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poutine

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Any plan to update the GUI for conditional logic inside of automations? It's really clumsy to do IF/THEN or switch style constructions. Too much visual space and clunky overall.

Lots of Barry's out there, one of them even got elected president and shared his knowledge with the world quite widely. Half the people took him credulously.

Point being, yes the LLM loves to make shit up. Lots of people dismiss it as a result. It's still bloody impressive, we just need to be aware of its limitations.

Have you met my cousin Barry? He does pretty much the same thing, though in a less formal way.

Barry is still sentient and can perform quite a few tasks quite admirably. I still wouldn't use him as a sole source reference for obscure facts however.

(I don't actually have a cousin Barry, this is for illustration).

The balloon last week could have easily been an order of magnitude more expensive than the AIM-9X. It was hundreds of feet in diameter with a suspended gantry with a multi-kw solar array. You don't put that much solar on to power nothing, so presumably there was a ton of military grade comms equipment on it.

I got it quoted. Basically would be around $50k CAN for heated floors (it's a big house). Ducted mini split heat pump (2 units to handle the house size) was $60k. Central hybrid gas-heat pump was $30k.

I put in heated electric floors in the bathrooms (about $1k each).

Byrant has a humidifier (https://www.bryant.com/en/us/products/humidifiers/) that integrates with the system. It also has integral HRV. As well as an air purifier: https://www.bryant.com/en/us/products/air-purifiers/dgapa/

It's not a bad compromise for our climate. Currently living in a home I designed that has mini splits everywhere and I really dont like them. Not enough air circulation and it's really hard to balance given a well insulated house on mildly cool days which is very common here.

I intend to always keep the fan going to circulate the air in order to clean (we have allergies) and humidify.

I've only built two houses for myself that are large custom builds. Dont really know about kit homes. From what I hear that they dont really solve a ton of money as people always overestimate the cost of the structure and underestimate site prep and finishing which are the same whether your house is custom or pre fabricated.

It'll likely depend whether it's a fixed cost build or a cost plus. With cost plus this will not nearly be as much of an issue.

If you built a 1000sf detached home in North America you'd have a hell of a time selling it later on outside of some very specific conditions as it'll not be much cheaper than a 1500-2000sf home.

Home costs do not scale proportionately with their square footage. For example you still have one refrigerator in most homes regardless of size, one front door, pay base flat fees for services and trades just to show up, permitting fees, etc.

Some good, basic guidelines here. However a lot is going to depend on your local market and what the trades are familiar with. In smaller markets trying to push exotic techniques, technology or materials is going to be a recipe for suffering. The trades will not do a good job and/or you'll pay a crap ton for it.

This is what a builder would do in North America, they're the general contractor and will generally budget for you, manage the project and the trades. They'll ensure quality and be your point of contact. Typically where I'm at they charge 15% of the total time and materials of the build.

You might have trouble finding good builders for such a small job. Depends on the market I suppose. Also you'll run in to restrictions on some land, some areas will not let you build really small places that are out of proportion to the neighbourhood. Depends how fancy you're talking.

But doing a really nice small space is a great strategy for saving money. You can use nice materials since you dont have a lot. Doing a lot of quality built-ins (cabinetry and the like) also will make a huge difference -- and is a necessity when going small.

Living in the PNW, I'm building a new house and I've chosen a dual fuel hybrid heat pump system as per https://www.bryantbing.com/products/hybrid-heat/

I'll also have solar + battery. Should be able to run the furnace & fan but not the heat pump (too many kW/h) during a power outage and thus heating with gas. It'll run off the heat pump for 90-95% of the year, only using gas on the coldest days, or during an outage. To go full heat pump for 100% of the year you need to seriously upsize the heat pump(s) and you wouldn't have performance during an outage.

WLED Project 4 years ago

I've been toying a lot with this recently.

A tip for anyone that's interested, you can order a compatible LED strip from Ali Express for much cheaper than Amazon, though you're going to wait several weeks. For example, do a search for WS2815 LED Strips and compare.

BTW, if you're doing just single color check out COB LED strips, they're pretty cool with the uniform lighting over the strip. Get them in 24v to avoid voltage drop.

LED Strips are lots of fun to play with and pretty easy to chop up, power and control.

My 6.5yo has just gotten access to an iPad to do some learn to read training through a specific app. No other apps permitted. Before this there was no access at all to iPads or computers and very limited TV time. We'll continue to slowly introduce tech with heavy guidance and restriction as she ages, but she'll be a lot less online than her peers seem to be. I don't really see this as a detriment.