Hi PrepHole
I was lucky and inherited a house from my grandma and grandpa. The thing is huge, 320m^2. It was built in 1985 and I think it's time for a renovation. My current plans are to renovate the 3 bedrooms to use as a clothes room, bedroom, and work room while I renovate the rest of the house.
My current main focus is writing down what electrical renovations I will do. I plan to replace the whole electrical since I went through electrician education but never got licensed, and then get a friend electrician to vet it.
I am planning to sort the electrics out in a way that I can afterwards "smartify" the house. Because of that I've been eyeing a latching relay setup with pushbutton switches. My main concern (and reason why I am eyeing latching relay setups) here is however, that I am going to be pulling lots more wires for multi-switch setups if done the traditional way.
Is there any good reason NOT TO GO with latching relay and pushbutton switches? Except for the feel of clicking them.
I've also got the concern of not being able to use a lit up switch as an indicator a light is switched on in the pushbutton setup without connecting a separate line to the pushbutton to signal from the cabinet which seems very wasteful.
Nobody does direct switching of lights. Everything is relays, unless you´re wiring up a garage or similar. But if the house was built in 85, I dont think you´ll need to replace all the wiring, unless you´re in the eastern block where you´ll want to replace aluminium wires.
Is everything relays? here in croatia even new stuff still has direct switching? I thought relays were in the minority in general. Kinda eastern block, possibly alu wires. main reason for rewiring is because there are too little outlets and light fixtures so might as well do it all.
I dont know about croatia, sorry, but definitely check you wires. Alu is pretty bad, a fire hazard and all that. Im in germany and everything Ive seen here is relays.
he used m2, and even thought about using relays, so I figured hes not south american.
seems overly complicated. I designed a self powered relay circuit board and had some made by jlcpcb. they work pretty good but I don't see any reason to wire my whole house with extra circuits and failure points.
and when he says latching relays does he mean self powered or true latching (bi stabile).
>I thought m^2 might give it away.
no I thought something fell on your keyboard or the cat jumped on it.
>no I thought something fell on your keyboard or the cat jumped on it.
Btw latching din relays you can buy off the shelf from Kopp or Schneider or other reputable brands. It is a relay when pulsed switches.
lathing/self powered relay
resets to de-energized state when power is lost.
circuit board I designed.
the main board can control 3 other boards of pic related. which can handle 30amps using the connectors on the top of the relays.
>Nobody does direct switching of lights. Everything is relays
except for everybody does direct switching of lights.
>Is there any good reason NOT TO GO with latching relay and pushbutton switches?
why would you install "latching" relays?
so you can have pushbuttons instead of switches
https://www.houseofantiquehardware.com/premium-push-button-light-switch
20 seconds on google
thats neat, but since hes in europe and might want a smart home as he says, hell have a 24v switching circuit with relays. I dont know how they do it your side of the pond, but thats the way its done here.
>thats neat, but since hes in europe
I had no way of knowing that. also who uses relays in house wiring?
I thought m^2 might give it away.
Do you have an example of that somewhere, I never ever saw 24V switching circuit except for hallway lighting in one home. It was a 4 switch hallway.
Huh cool, guess I'm doing relays then, I wanted to anyways. Any idea if I could get the switches to somehow light up (if I had a switch that supported it) based on relay state? I suppose running a separate signal line for that would be the most common idea?
I think Eltako are the relays we use, I dont know about light up switches, there might be double contact relays that let you run one 220v and one 24v line, but as long as you get light ups at 24v you shouldnt worry about cabling since its very small and pretty cheap.
>Eltako
Thanks I'll have a look, but yeah I'd probably need double contact and then run lines to the switches. It seems like double the wiring but as you said, such low current the wiring is so cheap.
Nice 🙂 but probably won't be wiring up with DIY boards 😀
These latching relays are expensive but slowly they'll be worth it.
Look up the wire you need for led light ups, but Im pretty sure you can use the same "signal" line wire as the relay uses.
One more question, let's say I'm hooking these things up to some sort of smart home stuff (which will for sure be DIY since I am an embedded firmware developer). I either thought of using DPDT relay to use that LED power line for example to signal to uController that the light is on or detect the signal on the signal line. Signal line would be cheaper but do people even do that?
Im way out of my depth on that, best is to watch a video or something on smart home stuff, all I do is wire up stuff. You should be able to use the LED line as a "detector" line, but again, dont quote me on it.
Don’t destroy your walls like OP.
I mean he did chunk off a bit too much. I bought a wall runner saw to cut holes for conduits out so hopefully I won't be making too much of a mess.
Yeah thought of something like that.
I have many more rooms, these are just the first 3 to renovate and they will be used temporarily as a clothes room (washer dryer iron), and a work room.
My list of rooms I do have is: 3 basement rooms, 1 kitchen, 1 dining room, 1 huge living room, 1 small toilet + 1 small bathroom, 1 entrance room (shoes n shit), 3 bedrooms, 1 big bathroom + big toilet, 1 big workroom, 1 server room, 1 small storage room.
wall chaser*
Ah, so its a utility room, makes more sense. I thought you wanted a room closet. Will you put a kitchen(ette) in there too? You already have water and drain, I presume?
The other kitchen is still usable so I'll be using that for now 🙂
ok. Do you plan on saving any of the old interior?
A bit of it but not most. Some oak stuff I’ll keep.
One piece of advice: Get a real wood polisher for refinishing floor, I never quite recovered from doing it with a hand sander.
Yeah whole house is wood floored so I'll need it for sure. I'm only unsure what to do since there are gaps that have developed overtime from wood shrinkage on some bits.
Get the same wood (since its oak it should be easy) and cut strips with a circular table saw, and stick them into the gaps. Glue in if necessary.
Also: why do you need a clothes room? Wouldnt you want a living room/kithcen and a bedroom/workroom?
I get that there's a reason for using relays in large commercial buildings but why the frick would you use them in a house? Is it to save money on romex or something?
Again, I dont know about the US, but here (western europe), its not normal to directly switch the line power. Maybe because of 220v110? I suspect there could be more issues with arcing at higher voltages.
220v is not high voltage.
I don't know why you backwards savages do that but I suspect it's poverty.
How is poverty having money to put in switching relays?! They ain't that cheap.
The flooring is kinda dark right now but no idea what the original color is.
Ironically in my parents house the only thing relay switched is the basement. But it does have like 5 switches so might be that reason.
Id start sanding off the top surface of the wood that has the finishing applied at some corner, then look for wood that fits. I have some filler strips in my floor, it looks fine.
signal wire is cheaper than romex. I really don't know. There's just something about it that smells third world to me.
Of course. A more complex, more flexible system, costing more than a direct approach, with no issues concerning arcing or spotwelding, smells third world to you. Have you ever seen wiring in the third world? I give you a hint: they didnt take advice form europe.
>It's more flexible
>We use conduit
Hard pass.
Have fun, must be easy pulling wire between two wood panels.
That too lol.
Even if I (OP) wanted to I couldn't. My walls are not drywall panels on framing but made of bricks and cement. We have real walls over here in Europe.
Also invest in one of those slitting saws to cut cable channels, if youre gonna redo everything you might add some more outlets or lamps.
Already mentioned I did actually get a wall chaser as it is called 🙂 That exactly the plan, more outlets, more lamps, and prepare wiring for automatic blinds, wire internet absolutely everywhere etc.
I prefer my houses to last for a hundred + years thank you.
>wall chaser
ah, you learn something new every day. All I got was slitting saw.
Really go big on the network cabling, cat6 or better might seems expensive, but you dont want to be stuck on cat5 and barely making things work. Dont ask me how I know.
As someone running a homelab I can immediately tell you I will. Sucks on your part :. I'm planning ca6a or cat7, currently a 50 eur diff over 300 meters so might go for cat7. We'll see in a month or two tho. I'm also running shielded fiber between floors and to work room/server room.
very nice. Its nice living in a (somewhat) finished home, but you always get the wish you had a clean slate again. What are you home-lab-ing?
Currently a 80TB plex server, home's got 1/1gbit which is 10/10. From other stuff, just general services, bitwarden, nextcloud, rtorrent shit like that (a million services I forget, all dockerized of course). Server is custom built usex xeon 1245 or something like that I forget, 64 gigs of ram. Currently running old used cisco switches but planning on buying new mikrotik gear for the house.
Playing with fiber right now, plan is to run OM4 fiber as the house backbone between floors 0, 1, 2. Copper to basement to hook up basement automation shit, no need for bandwidth. Fiber to work room, living room, server room (which will contain the main networking equipment so duh..). Also have a set of 8 security cameras from reolink to be used around the house to protect from gypsies.
This is as good as I can get it tbh, the house and the ground it's on is worth around 350-400k EUR. With renovations and shit requiring ~ 50k EUR over a couple years the value will only rise. I wont sell it anyways since it's a great house and there is no reason to do so. Planning to have 2-4 kids which will make me remove the office room on the 2nd floor but at that point I'll buy out a small place for my office if necessary.
I have plenty of time since I'm 24 right now. About to be married soon too 🙂
Man, you´re living the dream. I wish you the best, and maybe post an update on your house in a couple weeks/months, I´d be happy to see it.
Thanks :). Starting work on it on 01.07. we'll see how it goes, I'll post progress pics for sure, especially when I figure out the electrical and the switch lighting which I really really really want (I think lol). I hope to get the first 3 rooms done by christmas to be able to move until then but we will see. I have 30 days of unused vacation so definitely some time to work.
If you need any more advice, I´ll be happy to help, if I´m able to.
One more! And thanks. Stupid question but, am I a moron to be running separate data (copper) and power? I'd think it would be protected enough from the interference but I don't want a possibility that some day, my future dumb self drills into a power conduit and shorts power to copper and fries my whole network.
Interference isnt an issue if you use shielded cable, but shorting might be. If you run big enough channels, cable usually moves out of the way, so at worst youre nicking insulation. Also the first thing you touch in shielded cable is the shield, which (if I remember correctly) is grounded.
Hm right, gotta check my local code though, Croatia permits tons of crap so I don't think it would disallow this but better to check.
Did you put any thought into photovoltaics? Dont know the pice per kwh in your location, but if youre running decently big servers 24/7 it might add up.
Yep, I'm planning on applying for one of those renewable energy grants. House is also turned very much southwards (10 degrees off I think) so it's a good place.
And croatia gets a lot of sun, so youll get good returns. Certainly better than here.
I'll bet this house is older than yours.
You put in conduit, fish a wire thru if needed later. My house is not a cardboard house, it's made of bricks and concrete. I have no "drywall" to pull wire under.
Also I just noticed what conduit means to you. Conduit here is that bright orange plastic shit that gets cemented/electricianputtyied into the wall.
I'm getting real tired of you people pretending having a house made of cinder blocks is something to be proud of.
Here's a lath and plaster wall that I'm restoring. If you would rather have cinder blocks, I don't know what to do for you.
Having wall cavities to pass wire through is just the icing on the cake.
bricks =/= cinder blocks
>more complex
more failure modes
>more flexible
Just run more wires and buy more relays! >costing more
poorgays owned
What failure modes?
Relay gets stuck: swap relay.
Regarding more wires and more relays, sure the relay costs more, but the wires are signalling wires not power lines. They are thinner and cost less.
Costing more while doing the same thing is the textbook definition of engineering failure.
not really the same thing, much more flexible (especially concerning stuff like dual switching circuits), easy automation/central control, easier to expand.
So let's say a nicer car than a fricking Yugo is an engineering failure? It does the same thing?!
Signal wire might be but the relays aren't. Also we don't use whatever Romex is, we use conduit and pull wires through that.
I'd use them since I want to do a lot of home automation afterwards and its much easier and safer to design custom hardware that will just send 24V signals to the relay to switch than to design hardware to switch actual 220V.
In eastern europe direct switching is quite common, tho I do often see arcing through old switches.
That ends up looking fine? Interesting.
it doesnt look perfect, but its normal for older wood floors to develop gaps, so its a "normal" look. Is it dark or light?
I think because of the higher voltage the spark gap is longer, thus the switch would need to be closed much faster than at 110v. Its probably easier to do that via a relay, and only switches that are seldom used (garage, workshop etc) are direct.
Wouldnt it be much cheaper to use direct switches? And even at 110v there have to be provisions for fast switching, I assume its worse at 220v.