New House Stuff Discussion

[RJ]

Arlo (Pro) is legit. Have used it for two years to monitor a residence that is 10 hours from me in SW Virginia. Using the free five camera set-up. Battery life and transmission range of cameras is great. If it gets really cold, that sucks battery life, but they can be plugged in as well. Software and system is easy to use. Alerts hit my phone in almost real time. I have Hughes Net at the house there and is works okay for the Arlo. There have been some software glitches along the way, but overall, a great set up for the cost.

ETA: The audio part of Arlo has been little used by me and is just okay. There is a lag, but that may be due to slow internet.

Thanks, I'm about to order their wired doorbell camera and maybe another couple of their battery-powered cameras. Appreciate the input.

[RJ]

Still working out the honey-do list this week. I am nearing the end of the electrical; two dimmers, a bathroom night light, two master bath fixtures, one guest bath fixture, a fan/light for the office, and today completed a pair of hanging lamps for the kitchen California top / bar stool area. Have to say the bar stool lights look cool, she picked an interesting vintage bulb for the clear globe lights. I have the DR light (a big one) to put up, and she now wants a dimmer switch on the bar stools. So far so good.

I was at Home Depot and spotted a flooring option for the garage to try out. These are 12mm 25" x 25" interlocking "gym" flooring. Pretty easy, they just come out of the box and get laid in place. I just made a 2 block x 3 block "rug" of sorts out of this package ($20) to see if I liked it. I do. It's in front of my kinda sorta workbench in the garage. I may get some more of this stuff.

[HeavyDuty]

Back to furniture… I am in the process of a split, and since I dumped the vast majority of my furniture before I moved here I need a full bedroom plus living room incidentals. I ended up going IKEA wood (no particle board) with a Casper mattress. The stuff is good enough for a few years, and I prefer the clean style since I grew up all Scandinavian modern.

[RJ]

Back to furniture… I am in the process of a split, and since I dumped the vast majority of my furniture before I moved here I need a full bedroom plus living room incidentals. I ended up going IKEA wood (no particle board) with a Casper mattress. The stuff is good enough for a few years, and I prefer the clean style since I grew up all Scandinavian modern.

We bought a Casper for the guest BR and a T&N Mint for the Master, and I have to say I prefer the Casper.

Our BR furniture (Riverside) suite is now delayed till “late September”, so we are continuing to use plastic moving crates.

[Darth_Uno]

Insulation question: My attic above the two-car garage has like zip for insulation. Plus it's open to the rest of the house, i.e. the insulated part to the garage is open for air to flow. I have whatever is code for attic vents, but no powered vent or turbine.

The garage has a passive 6" circular vent to a upside down U in the roof, presumably for CO and exhaust gas outlet. And I have a gas water heater, with a ducted flue out of galvanized sheet.

So with all that, is there any major problem if I shoot some loose-fill insulation up in there? I've never done that, but as a yute I helped my dad on all sorts of renos, and have spent many a unhappy summer putting down fiberglass insulation rolls in between joists in houses, sweating my you know whats off.

Lowe's has this "Attic Cat" concept, which is a rentable machine plus loose fill Owens Corning. It is R19.

Anybody use this stuff?

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Owens-Corni...rrier/50370322

Unless you're determined to nickel and dime the house, we insulate our new home garages with R11 walls and R19 blown ceilings. Remodel projects get R15 batts laid between the trusses. Blown is better, but it's "just a garage" and R15 batts are miles better than nothing at all. Unless you have a dedicated garage heating/cooling unit, no need to partition off the garage from the home - the ceiling itself (not attic space) is where most of the heat is both lost and absorbed.

[RJ]

Unless you're determined to nickel and dime the house, we insulate our new home garages with R11 walls and R19 blown ceilings. Remodel projects get R15 batts laid between the trusses. Blown is better, but it's "just a garage" and R15 batts are miles better than nothing at all. Unless you have a dedicated garage heating/cooling unit, no need to partition off the garage from the home - the ceiling itself (not attic space) is where most of the heat is both lost and absorbed.

Thanks, I think you described this new home builder accurately.

I plan to have a look up there soon; basically can I get safely into and out of the attic, in orde to get access to the joists. I read more on the blown in stuff, but got concerned about having to put in fences for the soffit vents, and hats for the hockey puck LEDs I have, so I started looking into the rolls/batts.

Appreciate the info.

[scw2]

I was at Home Depot and spotted a flooring option for the garage to try out. These are 12mm 25" x 25" interlocking "gym" flooring. Pretty easy, they just come out of the box and get laid in place. I just made a 2 block x 3 block "rug" of sorts out of this package ($20) to see if I liked it. I do. It's in front of my kinda sorta workbench in the garage. I may get some more of this stuff.

Would that flooring work well for an upright exercise bike indoors, and if so how many packages do you think one would need?

[RJ]

Would that flooring work well for an upright exercise bike indoors, and if so how many packages do you think one would need?

Sure, I don't see why not? It's that same stuff you find in gyms, for absorbing weights and such like.

The one package of 6 tiles you see in the picture was about $20 at Home Depot. Each tile is about 2', so that area is about 4'x6'; so maybe one package would work for a bike?

Pretty sure it's this stuff:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/TrafficM...DPHD/312491726

[frank]

Still working out the honey-do list this week. I am nearing the end of the electrical; two dimmers, a bathroom night light, two master bath fixtures, one guest bath fixture, a fan/light for the office, and today completed a pair of hanging lamps for the kitchen California top / bar stool area. Have to say the bar stool lights look cool, she picked an interesting vintage bulb for the clear globe lights. I have the DR light (a big one) to put up, and she now wants a dimmer switch on the bar stools. So far so good.

I was at Home Depot and spotted a flooring option for the garage to try out. These are 12mm 25" x 25" interlocking "gym" flooring. Pretty easy, they just come out of the box and get laid in place. I just made a 2 block x 3 block "rug" of sorts out of this package ($20) to see if I liked it. I do. It's in front of my kinda sorta workbench in the garage. I may get some more of this stuff.

FWIW, I had that flooring and tore it up pretty quickly. If you have a farm and home supply nearby, horse stall mats are cheaper and much more durable.

[Andy T]

Costco has a sale on Arlo wired doorbell/2 wifi cameras for $300. Mine will arrive tomorrow, although I won't be testing the doorbell for quite some time.