Keep sheetrockers from cutting wires

He's used Lincoln windows for a while.  20 year warranty and seem well made.
 
Googling Lincoln windows seeing mostly low marks on them nationwide.  But have a look yourself.
 
Here have a Bradford White water heater and it is still functioning well (considering the bad water) after 15 years.
 
I am using Zoeller, Hydromatic pumps for the wells here and a Davey pump that are still doing fine after 15 years.
 
I did replace the Zoeller pump switch recently which was no big deal.
 
Purchased a Flotec pump with a lifetime warranty that failed after a year.  Maybe it was related to purchasing it at a big box store?  Returning the defective one I did actually dent the return countertop.  (I was a bit PO'd). 
 
I had a similiar issue with a Kitchen Aid outdoor natural gas grill  purchase at a local big box store.  (pure junk).  I used a natural gas Broilmaster in the old house and it did last 30 years. 
 
Have a Bryant HVAC / Aprilaire whole house humdifier / Trion Air cleaner system which is still doing fine after 15 years.  Just one problem with outdoor AC compressor blowing up (literally at the 10 year mark).
 
Using Hellenbrand water stuff here and it is also doing just fine after 15 years.
 
pete_c said:
Googling Lincoln windows seeing mostly low marks on them nationwide.  But have a look yourself.
 
Here have a Bradford White water heater and it is still functioning well (considering the bad water) after 15 years.
 
I am using Zoeller, Hydromatic pumps for the wells here and a Davey pump that are still doing fine after 15 years.
 
I did replace the Zoeller pump switch recently which was no big deal.
 
Purchased a Flotec pump with a lifetime warranty that failed after a year.  Maybe it was related to purchasing it at a big box store?  Returning the defective one I did actually dent the return countertop.  (I was a bit PO'd). 
 
I had a similiar issue with a Kitchen Aid outdoor natural gas grill  purchase at a local big box store.  (pure junk).  I used a natural gas Broilmaster in the old house and it did last 30 years. 
 
Have a Bryant HVAC / Aprilaire whole house humdifier / Trion Air cleaner system which is still doing fine after 15 years.  Just one problem with outdoor AC compressor blowing up (literally at the 10 year mark).
 
Using Hellenbrand water stuff here and it is also doing just fine after 15 years.
 
I'm learning all I can while I have time and things are quiet.   They pour the foundation Monday so we expect framing to be complete in January.
 
Need more research on plumbing stuffs.   Wife wants skirted toilet fixtures.  We did order the Endless Pool spa.  The house will be built around it.  Or at least that section after it's craned in.  That room will probably have a drain/sump configuration.   Appliances purchased via Black Friday deals.  I've never spent so much money in one week in my life.  
 
We ditched the geothermal idea.   It is something that can be retrofitted later with a pump/dump system if desired.   We don't see ourselves at this latitude forever, so no geotherm for now.
 
Gas Grills:  My research says Weber is the best.   Those old Broilmaster grills lasted forever.  We'll plumb for nat gas on the patio and figure it out later.  Same for a fire pit.
 
There is a water company here that we spoke with.   Seem to have many solutions.  Will check out Hellenbrand.   They have a few RO products that I think we will implement one of in the kitchen.
 
Been surfing home build forums as well.  Electric radiant heat in the bathroom seems simple and cheap.    I'll pull LV wire for future LED strip lights.   Places like ceiling trays and maybe behind mirrors and under cabinets.   Maybe inside cabinets or pantry shelves.   I've done LED strip lighting under railings and in pantry with door switch and it's great to see stuff in the rear of the shelf.  
 
Initial plan is to pull wire everywhere.   For alarms, blinds, cameras and of course network and CATV.  Figure out how/what to connect them to later.  This site is fantastic.  Learned so much about wire quality to tools.   The fun is in hooking stuff up, right?
 
BTW Pete, my CumulusMX stopped working.    RasPi lost the CMX folder.   I spent days reinstalling/updating and it wouldn't update my website.  Just when I was about to toss the whole thing and format a new SD card with Raspberian on it, the dang thing started working  *shrug* . http://bznweather.x10host.com/
 
 
--Russ
 
Good news Russ!
 
Yeah friend here recently built a home and purchased a new weber grill.  He is a happy camper.  He got the best deal from the east coast and they are made here in the midwest.
 
Added a drop safe in the cement during new construction and some PVC chases.  Skipped the fireplace in the great room and had a custom in wall media center built low and glass windows above.  LV chases are in the cement below the wood. (well also in the home office room).
 
We do RO to the ice maker here and do change the water filters on the fridge.  I had to replace the ice maker on the fridge after 4 years here.  It was an easy DIY.  Never did get rid of the flavor of the water coming from the fridge though.  Originally had the top  and bottom set up then wife wanted the side by side  and today should would prefer something else.
 
my CumulusMX stopped working.    RasPi lost the CMX folder.   I spent days reinstalling/updating and it wouldn't update my website.  Just when I was about to toss the whole thing and format a new SD card with Raspberian on it, the dang thing started working  *shrug*
 
I used an original RPi with the big SD card to run first generation of Homeseer for Linux a few years back.    Something would trash the SD card ever few months.  Not sure what it was other than maybe constant RW's on the card.  I would make a copy of the card and would always manage to fix it with GParted on another computer.  I migrated HS3 to the RPi2.  First card I purchased was a very quick 16 Gb Samsung which did OK.  Second Samsung SD card was trashed from the get go so I switched over to the fastest SanDisk card.  I was a bit paranoid so I cache much of the RW's in memory these days and do a SD disk check when rebooting the Homeseer 3 RPi2.  (one liner when booting and a bit of a modification to FSTab).  Typically when updating CumulusMX copy the entire directory to a back up and just update the updated files. Will post adjustments.
 
cmx-1.jpg
cmx-2.jpg
 
I have not upgraded one Cumulus set up and did have some Verizon FIOS issues over the last week and it was down.  It is back up again and Fios issues have been resolved (PITA took 4 phone calls with the last CS telling me that he was a Verizon customer too?)
 
I did exactly the same RPi2 build for the CumulusMX server and it has been doing fine.  It is also using a PiFace RTC and I have it velcroed to the back of my Davis Console.
 
Pete, 
What do you use the in concrete chases for?   
In floor safe is a good idea.
 
We'll have crawlspace in most of the living spaces.   
 
After reading this, I think I will replace the SD card.   It's probably a cheap one that I didn't care about.  I should.   The constant read/write is no doubt an issue with cheap grade SD.  In the case of CumulusMX, the thing is constantly writing to the chip.   Surely write limits must exist.  Or it was that virus the Microsoft tech who called me today claimed I had on my Mac.
 
I recently learned that SSD drives are super fast, but not suited for constant rewrites in server like environments.  They have a fixed number of write counts and although this number is disputed and probably very high, it is limited.   Here I thought the idea of SSD was nothing too wear out.   They can and do.
 
Backing up the SD data is a great idea.  That's what made me sad.   Lost all that historical data for the past 6 months.   
 
--Russ
 
What do you use the in concrete chases for?
 
Home office has desk in the middle of the room sort of.  Chases provide LV & HV.
 
Custom wood media cabinet has PVC running down and over to center section on either side for wires.  The three sections of the media cabinet have HV outlets and was wired for 7.1 and ran LV wires to closet in center of home.
 
Ran one in garage cement floor for irrigation system control wires. 
 
There is a lot of documentation on internetlandia relating to the use of the RPi2/RPi  and SD cards as many early RPi adopters had issues with SD cards. For a bit in the early RPi days almost gave up doing automation on it.
 
I am using Janks start up script which has backup and startup/shutdown built in. 
 
GParted works really well at fixing the SD cards.  You can boot up a Linux ISO live disk and run it if you want.
 
You must have built on a slab.   Makes sense to have a chase under that.
Crawl space gives access to lots of stuff.  Builder runs a HV wire to center of the room under the floor and waits until furniture is in place to install floor outlets where needed.  I thought that was a smart idea. 
I will think about irrigation wires under the garage.  I'll discuss this with the builder.  It might makes sense to do some planning now.   We will have drains installed in the floor. 
  
 
I'm using Janks start up script also.   I didn't know it backed up data.   Maybe I do have a backup if that's what it does.
 
You must have built on a slab.   Makes sense to have a chase under that.
 
Yes the home in FL is on the Gulf of Mexico at sea level.  New contruction FEMA stuff put it up on concrete some 10 feet.  This was a tear down of a home built in the middle 1950's and purchased in the 1980's and torn down in the 1990's that took some 3 years of mostly political rhetoric from HOA in a small 50 home subdivision.  It was a PITA as this is where I had to micromanage the GC.  I did catch one neighbor paying off a town inspector to change stuff and this neighbor is on my s list (that said he is old and almost dead now so he is not an issue these days).  One roofer fell off the roof and that delayed the project some two months which also was a real PITA to deal with.
 
 
Backing up the SD data is a great idea.  That's what made me sad.   Lost all that historical data for the past 6 months. 
 
It is better.  I am using older but made before their time Openframe devices with original OS's on 1 or 2 Gb MMC's which while still functioning have gotten trashed from multiple RW's and these are soldered on the motherboard.  I have modded these tablet top touchscreens with a 16/32 Gb SSD which boot fine in to Ubuntu 14.04 or Wintel embedded.  The PiPoX7 is running off a 32 Gb soldered on MMC and I do not trust it still today.   You can run a cron job to back up the CumulusMX directory and still manually image the entire SD card.  You can do a dual boot partition with one running an image partition copy to a network drive if you want.  It is a PITA.
 
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