Building a new Home Help!

[Pechan]

Hi Everyone.
I have found this forum just in time!
I am building a new home as an owner builder, It should be dryed in within 10 days or so.
Now for the fun part. Electrical!
I have pretty good knowledge of Electrical as I worked for an electrician in college.
My home is about 2200 sqft. 3 bedroom, off grid. I have 8000 watts of solar and 1600 ah of batteries @ 48 volts
I am using the Outback Radian Series Inverter with 8k watt output. I plan to use quite a few LED lights.
Im not trying to be green, Just that power company quoted me 20k to run power to my house.

I would like to automate the following.

Lights
Few Recepticles for lamps etc.
Home audio.
Blinds.
Front door lock.
A couple of Ip cameras
Radient floor heat.
future gas fireplace.
alarm system

I would like there to be a stand alone controler.
Ability to have touchscreens.
Conventional Wiring. (not all homeruns)
mood lighting

Not trying to overspend but I want a solid system that I do not have to work on all the time.
What components would you recommend?

Thanks, Pechan in Wyoming.

 

[Pechan]

I cant figure out how to edit my post but I typoed my system voltage. It is 48 not 24.

 

[oberkc]

I would like there to be a stand alone controler.

It seems to me that this is your key decision here. Identify your controller and answers to most of the rest of your questions will fall in place (or at least are bounded). I use an ISY-99 controller (stand-alone) for lighting and doors. It integrates well with a couple of security systems, I hear. I understand it is relatively energy efficient, as well.

While I can offer no insight in the energy department, I am intrigued by your automation ambitions with your house that is "off the grid". Much automation DOES consume energy, even when at rest. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a limiting factor.

 

[BLH]

Is the inverter a pure sine wave output?

 

[apostolakisl]

It seems to me that this is your key decision here.  Identify your controller and answers to most of the rest of your questions will fall in place (or at least are bounded).  I use an ISY-99 controller (stand-alone) for lighting and doors.  It integrates well with a couple of security systems, I hear.  I understand it is relatively energy efficient, as well.

While I can offer no insight in the energy department, I am intrigued by your automation ambitions with your house that is "off the grid".  Much automation DOES consume energy, even when at rest.  It will be interesting to see if this becomes a limiting factor.

Michel at UD answered that question for me once. I believe he said 5 watts. It might have been 7 watts. Insteon switches use about .7 watts in my testing when I put 10 of them on a kill-o-watt for 24 hours and did the cumulative thing. These were about a 1 year old model vs what they ship now.Have you looked into running DC current through your house? It would be more efficient then converting to AC then back to DC at the point of use for all your electonics. Obviously you would still need AC current for many things, but you could probably do your LED lighting in DC current and run 12v DC to many of your electronics. I know you said you had 48v, but I suspect you could pick 12v off?Also your HVAC fans may be able to go DC. I know that the fan motor for cooling the outside coils on my unit is DC. The compressor of course is not. I don't know about the inside blower, probably not DC. I suspect you are not going to put AC in. Are you doing wood burning or propane or oil or what for heat?

 

[Pechan]

Is the inverter a pure sine wave output?

Yes it is Pure sine wave. outbackpower.com/products/sinewave_inverter/radian/About using DC power for some of the house needs. I would like to keep the wiring as conventional as possible, In the future if someone wants to hook up to the grid all that they would have to do is pull the inverter wires and drop in their line feed. I agree on the controller. I am looking at the ELK controllers as so many people here seem to like them. I will look into the ISY-99. Thanks for the feedback.Pechan

 

[Pechan]

Natural gas boiler for heat.
Not going to be installing AC.
There are only 2 weeks or so where I could use AC here in Wyoming.
I am planning on using AC LED bulbs.

 

[Mr Spock]

If you use UPB, X10 or Insteon or any other powerline communication based control you may need to be careful running it off an inverter. There are stories of people who have had lots of problems if they use a generator or other form of non-grid power. It seems to come down to AC waveform distortion and possibly some frequency error.

Do some checking before you buy a bunch of light switches, blow some out, and find out later you voided your warrenty.

 

[potts.mike]

Have you considered a natural gas generator to supplement your solar/battery system?

 

[sanders2222]

Radiant floor heating with just 8000 watts off the solar panels? Something does not add up right to me. If I understand some fundamental things about electricity, I just don't see how you can do this and run anything else. I have a 2700 sq home that is currently on generator power (nasty ice storm is hitting Pacific Northwest). I have a small 7.5KW natural gas Generac that runs my home automation stuff, priority appliances (sewer pumps, refrigerator, freezeer) and security systems. But there is not enough there to include the oven, microwave or laundry applicances.

 

[apostolakisl]

I think the radiant floor heating is getting the heat from nat gas. Electricity would only run the pump.

You would need to be super conscious of every watt you use. Especially being out in Wyoming where it gets very cold. You wouldn't want to lose power to your boiler/circulating pump and freeze you house. I think a backup generator for at least that item would be worth it.

You mentioned $20k to get wires to your house, how much for all the solar panels/batteries/inverters? That has to be at least $20k.

At least for things like your cirulating pump, you might look into using dc power there. DC motors usually are more efficient per watt used even before you consider the waste from the inverter.

 

[Pechan]

Yes, the floor heating is nat gas, so are dryer, range, and oven.
Between an instate 10k grant and the 30% federal tax rebate for solar, I am coming out ahead there.

 

[drozwood90]

10K grant? Really? What state are you in?

 

[drozwood90]

Also, regarding inverters and power line controlled automation. Even if it states pure sine, doesn't mean it will work. Maybe your best bet is hardwired or Z-wave?

I've read in a few places people using Xantrax (spelling?) inverters and running UPB.

--Dan

 

[JimS]

Yes it is Pure sine wave. outbackpower.com/products/sinewave_inverter/radian/About using DC power for some of the house needs. I would like to keep the wiring as conventional as possible, In the future if someone wants to hook up to the grid all that they would have to do is pull the inverter wires and drop in their line feed. I agree on the controller. I am looking at the ELK controllers as so many people here seem to like them. I will look into the ISY-99. Thanks for the feedback.Pechan

Seems like you might be able to have a DC panel next to the AC panel and run distribution wiring that meets code for both AC and DC, meeting your desire to have it nearly conventional. If converting to all AC in the future you could change the panel to an AC breaker panel and reuse the wiring. The difficult part is not the end things but running the wiring. Or just run additional wiring for DC and not use if when going to AC. The conversions do eat up some power so a DC supply would seem to be a big plus. At points of use you could have switching power supplies to run the low voltage gear.

Radiant floor heating with just 8000 watts off the solar panels? Something does not add up right to me. If I understand some fundamental things about electricity, I just don't see how you can do this and run anything else. I have a 2700 sq home that is currently on generator power (nasty ice storm is hitting Pacific Northwest). I have a small 7.5KW natural gas Generac that runs my home automation stuff, priority appliances (sewer pumps, refrigerator, freezeer) and security systems. But there is not enough there to include the oven, microwave or laundry applicances.

Sizing a system to run everything at once really runs up the cost and is often not absolutely needed. While a slightly bigger system might be convenient you can reduce the peak load by turning off some loads temporarily. The sewer pump seems like the only thing that HAS to run when needed but even that might be managed - it probably doesn't run for long when it runs. So if you need to run the oven or dryer (but not both at the same time) just shut off the refer and freezer while the oven is on - an hour or two. Their temps won't change much in that amount of time. And if the pump needs to run, shut off the oven for 5 minutes (or however long it is). I will grant that managing this is not trivial. But when the option is paying for a 2x or more larger inverter or generator the electronics to manage loads ( and/or the inconvenience of manually doing some of it) may be worth it.