fresh home build coming soon

[BoomerD]

My wife is ummm "generous" sized and while we do have grab bars in the walk-in shower and in the tub area also, she wanted an additional one.
I got her this - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B095WB5RWJ
She's used it 2 years, twice a day, every day and although she has had her full weight on it numerous times ("clumsy" runs in her family) that sucker has yet to budge !!

Hmm...they claim that works on drywall with a textured finish. I might have to give that a try.

 

[Micrornd]

Hmm...they claim that works on drywall with a textured finish. I might have to give that a try.

I don't know if I'd go that far, we've only used it on tile

 

[skyking]

I get up there a day or two a week, with a 4 hour round trip commute. I have pulled in about 1400' of 12/2 NM-B, the 6/3 for the range and a few 10/3 for the dryer and the shop 240V outlets.
Yesterday I punched all the holes in the gutter, put up the critical loads panel and started the conduit for the inverter over on the right. I will cut that down about 8".

The breakers are coming in Monday and we can start laying stuff down.

 

[BoomerD]

I get up there a day or two a week, with a 4 hour round trip commute. I have pulled in about 1400' of 12/2 NM-B, the 6/3 for the range and a few 10/3 for the dryer and the shop 240V outlets.
Yesterday I punched all the holes in the gutter, put up the critical loads panel and started the conduit for the inverter over on the right. I will cut that down about 8".
View attachment 136526
The breakers are coming in Monday and we can start laying stuff down.

How's your better half doing?

 

[skyking]

She's OK, according to her. I know it is tough.

 

[Micrornd]

She's OK, according to her. I know it is tough.

It will get back to normal, it just takes time and not over doing it.

 

[skyking]

120V and EV 240V conduit in the carport.

 

[skyking]

How's your better half doing?

They took x-rays today and she is cleared for weight bearing, using a walker for the next 4 weeks.
" as tolerated"
That is not very much just yet. It will take time.

 

[BoomerD]

They took x-rays today and she is cleared for weight bearing, using a walker for the next 4 weeks.
" as tolerated"
That is not very much just yet. It will take time.

One day at a time, bud...one day at a time.

 

[skyking]

Inverter is up and powered in and out on the AC side. The rest is on a separate permit so I will work on that next weeks.
All the wire is terminated but a couple of conduit pulls to do tomorrow.


Everything for equipment is surface run in EMT






outlets out the basement door for a compressor outside and what-have-you.

 

[skyking]

Low voltage cabinet is 90% terminated.


127 light fixtures and 10 fans, on a single 20 Amp breaker. 1092 watts total load.

 

[Brovane]

Are you doing anything to monitor your circuit loads? I use a emporia energy monitor which gives me data on what is using power. Are you going to be doing a battery installation with the solar inverter? I did see you have a critical load panel.

 

[Greenman]

Inverter is up and powered in and out on the AC side. The rest is on a separate permit so I will work on that next weeks.
All the wire is terminated but a couple of conduit pulls to do tomorrow.
View attachment 137180

Everything for equipment is surface run in EMT

View attachment 137181


View attachment 137182

outlets out the basement door for a compressor outside and what-have-you.
View attachment 137183

It's odd seeing Romex exposed on walls. Where I worked the rule was no exposed Romex below 8'. Attic and crawl space exempted.

 

[skyking]

It's odd seeing Romex exposed on walls. Where I worked the rule was no exposed Romex below 8'. Attic and crawl space exempted.

It will get covered by some framing and plywood just as needed, and the room gets a hard sheetrock lid at 88.5"
Picture a few ripped 2x4 on the wall making a box around the romex, with plywood screwed to that.

 

[skyking]

Are you doing anything to monitor your circuit loads? I use a emporia energy monitor which gives me data on what is using power. Are you going to be doing a battery installation with the solar inverter? I did see you have a critical load panel.

I'm not going to bother with circuit by circuit monitoring. The inverter came with this integrated monitoring system.


I am still figuring on where to put it. I think in the first panel outside because it has room to just sit that box inside with those short 32" leads, and then drop the RS485 on some CatX coming in with the RSD signal wire. It can sit in the corner here. Early picture, this is all built out with a 50 Amp GFCI and a 20 that goes to the nearby carport wall, and the 20KA plug on surge protector. There is one in each of those two outdoor panels. Some purists say you need 50KA and It does make me grin. How about the vast majority that have none? I also do not have an overhead line in sight, nor do we get enough lightning to enjoy, let alone worry about.

because of the split service I will not capture all the power usage once the shop is built. No worries.
I have an LG 16H 16KWH high voltage battery to go with that high voltage inverter.

 

[Brovane]

I'm not going to bother with circuit by circuit monitoring. The inverter came with this integrated monitoring system.


I am still figuring on where to put it. I think in the first panel outside because it has room to just sit that box inside with those short 32" leads, and then drop the RS485 on some CatX coming in with the RSD signal wire. It can sit in the corner here. Early picture, this is all built out with a 50 Amp GFCI and a 20 that goes to the nearby carport wall, and the 20KA plug on surge protector. There is one in each of those two outdoor panels. Some purists say you need 50KA and It does make me grin. How about the vast majority that have none? I also do not have an overhead line in sight, nor do we get enough lightning to enjoy, let alone worry about.

because of the split service I will not capture all the power usage once the shop is built. No worries.
I have an LG 16H 16KWH high voltage battery to go with that high voltage inverter.

I have a Emporia Energy monitor on my main panel and then 2 more on the sub-panels. I appreciate being able to look down the circuit level and see what the highest users. Not just seeing total energy usage. Very neat running of the wires and termination into the panel.

I am on aerial power where I live and have a Siemens 140k Whole Home surge protector.

I would recommend you consider Solar Assistant for monitoring if your Solar+Storage system.

 

[skyking]

Thanks, they talk about it over on the DIY forum quite a bit. Once this work gets accepted by the AHJ I will finish up the solar and get an inspection for that.
My house has hydronic heat and will be using a ground source inverter heat pump. I will also get a hybrid heat pump water heater.

 

[Hans Gruber]

Thanks, they talk about it over on the DIY forum quite a bit. Once this work gets accepted by the AHJ I will finish up the solar and get an inspection for that.
My house has hydronic heat and will be using a ground source inverter heat pump. I will also get a hybrid heat pump water heater.

Will your power bill be zero dollars annually with net metering? I know you have a geo thermal setup and solar panels. I cannot imagine you would have any significant power bill. I assume you will have net metering setup through PSE.

 

[skyking]

Yes I will get net metering from the local PUD.

 

[skyking]

I have a Emporia Energy monitor on my main panel and then 2 more on the sub-panels. I appreciate being able to look down the circuit level and see what the highest users. Not just seeing total energy usage. Very neat running of the wires and termination into the panel.

I am on aerial power where I live and have a Siemens 140k Whole Home surge protector.

I would recommend you consider Solar Assistant for monitoring if your Solar+Storage system.

I looked at emporia, that is very affordable at $200.
I will not go there because I am making the decisions up front about appliances and strategies.
I put in the plumbing for a GE Profile ventless heat pump washer dryer in our closet, in addition to a traditional W/D setup in the basement.
I decided on a Rheem ProTerra 50 gallon hybrid water heater, which is controlled via Econet and does it's own energy monitoring.
I'll have enough geek out features with the hybrid inverter and net metering and those things to satisfy me.
I took a total hack at how much panel I need, by just filling the south facing surfaces and leaving the 36" path up each roof pitch that is typically required.
My AHJ is so cool though. He said he could get a letter from the fire department stating that they will NEVER go on the roof for a rescue, and I could eliminate that path.
I want it for my access.
My hope is I will have excess energy and not need to consider it at all.

 

[skyking]

That all got inspected today and we pulled wire to the solar panels through EMT conduit.
I was quite worried about the inspection but it went very smoothly. I got to go over the solar stuff ahead of that inspection, a freebie and I pre-answered all his concerns there.

 

[Brovane]

I looked at emporia, that is very affordable at $200.
I will not go there because I am making the decisions up front about appliances and strategies.
I put in the plumbing for a GE Profile ventless heat pump washer dryer in our closet, in addition to a traditional W/D setup in the basement.
I decided on a Rheem ProTerra 50 gallon hybrid water heater, which is controlled via Econet and does it's own energy monitoring.
I'll have enough geek out features with the hybrid inverter and net metering and those things to satisfy me.
I took a total hack at how much panel I need, by just filling the south facing surfaces and leaving the 36" path up each roof pitch that is typically required.
My AHJ is so cool though. He said he could get a letter from the fire department stating that they will NEVER go on the roof for a rescue, and I could eliminate that path.
I want it for my access.
My hope is I will have excess energy and not need to consider it at all.

For the price point it is very affordable. What stops people is that you have to open up your main panel and put CT clamps around the wires for the circuits you want to monitor. I also have a Emporia EV Charger which so far I have been happy with.

I have the Rheem ProTerra 80 gallon Hybrid water heater (4 people in my household) so far have been happy with the water heater. I did have a issue with the thermistors in the first year of ownership that had to be replaced, paid for by the warranty. The heat pump water heater is basically two water heaters in one, heat pump and has a standard element to heat the water. So that means the heat pump stopped working (thermistors failed) I just switch the water heater to electric only mode. One thing I did before install was to investigate how to replace the anode rod because it has 1/2 ton heat pump on top of the unit so you have to take the top off that to then go down to access the top of the anode rod. So what we did is leave the screw permanently off the top of it that faces the wall so we can get the top of the unit off easier. Mine is in my garage and while it is nice in the summer to have a 1/2 ton AC unit blowing cold air it struggles a bit in the colder parts of the year, not that it gets really cold in San Diego. So during the winter I switch the unit to High Demand mode.

I just recently got Home Assistant installed on a PI box and I am exploring what I can do with that as far as aggregating all my smart home stuff together.

Personally I have found with solar that if you get a small bill, you use energy more.

In 2024-2025 True Up - I used 41 MWh of power for my house, pulled 14.8 MWh from the grid, Exported 6 MWh to the grid and produced 35 MWh of solar from 20kw of panels (DC) with 75 KWh of LFP batteries. This netted me out at the end of the true-up period (12 months) a total bill of about $300 from SDGE which made me fairly happy.

I also have 2 BEV's, a pool(In the process of getting rid off), spa and the house is fully electric. The only time we use Propane is for emergency heating with the heat pumps which is often in San Diego.

 

[skyking]

My best guesstimate of heat load at the 23F heating degree day is about 2KW continuous load.
I have the LG 16KWh battery, and can add a second.
14.76 Kw of panels x 4.5 hours at best is 66KWh on a good winter day. Theoretically, I could keep up in a power outage, and the 32KWh storage would be a decent matchup.
We do not have any lengthy outages though. Just spitballing it for fun.
I had a big long post about the inverter heat pump and charts and deleted the tab, argh.

 

[skyking]

Thanks for the heads up on that screw thing. My equipment room ceiling is 88.5" I wonder how getting the anode out will go.
My HPWH will not be tight to the walls because of the hydronic plumbing that will be surface mounted around that corner. It will be about 6" out of the corner. I will add a block to the wall for the earthquake strapping.

 

[Brovane]

My best guesstimate of heat load at the 23F heating degree day is about 2KW continuous load.
I have the LG 16KWh battery, and can add a second.
14.76 Kw of panels x 4.5 hours at best is 66KWh on a good winter day. Theoretically, I could keep up in a power outage, and the 32KWh storage would be a decent matchup.
We do not have any lengthy outages though. Just spitballing it for fun.
I had a big long post about the inverter heat pump and charts and deleted the tab, argh.

Have you looked at the LG Batteries and issues with this model? I looked them up and it looked like the had a lot of issues. You never know with Reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/solar/comments/1n3zt8q/lg_resu16h_prime_highvoltage_16kwh_lithium_battery

Are you doing a wood burning stove?

Thanks for the heads up on that screw thing. My equipment room ceiling is 88.5" I wonder how getting the anode out will go.
My HPWH will not be tight to the walls because of the hydronic plumbing that will be surface mounted around that corner. It will be about 6" out of the corner. I will add a block to the wall for the earthquake strapping.

The 50-gallon unit has a H of 64" so with 20"+ of clearance you should be ok if you are careful. However the replacement will have to be sectional.
We just removed the screw because we didn't think it was necessary since there was plenty others holding in the top. Ours is also out from the wall for Earthquake strapping.
You will also have a air filter on top that will need to be taken out and cleaned every 90-days.
Are you going to duct the exhaust air from the HPWH outside or into the equipment room?