The Quarky Engineer

Fall colors are really coming in as the trees change, and interior trim work has started. Audrey refers to the house as ‘furry’ at this stage, as all of the insulation is done. We are experimenting with doing a lightly trimmed window in a more modern way ( not drywall wrapped, but similar with wood trim).

The flat roof sections still need to be installed (metal roof there), and the siding and exterior trim is at about 80%. Painting is following the trim closely and should hopefully finish up next week.

The driveway is getting prepped, and power has been conduit routed along the driveway on both sides. I did a power outlet every 75 feet or so on both sides of the driveway all the way from the house to the gate, with the front half fed by a dedicated meter at the gate, and the back half fed by the house.

It looks like we will need about 28,000 sq ft of asphalt. Back of the envelope says that is a tad over 1 million pounds of asphalt, and probably another half a million pounds of rock.

Based on the remaining work I would guess we will move in late January to early February, which isn’t terrible given we started the project in June of 2017.

In order to get power at the gate, which is about 1000ft from the house I added a dedicated meter. I’m pretty lucky that when this driveway was originally laid out there were 6 extra 2″ conduits installed all the way from the house to the street that I can use for data and control. I just got a 1000ft roll of 12 fiber single mode, plus 3000ft of shielded Cat6A.

Next up is to dig the footers for the gate and the control system. I’d like to have the control system automatically detect our cars and open the gate without interaction. Some kind of RF system should work for that… something to research. I considered putting an HID reader, and then I can add my friends HID cards (from their work, etc)…

I also need to figure out some kind of small fiber splice cabinet to terminate the fiber into, as well as to house a switch and few other things.

Back into the whole-house-audio stuff.. I mentioned previously the need for something to handle 12 audio zones, and in those 12 zones a total of 38 speakers (19 stereo pairs). I have so far found three reasonable solutions, but would love to hear if anyone knows of something that I missed. The key requirement is to simply be able to play a number of sources in any combination of zones.. however the number of sources is pretty small, so 3 or 4 sources. There really isn’t a reason I would want 12 different things playing on all 12 different zones.

Solution 1: HTD (Home Theater Direct) – They sell a ‘Lync’ system that is exactly 12 zones, and if you buy more 12 channel amps as many speakers as those zones need. It has room controls (touch pads over Cat5+), supports voice assistant integration (alexa, etc), phone/app control, etc. The switching matrix by default has 5 inputs, but can support 12 additional ones… but really that isn’t needed as the practical use case is almost entirely listen to music or podcasts, both of which can stream off an Apple TV or the like. The pricing of the HTD stuff is very good, and they support end user installation and configuration.

Solution 2: Russound – Their MCA-88 system can support up to 36 zones, so 12 is doable, and they have the same streaming support, input support, and room controls. Their in room controller is a bit older tech looking, but the single biggest negative is the Russound stuff requires a dealer to install/config. I really really really dislike that as I don’t want to have to rely on someone else to do configuration changes, and I certainly don’t need the installation help.

Solution 3: Sonos – Sonos now sells either a dedicated ‘AMP’ module that is a sonos controller and amp mixed together, or just a standalone line-level output Sonos controller called ‘PORT’. I really don’t need a dedicated sonos controller for every speaker pair (and the cost would be pretty high at 19*$700). If I used the PORT modules as sources and drove those into a multi-channel amp system that would work, but I would still need 12 of the PORT modules for 12 zone, which is paying for independent functionality that isn’t needed. I could use a Sonos PORT as as ‘source’ in either of the above two systems if I wanted that functionality.

I’m leaning towards HTD.

I have color coded the house speakers for determining R and L channels. I’m not sure if it is better to have the imaging in the same direction, or the opposite. If I were to reverse some of them, there would be more intercepting area where you would hear a stereo effect.

The blue lines represent zones, and there will be 12 zones for the upper 2 floors, 38 speakers, plus 2 more zones and 6 more speakers on the lower level. I’m going to need 4 of those 12 channel amps, which do 100w per channel for a total of 4400w (44 speakers total).

The little red rhombuses are the subwoofers, which I also need to assign to zones.

Any input on the layout and channel orientation?

The trees be a changing. It is interesting to note the higher ratio of deciduous trees near the house as a result of the previous clearing of large fir trees, which allows the maples to come in quickly.

As for the house, insulation work is still going on inside, and siding and painting outside. The driveway is getting prepped, and I think in the next 2 weeks I will pull the 1000ft 12ct fiber from the house to the gate. #DoneIn2020

Insulation is under way. We are using a mixture of materials for different parts of the application. The walls in the lower garage and shop start with closed cell foam, and have R19 batts applied on top of those. The primary purpose of the close cell phone there is to seal up the garage/shop from the rest of the house, and the batts are a material designed for acoustical isolation as well as the standard thermal properties. Interestingly the batts are somewhat eco -friendly in that they use a natural plant based binder as well as sand, so no phenol-formaldehyde.

Most of the main and upper floor walls are using blown in high density cellulose insulation, which with the 5.5″ thick cavity gives the walls an R19. There is some closed cell on the walls with concrete foundation exposure, as well as the areas under the metal roof (effectively actic-less). The main attic will be blow in with 18″ of cellulose (R60). Some of the longer walls have rockwool insulation for fire prevention.

The deck coating system is also getting installed. It is a sealed membrane system with a stainless steel mesh followed by a concrete like polymer material in multiple layers.