Recent content by miked

We're also in the Seattle area, without air conditioning. We had a couple of solar-powered attic fans installed. The cost was reasonable (under $200 a piece I think, installed), and the installation process took the guy less than an hour a piece. These are the people we used...

RAdioRA! :D It's a little pricey, but it's bullet-proof. I have never had *any* issues with any aspect of it . . . lights always turn on, lights always turn off, everything is always reported properly, etc., etc.

The return line is the cold line, you're correct. This hasn't been a problem for us. At most, at the sink where the cold meets hot, you'll get maybe 10 seconds of warm (not hot) water before the cold flows. And it's never a problem anywhere else in the house.

We have a lot of PC's running all the time. The automation/HTPC, the media server PC, a second HTPC in the bedroom, and my work PC (which does various backup tasks every night). There's definitely a bump in my electric bill compared to my neighbors. But not as much a bump as installing...

I installed our RCS TR40 thermostat over the weekend. This was a retrofit install, so I installed the control unit in the garage next to the furnace (no freezing concerns here in the Pacific Northwest), and used the existing thermostat wiring to connect the control unit to the wall display...

We had a Metlund system, and it worked well. However, when we remodeled our bathroom, the designer chose to have exposed piping under the sink, so it was no longer an option. We went with the Grundfos instant hot water system. It also works well. The only downside with the Grundfos is that...

I'll comment on something similar to WaterCop. We added a washer/dryer to a closet upstairs, and I didn't want to go through the expense of adding a drain and sloping the floor. Therefore, I put a unit similar to WaterCop onto the water outlets by the washer/dryer, and stuck the sensor under...

Back to the original question . . . if you use cameras that have a "night" mode, in which they can sense lighting down to 0.1 lux, you won't need any sort of external lighting if there's any ambient light at all. We have a Panasonic HCM280 (which does have an alarm hookup for something like a...

I'll throw in my two cents for RadioRA, from Lutron. It's pricey, but bulletproof. You want a light turned on, boom, it turns on, no problems, every time, all the time. Plus, if you're the type to do their own rs232 communication, the protocol is well documented and free.

The edgeports are nice, but pricey. The Keyspans are a better deal. I have three of these, each of which provide 4 serial ports. They have pretty nice configuration s/w, as I'm able to manually assign the com # for each port. - Mike.

My thoughts: 1) For compact fluorescents, I really had to sell my wife on the idea, as she didn't want the light to be varied in any way as compared to what the incandescents were doing. I ended up buying a couple of lights from about 10-15 different brands, and we came up with (and only one)...

Would it be possible to simply use standard 24v sprinkler valves, and then control them via 24v application? There is of course the rain8net controller, which has both serial and X10 versions. I have a Ware Brothers controller: http://www.warebrothers.com This is a nice little device, albeit...

Although this is very cool, it seems overly complicated (admittedly, the only thing I wanted was to be able to remotely control the garage door, and also see if the garage door is opened or closed -- so my solution is not as precise as this one). Here's what I did: I bought one of these ($15)...

I have had good luck with these: http://www.eeci.com/

I think it may be a smoke or heat sensor. We have the usual smoke detectors, but there's one more near an existing one in the upstairs hallway (which is open to downstairs), and we never really knew what it was for . . . . I'll have to take some pictures and show everyone.