So car modding has taken a hit again so I can do more mods to the house. I have started doing some home automation and now have the lights and fans in the master bedroom, the living room, and the kitchen all on GE Z-wave switches controlled with SmartThings and by voice with Google Home. I also replaced my outdoor wifi controller for my firepit lights with a Z-Wave one so that it works with everything else.

The wall switches are not small and in some of my boxes has made it a little tricky fitting everything back in the box. Luckily, the electricians that did the house originally used a very standard wiring configuration for the 3way switches in the house so that has made things easier on me for changing out switches.




Little bit of a tight fit but I was able to get them back in.

I also wall mounted two TVs. One in the bedroom to get the clutter off the top of our dresser and make it less stress when laying in bed to watch TV by having it up higher. The other is outside in the screen in porch as I love being outside as much as possible in the spring and fall.

I used this bracket here that had great reviews and was at a really great price if anyone is looking. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The install in the bedroom was really easy. I didn't have to find studs since the previous owner had already had one mounted in the place and did a poor paint match job when doing the repair so I knew exactly where the bolts needed to go. They also already had a remote outlet installed and a piece of conduit run for cables down to the floor in the wall. Right now I am just using a chromecast though so not sure I will need that.



The outdoor TV was a bit more involved. The TV is under a roof but to maximize viewing and weather protection I really only had one place I could mount it. I won't be able to see it while grilling outside which is kind of a bummer but the only place I could have mounted it for that would have risked it getting wet and also made you look up at a sharp angle to watch it.

The mount


So I am mounting the TV above the outside door to my screened in porch. There is screen above the door as well. I needed to cover this area with something to prevent the rain from hitting the back of the TV possibly. I had toyed with multiple ways to address this. One was to board up the area and paint it the same color as the house. That would involve time of waiting for paint to dry and would not allow me to finish this project right away and I don't always have patience. The other was to use PlexiGlas to make a window pane behind the screen so you could still see through the area and get light but keep the rain out. This is the plan I ended up going with. I was able to get it up right away with a piece of Plexi from Lowes but it needs a little tweeking still. It is only bolted in at the top so I want to add some small corner blocks at the bottom to bolt the bottom part to so it is more solid. I decided to leave the protection film on it till I do that part.
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TV up on the mount.
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The TV I ended up getting on Cyber Monday actually turned out to be a great accident. It is a Roku TV with the Roku built in. I have never used a Roku period so I wasn't sure what to expect. My original plan was just to get a TV and I was going to connect a FireTV Stick and a Chromecast to it for viewing out in the porch. Turns out that Roku has a channel for Time Warner Cable and the Roku is able to act as another cable box for me. Which means I get over 300+ channels of my regular TV package out there without having to run a single extra wire which is something I was never expecting. I think I will still put the chromecast and FireTV out there as SlingBox works better with FireTV than Roku in my brief expierence.

Testing it out watching the final quarter of the Big Ten Championship game.
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Some better daylight pictures. In this position it is almost 100% shielded from the weather. This is with the arm extended all the way to the right which is great if only one or two people are out using it it shouldn't need moved. This is also the position it will always be stored in when not in use.
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With the arm all the way to the left it will make it easier to watch from the other half of the L couch. By using Plexi instead of a boarding in the area above the door you still get light into the porch when the TV is in this location.
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The only thing left really to figure out with the TV and I am not sure it is a huge issue is how to get it constant power. Right now if you look closely where the lights around the porch are you can see a white extension cord and that is what powers the TV. It happens to be plugged into an outlit for those lights on the ceiling that is controlled by a switch. I either need to put a smart controller on those lights and make that switch permanently on or find a way to get power from the receptacle that is down on the ground that is always on up to the TV. I haven't figured out which route would be better yet.

 

The white extension cord was the first thing I noticed


What I would do is install an outlet prior to the switch for the lights so you can get constant power. I did a similar install for my friends patio lights using PVC conduit and externally mounted boxes. worked like a charm!

 

Nice house Jason. Very nice.

 

Nice work on the TV mounts J. I'm guilty of the same in my bedroom, I patched the holes but you can still see where I mounted to the studs when I had my 20" up that I patched when I hung the 47" and bigger mount. I honestly think if/when I sell my house that I'm just going to leave that mount on the wall. Love the outside TV, I've been wanting to do that for years just never wanted to run the cable line outside

 

will be interesting to see how it lasts in the summer temps

 

Damnit really? Even with knowing it is there I have to look for it in those pictures besides the one of the backside of the TV.

The issues is the switch is inside the house not even on the exterior wall and then outlet is run outside with conduit to the surface mount box. My limited electric knowledge tells me that none of those wires would allow me to get a non switched connection from that outside conduit. I don't swear to be super knowledgable in that area though so if I am wrong please tell me.

I guess I could do conduit along the ground from the non switched outlet them up the porch post, all the way across the top, and around to the TV. would be a lot of conduit and not super clean. It would be awesome to pull down the plastic ceiling and see if I could find some connection up there to tap into but I have no idea how invovled that would be.

 

IANAE(I am not an electrician)
Does said switch so happen to be located on the wall facing outside? If so, you could always drill from the switch junction box outside, then essentially do a middle man between the wires coming INTO the switch. In theory, this would work.. It depends on how that switch is wired though, so don't quote me I wouldn't want you to burn your house down because of me

 

I talked to the place that I get all my home audio speakers from that also does installs and they have installed lots of TVs outside for people under covered porches. They say they last pretty long if you have them covered from the elements. The Temperature and humidity doesn't seem to bother them. They typically recommend people don'y buy specific outdoor TV unless they are mounted outside with no protection from the elements at all. A 40in outoor TV costs $2500-3000. You can buy a decent grade 1080p TV 40-43in for about $200-350. If it dies in 3-5 years so be it I will buy another one for the same price or possibly even cheaper by then and could buy many more for the price of an outdoor TV. I was even told they install TVs in bathrooms for people and those see much more constant humidty and drastic temp and humidity changes on a daily basis than a TV seeing gradual changes in temp over the corse of a year and bathroom TVs seem to survive. Honestly though we will see. That was one reason I wanted to get one as cheap as possible on BlackFriday/CyberMonday.

 

Unfortunately it is not. It is on an inside wall seperating my kitchen and my living room.

 

Boo..


Any outlets along that wall at all? You could easily tap in a socket using the same method (through the wall with some 12/2 Romex )

 

Are those Z Wave switches 3 ways? I've been looking for 3 way switches for my house forever but the wemo ones aren't compatible with 3 way.

 

I've been looking for 3 way too

 

I have an outlet outside already that is not swtiched. It just happens to be behind the sofa dead center under the left of the two windows.



I could run conduit all the way along the ground and then up the post of the porch roof and along the top. Or maybe even run it up along post into the roof and then bring it back down out of the roof with more conduit behind the TV. Again I don't know how much work would be invovled in removing the plastic slat ceiling in the porch.

 

All part of the fun of home ownership breaking shit and then fixing it


Up or down would work. Is your porch lifted and is there a crawlspace under the tile? It might look neater that way. Plus you can always paint match the portion of conduit that's visible to your exterior wall color.

 

Dead center under window sucks. Would be easier to go down than up in that case.

Is there no attic access in the porch? Another option might be to try and pull from an interior outlet if there's one on an interior wall near where you want the TV outlet.

Lastly, is your wall wired with 3 wire or 2 wire romex? If you have 3 wire, there's a chance you can set up the outlet on the wall to be "half hot/half switched". Do some reading on it.

 

Yes they are compatible with 3 way and 4 way switches. You have to replace all switches in the setup though. You need one regular switch or dimmer to replace the primary switch. They you get the GE Zwave add on switches to replace the other switches in the series.

 

No interior outlets near where the TV is unfortunately except on the same partial wall the switches are on inside which isn't an exterior wall.

The onyl attic area above is the half trusses that come off the side of the house for the roof.

I have not checked what the outlets are wired with but the switches have all been wired with 3wire romex. I will have to look into that cause at least that would allow me to keep using it with the exention cord but not have that part plug be switched on and off always.

 

I have not checked whether the crawl space extendeds out under the porch or not. That is a very good question. I have not had any reason to crawl under there yet. The floor of the porch is stamped concrete slab so I always just assumed there is no crawlspace under but I am not sure that would be a guarentee I guess.

 

Nice house! I don't think your dogs are spoiled at all...

 

Even half trusses are ok to run wires through provided you can access them. Do a search on half hot outlet wiring and see if it works for you.

 

Awesome, love it! If I were you, I would replace the outlet with a Z wave; half is ST switched and half is constant power (most of them at least) and remove the light switch or just never turn it off. You can get a variety of cover blanks from single gang up to God knows how many, that include one blank but that's just me.

If you use the light switch a lot and don't want to use G Home or the ST app to turn the other lights on and off, are the other Z wave switches you just installed close? You can get a smart app called double tap (think it's double tap) that will allow you to "tap" another Z wave on/off switch (I hear dimmers don't work well) twice, and it will control that smart outlet. Basically, it will be physical existing Z switch that turns on/off what it should turn off but when tapped twice, would turn that outlet on or off.

Just some ideas, since you're into ST

 

No they are not spoiled one bit. Yeah I don't think they have any idea how good they have it. The one shows it though so much. If it is time to eat and my gf or I is feeding them and the other of us comes home during that time she leaves her food to come say hi and gets so excited. She was a stray and was found starved at almost half her weight but yet people make her more happy than food it is crazy and so sweet to see at the same time.

If I could do a halfoutlet wiring by having neutral couldn't I also tap the wires halfway to the first outlet and use the line and neutral wire to power a seperate fully not switched outlet? Either of these options would be my first choice.

That is a great idea. Not a huge fan of having a blank however if I can't easily with minmal work do the other options this sounds perfect.

 

 

That unconditional love dogs have is the best! No matter what mood you are in they always put a smile on your face. I have 2 trouble makers myself, but would not give them up for anything!

 

Not sure on this. I tried to do the same in my office where all the outlets are half hot but I only want a few to be and it didn't work. I'm not an electrician and don't know enough to mess around with it so they remain all half hot.

 

So we got some snow this past week here in NC. Thankfully when my dad handed me down his old John Deere (from 1988) he gave me the snow plow for it as well. I personally love doing it for some reason. Just fun. Guess I am still a big kid. Cleared my driveway, 2 neighbors, and the private drive our small neighborhood is on.









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One Last show with the snow and Christmas lights.
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Love the last shot

Wish I had a tractor and a snow plow

 

What beer were you drinking while plowing the snow?

 

That's a beautiful house! Start up your own plowing company. I would be on that thing all night, clearing snow off the front lawn!

 

No drinking and driving

 

The right answer is Alamo Beer...

 

Thanks

Next year I plan to grow my lighting display. I want to do the small section of second floor roof line in the middle of the house as well as the 3 large holly trees in the front beds. Looking at the lights I need now since Lowes is blowing everything out at like 85% off. Might even finally make the switch to LED even though I prefer the warm glow of the incadecent bulbs.

 

you can find warm white LED bulbs too look for the "warm white" or "soft white" with the 4300K or lower Kelvin rating

 

pretty house. I'm more of a snow blowah though

 

Not enough snow for a dedicated tool.

 

??

 

What else do you use the plow for?

Beautiful house though. I always love the look of new snow in more mild climates. It looks so much more pleasing than the frigid wasteland we have here in the winter.

 

The tractor has a mowing deck I removed when I put the plow on.

 

Now that you're in a winter climate you'll appreciate how the incandescents burn themselves out of the snow. The leds just sorta make the snow glow but won't melt themselves out

 

I bet a reasonable sized blower would fit in the same footprint as that plow/mower deck.