The Lance J. Technoweb

I have a large window in the front of my house and a roller shade was just the right window treatment for it.  But I also wanted to automate it. My MotionBlind Upgrade kit and my new roller shade I looked around to buy something that I was comfortable with, but simple non-automated roller blinds can be expensive, especially when they're larger than 6 ft x 6 ft.   This is disappointing, as a roller blind is just a tube with a small amount of synthetic cloth but can easily cost hundreds of dollars. Plus, since I wanted a smarthome blind, we're talking $500 or more from the "service oriented shops". I'm a tech guy.  I think can do better. After thinking about DIY and creative solutions, I decided to try out the Eve MotionBlinds Upgrade (MBU) kit.  This kit transforms an ordinary roller blind into a smart blind.  The MotionBlinds mechanism is basically consists of a small motor and battery in a long metal tube.  This motor tube slides into a roller blind ...

The apartment building we own has "common" lighting in the hallways and stairwells. Lighting accounts for our largest share of electricity. I've worked over the years to reduce the lighting costs. Here is how I reduced our lighting expenses by a whopping 90%. Pursuit 1: 70% savings by moving from CFLs to LEDs and reducing bulb count My first pursuit was to simply transition from CFL lightbulbs to LEDs. LEDs are generally lower wattage than CFLs, and given the extraordinary reliability of quality LEDs, I no longer needed in-fixture bulb redundancy. I happened to come across a set of Energy Star certified Cree LED bulbs and used them to replace all of the old CFLs.† This reduced the building's lighting expense by about 70%. This change also greatly reduced my labor costs, because the CREE LEDs have been 100% reliable for the past 6 years, unlike the old bulbs which needed to replaced every year or so. The reliability of the CREE LEDs have been so high that over the pa...

A few months back my dishwasher started to get noisy.  The wash cycle was taking a very long time, and  the dishes were coming out dirty. This turned out to be a water fill problem due to debris in my home's hot water pipes. In the end I solved my dishwasher's problem by flushing my home's hot water pipes.  Here is how I solved this problem. Dishwasher Problem Diagnosis After a few weeks of awful dishwasher behavior, I ended up opening its door in the middle of a cycle to see what was going on. It sure did look and sound like it was trying to pump water around, but it was clear that the spray was minimal. At first I imagined the problem was due to a clogged dishwasher filter or bad pump, but after disassembling all those things it was clear they were not the problem. Then I started to suspect that the dishwasher simply wasn't filling up with enough water. There was an easy way to test it: just add water. So at the start of a cycle I'd add about a liter of water and ...

An unfinished attic can be an extreme environment for electronic equipment, with conditions that are very unlike what is experienced inside normal living spaces. What's the deal with installing electronic equipment in an unfinished and uninsulated attic?   I wanted to install a standard WiFi router in my attic to function as a Wireless ISP (WISP) gateway. My attic is a fantastic location from a radio signal perspective, but it is an uncomfortable place for both people and electronic gear. Although the attic is well insulated, that insulation is on the floor, designed to keep the living space of my home at moderate temperatures. As a WISP gateway, my WiFi router is best mounted above the insulation and close to the roof, where the only protection from weather extremes is the wood of the roof and a layer of asphalt shingles. Equipment Specifications and Extremes Almost all electronic equipment has a set of specifications regarding operating environment. These specifications state the...

Modern US homes have a lot more electrical circuit protection than they once had. Ground and Arc fault circuits are great at preventing electrocution and house fires.  What is their power consumption? It's hard to be completely accurate here, but I've measured a bunch using a combination of my Kill-o-watt meter and my Emporia Gen 2 Vue .   My measurements suggest that these devices use roughly 0.5 watts each .  In total, that works out to 4.4 KWh per GFCI/AFCI per year: (0.5 watts x 8766 hrs/year) ÷ 1000 watts/KW = 4.383 KWh/year Again, this is an estimate . It could be 3.5 or 4.8 KWh per year, but you get the idea.  Total GFCI / AFCI Load On My Electricity Bill I have 27 circuits with these features ( 18 modern breakers and 9 outlets ). So multiplying 4.383 KWh/year by 27 circuits, and we get a total draw of 118.3 KWh/year. That's a measurable amount of money.  That's about $142 per decade using today's US-average electricity cost. The Cost/Value of GFC...

The other day I went into my basement and there was a puddle of water on the floor.  It turned out that my front loading clothes washer was leaking. The drum was full of water to the point where it was dripping out of the open door. Yuk! It appears that one of the washer's internal inlet valves has a slow drip leak.  I ended up closing the door and running a "rinse" cycle to pump out the water.  Happily, it seems like the very first thing the washer does is drain the drum. (A better design might have the washer pump out water on its own when it unexpectedly hits a high-water mark, but maybe there is a good reason not to do so.) Then I ran some loads of laundry because, hey, I still have to do laundry and no slow leak is going to stop laundry. Happily, affordable replacement washer inlet valves are available , and they are relatively easy to replace.  But there's bad news: I don't like to fix non-broken things, so I need to identify which valve (hot or cold) is lea...

I've been doing some serious electricity power monitoring at my house to see how I can reduce my electricity consumption and costs. I have an 8-sensor Emporia Vue home electricity monitor and a Kill-o-Watt power meter , so I'm well equipped to identify what is chewing down the electricity I pay for.  When I first installed my Emporia Vue, I found that my house was always consuming at least 128 watts of power.  I'll call this my house's base load.  What made up these 128 watts?  Phantom loads?  Let's Discuss! Phantom Load or Not? A phantom load, by one definition, is equipment that is always consuming some electricity even though it is not in active use. This is commonly understood as "standby power consumption".  But another definition of phantom load is equipment that is inexplicably consuming significant power for no known useful reason. We might call this "completely stupid power consumption". I had both types: standby power and crazy-off-the...

The outside of my house had an ugly nest of telephone and cable TV wires.  These wires were installed decades ago (between 1925 and 2005) and no one cared how it looked.  Ugly is a problem from reasons other than aesthetics: reliability and understandability.  My mission: Pretty up any potentially useful wiring, and remove any useless house wires.  Diagram 1: Wires Everywhere The east side of my home had a lot of wires, as seen in Diagram 1.  There was a telephone feed (red) that went to a telephone demarcation box, and then traveled along the building, where it finally popped in by the basement window.  In addition, there was a long-abandoned telephone feed (1920s?) that worked its way across the building and into to the basement. The cable TV wiring (blue) was bulkier and uglier.  It followed a slightly different route. The cable TV was also fed into multiple rooms by stringing it up along the facade.  I gave up using cable TV and wired telepho...

I wanted to mount an Apple TV, an HDHomerun, and a Ring doorbell transformer to a wall, but none of these devices have tabs or screw holes for wall mounting.  Happily, I found a way to easily and inexpensively wall mount equipment even if the device specifically designed with mounting in mind. There are a lot of expensive or complicated mounting options, but then there are cheaper AND better options. Specialized mounting brackets are available for many devices, but they can be stupidly expensive and then I'd have to wait for shipping.  Or I could 3D print some brackets.  My solution? I simply use zip ties and strategically placed screw-down cable tie mounts . Zip ties are very strong, and the screw mounts can be used to anchor down the zip ties while also preventing the devices from sliding out of position. This is actually far less wasteful than a specialty bracket. Special brackets use a lot of plastic. Zip ties may seem disposable, but they are actually reusable unles...

I've seen people repeat the false claim that dishwasher detergent pods should be thrown in the dishwasher, and not be placed into the automatic dispenser cup. WRONG!!! Throwing your dishwasher detergent pod into the bottom of your dishwasher results in failed cleaning, as anything at the bottom of the dishwasher at the start of its cycle is quickly pushed down the drain. Always put the dishwasher pod in the dispenser and close the lid   Why?  Because the very first thing a modern dishwasher tries to do is push out the majority of food debris. All the crumbs and ketchup and milk or whatever is quickly rinsed to the bottom of your dishwasher.  Then, everything on the bottom of your dishwasher is pumped out as waste, including your detergent pod.  Whoops! Here are the details of the typical sequence performed during a modern dishwasher run: Debris Rinse Cycle: Fill with water.  Knock debris off of items for roughly 5 to 7 minutes. Drain. Wash with Detergent Cycle...

Today I repaired the broken light controller of my Casablanca ceiling fan.  I could turn the fan on and off, but the light bulbs stayed on whenever the fan was running.  Here, I show how I easily fixed the controller board to restore normal operation for about $5. The problem I has was this: Pushing the "light" button resulted in some flicker, but the lamp remained "on".  The only way to turn off the light was to turn off the fan.  One of my many Hunter / Casablanca fans with lights. The fan sales guy I talked to wasn't interested in repairing my broken fan.  He said my only solution was to have a new fan unit installed for several hundred dollars.  That'd be a shame because other than the light issue, the fan is fantastic. Happily, I have found two ways to fix this problem for under $5.    The Repair Options I realized that the problem was inside the fan unit, and not the "Inteli Touch" push button controls.  It seems that all the "smarts...

I have an over-the-range GE microwave oven, and I use its surface light quite a lot. It's great for illuminating the stove top, or just brightening the kitchen a bit. Sadly, the bulbs it uses are a weird size and they burn out often. Here I discuss how I installed common and inexpensive LED bulbs in my microwave oven. Microwave Oven Surface Light with LEDs Most over-the-stove microwave ovens and exhaust hoods still use old-school incandescent light bulbs. They burn out rather frequently, and it's a pain to replace them because it entails removing the glass panel with a screwdriver. To compound the pain, the weird bulbs are stupidly expensive. And since each bulb uses 40 watts of energy, cost to run them (80 watts) is ridiculous. I initially replaced my microwave's 40 watt bulbs with 25 watt bulbs, but that's still 50 watts, and they're still burning out several times a year. I decided that I'd replace the lousy old bulbs with quality LED bulbs, but sadly nothing...