix in some wirelessly-powered LEDs with the glass beads.
• I want to make a picture-frame jewelry box for Brianna based on that Litograph I mentioned earlier.
• Connect the whole-house humidifier (not the evaporative cooler) to the Nest Thermostat.
• Look into Solar power for our south-facing roof.

And who knows what else is going to crop up as we head into our first winter in our new house.

Oh, I've also built up a bit of a reading list over the past seven months. I'm looking forward to knocking that down a bit, too.

I do expect this website to transition from house-blog to baby-blog as I experiment on and program raise my son after he arrives in December. I'm looking into setting up the website so a visitor can see A) everything, B) just baby posts, or C) just house posts. But so far it doesn't look like Blogger supports that kind of functionality.

Solar City

While I was picking up a few things in Home Depot this morning, I passed a kiosk for Solar City with a sign out front announcing that they now work with our power utility!

The basic concept of Solar City is that they will sell, install and maintain solar panels at your house, and after a tax credit, it's all "at no cost to you!" They make their money due to net-metering - any profits made by selling surplus electricity back to the utility go directly to Solar City.

One of the things Brianna and I were looking for in a house was a south-facing roof, so we would have the possibility of solar power in the future. And we did wind up buying a house with a south-facing roof.

Solar City's offer sounds too good to be true, so I'm going to have to read their terms carefully before pursuing this further. And I have to acknowledge to myself that because Solar City was founded by Elon Musk, it has a celebrity-endorsement factor that could make me trust it when I shouldn't.

But it's all very interesting. I'll be looking at this closely.

Litographs

These Litographs are pretty amazing. The pictures are made from the text of the books they represent. I think we're going to buy a couple in the near future. Here's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man":

Smart Sprinkler System

We started our built-in sprinkler system the weekend before last, and discovered one of the sprinkler head was completely busted. This past weekend we replaced it.

In all our water bills up to this point, actual water usage has amounted to less than 10% of the total bill. Now, though, we have gallons and gallons and gallons of water flowing out onto the grass, and I can literally hear it flowing through the pipes when I'm in the basement.

I am very curious how much water the irrigation system is going to use (but not curious enough, apparently, to actually make a note of the water meter before and after the sprinklers run). After we get the next month's water bill, we can maybe make some estimates about whether a smart sprinkler system that can track weather and the amount of water in the soil, understands the neighborhood watering schedule, and can be programmed via a phone or iPad app (right now, I think that last feature is worth at least $100 to Brianna. I think I heard her swearing at the current sprinkler timer system!) would be worth the purchase price.

Off the top of my head, the Iro (made by a company called Rachio) is the only smart, WiFi-connected sprinkler controller that's currently available for less than $500 (it's $250). Anyone know of any alternatives? SkyDrop is another option I've been tracking.

WiTrack

WiTrack is a project coming out of MIT. It uses radio transmissions similar to WiFi to track a moving person through a house, despite walls and other obstacles, using a set of antennas in a fixed location. From a home automation viewpoint, this is intensely interesting. It sounds like they're making progress, too. I wonder when they'll be able to commercialize it?

We're Going to Have a Baby!

We are looking forward to introducing you all to the newest Medema in early December 2014!

(We don't know the gender yet, but Brianna really likes the pink shoes).

Cooling the House in the Summer

We are still occasionally getting snow on the ground, but on days when it doesn't snow, the house can reach 75 F without any help from the furnace. We have a great south-facing exposure, which will be handy in the winter, but makes me pretty nervous about the upcoming summer months. The house does not have a central air conditioning system installed. After three years in Texas, Venezuela and Abu Dhabi, I don't like living in warm climates with no air conditioning.

Unfortunately, air conditioning is expensive, both in up-front purchasing and installation costs and in year-after-year operating costs. I'm not a big fan of that, either.

So what are the options?

• Suffer quietly through the summer without any type of cooling (not going to happen).
• Refurbish or replace the gigantic, gross and rusty swamp cooler hanging off the house's west face.
• Get a window AC unit for the master bedroom - I kinda like this idea, and there is a cool "smart" window AC unit due out in May.
  
• Shell out $5000+ for a new central air system, and pay ~$200/month extra in electricity.
• Install a whole-house fan in the attic.

The more I think about it, the more I like the last idea. A whole house fan resides at the highest ceiling in the house, venting hot air into (and out through) the attic and drawing cool air up from the basement. The house I lived in the last two years of college had a whole-house fan, and I remember it working rather well during the muggy Michigan summers. Having someone else do the installation seems to run between $1500 and $2000 all-in, and I bet my brother-in-law and I could do it for significantly less. Add some automation to make it a little bit smart about what time of day it runs automatically, and I think this could be a winner.

(I have to admit, I still like the idea of a smart window AC unit. It has wi-fi. And a phone app. It's aimed right at my weak points!)

Xeros Bead Cleaning

I heard something about using plastic beads (rather than water) to clean clothes as early as five years ago, while I was still in college. Well, turns out it's a commercial product available to Dry Cleaners, Hospitals, Athletic Facilities and other businesses that do a lot of laundry, and Xeros, the company that makes it, is looking into selling a domestic version.

A lot of the articles I read called it "Waterless Cleaning" but the process actually uses 25% as much water as a modern washing machine - still, that's a big improvement, and important in a dry state like Colorado.

There is another claim that strikes me as weird - Xeros says their plastic beads a simultaneously highly engineered and impossible for anyone else to manufacture AND can be recycled right alongside empty 2-liter plastic bottles. Unless there is some sort of patent protection on the beads (which there probably is) I don't see how those two things can be true at the same time.

Anyway, once this comes on the market, we'll be looking at it very carefully. We might be due for a new washing machine at that point anyway.

Phillips OneSpace Ceiling Light

Now this is the kind of light I want on the kitchen ceiling. Doubt it will be affordable for home use in the next 3-5 years, though.

House color scheme inspirations

Brian has been giving me almost complete free range for color choice in the house.  It is just an area he does not have strong opinions, due to his partial color-blindness.

I have been very excited about painting and choosing non-white colors.  The apartments and houses that we have rented have all seemed to have white EVERYWHERE.  We don't have a 30k budget for furnishing/decorating this year and so much of what I have been looking for are DIY/IKEA or paint-centered. Houzz.com has been where I have been getting a bunch of inspiration.

The Master bedroom inspiration:

Contemporary Bedroom by Sandy Media & Bloggers Michelle Hinckley

Traditional Bedroom by Atlanta Interior Designers & Decorators Cristi Holcombe Interiors, LLC

Beach Style Bedroom by Mount Pleasant Architects & Designers The Anderson Studio of Architecture & Design

 <- Mild Blue, Sherwin Williams, 3 bedroom walls

<- Jonquil, Sherwin Williams, will be Master Bath color

<- Dover White, Sherwin Williams, will be ceiling of most the house

Hallways upstairs & Main wall:

<- Great Green, Sherwin Williams, fillet corner accent wall color in bath & both upstairs & downstairs hallway

Grey and green for upstairs hall bathroom:

<- Silver Plate, Sherwin Williams, all other walls

Contemporary Bedroom by Other Metro Architects & Designers SVOYA studio

Traditional Bathroom by New York Design-Build Firms DELUXE Design & Construction

Modern Bathroom by White Plains Interior Designers & Decorators Luminosus Designs LLC

Black (ok dark grey) & White Bedroom: 
I very much like the theme of trees and I wanted a room that would be almost neutral forest.  I have also had my eye on various tree wall decals.  These two from IKEA cost an order of magnitude less than the other trees I was looking at and I liked them almost as much.  The leaves can be placed in a variety of patterns and I am hoping to have them falling off the tree away from the window.  Like a gust of wind caring them into the house.  

Ikea Mossen Decorative wall sticker and Elsabo

Midcentury Powder Room by San Francisco Interior Designers & Decorators Regan Baker Design

This one has a large tile pattern that I would like to add to the room, but not sure how to incorporate it with the other white/black.  Maybe the wall opposite the tree decal from IKEA?

Contemporary Spaces by Other Metro Architects & Designers SVOYA studio

We currently do not have a guest bed.  As soon as we do, I would like to get white or gray bedding similar to this.

Other

I like the busy geometric pattern wall paper paired with the black & white

Contemporary Bedroom by West Hollywood Interior Designers & Decorators Kari Whitman Interiors

We already purchased these curtains from IKEA. :-)

Eivor Curtains, from Ikea

This pillow below was truly the inspiration for the room.

Eivor Cushion, from Ikea

Blue Ceiling Bedroom:

I want to include a blue sky in multiple rooms.  For the upstairs bedroom, I want to add stars in glow in the dark paint.  I'm interested in figuring out the best way to put real constellations up... not sure which part of the night sky I want to be semi-permanent... ideas?

<- Vast Sky SW 6506, Ceiling

<- White Duck SW 7010, Walls

Contemporary Bedroom

Contemporary Living Room by Washington Interior Designers & Decorators Sroka Design, Inc.

Contemporary Dining Room by Los Angeles General Contractors SoCal Contractor

Traditional Bedroom by Dallas Interior Designers & Decorators RSVP Design Services

This picture below is WILD and I like the planets and orbits showing but I want a significantly toned down version. Not sure if I want a yellow or white light in this room.

Contemporary Kids by Orlando Design-Build Firms Hobus Homes

Downstairs hallway, outside main half bath:
I would like to use the colors that are spread throughout the house in a similar geometric landscape.  My concern is that there is not sufficient space in the hallway to appreciate a similar piece.

Modern Dining Room by Portland Interior Designers & Decorators Jessica Helgerson Interior Design

Half bath on main floor:
I like the idea of a dark half bath that is pictured her (below)

Traditional Powder Room by Rehoboth Beach Home Builders Schell Brothers

I am also drawn to multiple versions of the horizontal yellow/grey lines... I would personally not look good in these horizontal lines as they add width, but for a small room with a relatively tall ceiling I think they might work.

Contemporary Powder Room by Toronto Interior Designers & Decorators Shelley Kirsch Interior Design and Decoration

Contemporary Powder Room by Charlestown Interior Designers & Decorators Emily Elizabeth Interior Design

Contemporary Powder Room

I think this one is my favorite... yellow, green and blue!

Modern Powder Room by New York Architects & Designers Dufner Heighes Inc

Kitchen/Family room:
The other room(s) that I want to put a blue ceiling.  I would use Vast Sky for the ceiling again & White Duck for the long wall & the Mild Blue for the wall with the fireplace.  The wall next to the kitchen I want to have a framed chalkboard paint area.

Farmhouse Kitchen by Minneapolis Architects & Designers Albertsson Hansen Architecture, Ltd

Eclectic Kitchen by Santa Monica Interior Designers & Decorators Daleet Spector Design

Well, if you made it to the end of this post, you deserve props.  I have been having too much fun playing with bold blues, greens, yellows & grays.  I tried out two purples & one red but can't seem to find I place I want them.

What do you think we should do with our entry/living/dining great room?
ideas?

Kwikset Kevo

Thinking about doors and locks: the eventual goal with the front door is to have both the Push-Pull-Rotate lever-style doorknob AND something like the Kwikset Kevo Bluetooth Deadbolt.

That way, as you walk up to the door with your arms full of groceries or whatever, the deadbolt will unlock after talking to your phone, and you can simply hip-check the doorknob to get inside.

In theory, after driving an hour down the road, you could also check to make really sure the front door is locked via your phone.

At the moment though, there are other spending priorities :-(