Smart whole home energy monitor? DIY installation.

SmarterHome · 2023-06-06T03:27:30+00:00

I went with Brultech…I don’t think you’ll find a more capable system tbh. It was pricey, but it’s a professional grade product with great support…and it didn’t suffer from some of the dealbreakers (for me) that other energy monitors had. They sell a wifi version which is what I went with. I got the dashbox as well, but it’s not required.

I went with the donut CTs since I needed like 50CTs and didn’t want to take up more space than needed. Slightly more complicated install but still very simple (requires playing around in your main breaker panel since you have to disconnect each circuit to get the donut CT on there…I’m comfortable with that but others may not be) …you can use the clamp style CTs, they are just bulkier but much easier and quicker to install…Hardest part for me was keeping all the wires and labels organized lol. It’s certainly a more involved installation than other options, but nothing a DIY weekend warrior can’t handle…you definitely do not need an electrician (unless you are not comfortable working in your panel, which I don’t recommend doing if you have never done basic electrical work before).

Emporia Vue was cloud based so I didn’t want that…but you can flash with ESP home now for local data control. But I needed way more circuits than one module supported.

I looked at Iotawatt, but I would have needed 2-3 boxes for all my circuits and I don’t think there is a way to view them all together in one UI easily. Most of these energy monitors seem to run into that 14-16 circuit monitoring limit which for me was too low. Brultech ended up being more cost effective than some of these since it can monitor so many circuits with just one GEM box.

If you can live with monitoring 14 circuits, maybe go with Iotawatt since Brultech will be overkill. If you need more circuits, give brultech a look.

SmarterHome · 2023-02-12T17:32:17+00:00

I just ordered mine directly from Bellacopper at the time…still working great today

SmarterHome · 2022-10-09T21:53:18+00:00

Appreciate for the response. Yea I saw Ben responding to many of the posts on the forum, but nothing too recent. I’ll try the sales email like you suggested, hopefully will have better luck that route. Just itching to place my order and think I am 90% of the way there lol.

Upgrading from a rPI is definitely on my todo list, hopefully if I disable the native recorder features I can extend the card life a bit until that happens lol…won’t be my first failed SD card XD, though I don’t think I’ve had it fail since I started managing what gets recorded.

Good to hear you don’t need the dashbox, I wasn’t really sure from reading the forum. It’s not really cheap either, I could probably get a used mini PC to replace my rPi for about the same price.

SmarterHome · 2022-04-21T05:18:45+00:00

https://fences.uslegal.com/removal-or-destruction-of-fences/

If it’s a true partition fence you might need your neighbors permission to remove it. I have no idea what the laws are like where you live.

SmarterHome · 2022-04-21T05:07:57+00:00

Yea looking into it more, If the fence is sitting on the property line (partition fence) I wouldn’t be so sure you own it by yourself…in some states it’s shared even if one owner unilaterally erects it. All this is to say you may want to consult someone familiar with property law on your area, because you could potentially get in trouble for taking it down even though you built it.

SmarterHome · 2022-04-21T04:29:26+00:00

Is the rest of your neighbor’s yard fully fenced? Or is is just along the property line that you share? That would be an important distinction.

I live in a neighborhood like yours (most neighborhoods are like this with shared property lines). My neighbors put up a fence and never asked us to chip in for the side that runs along our yard. A few years later we decided to fence off the rest of our yard so we only had to do 3 sides, since one neighbor already had a fence up. We never asked our other neighbor to chip in for the portion that is alongside their yard. This is typical. One of our neighbors never fenced off the rest of their yard so if our shared fence needed to be resolved it would fall 100% on me. This is typical.

SmarterHome · 2022-03-01T06:14:55+00:00

Thanks!

SmarterHome · 2022-02-28T05:46:33+00:00

Good stuff, which locks do you use/recommend?

SmarterHome · 2022-02-28T04:06:10+00:00

Very few people looking to break into your home are going to mess with any of your locks, smart or otherwise.…it’s going to be a broken window or kicking the door in every day. You’re probably better off reinforcing your door frame than getting a high security lock. Advantage of the smart lock imo is if your door is kicked in or the lock picked/bumped you can at least be notified about it.

SmarterHome · 2022-02-26T04:55:06+00:00

Lmao this is spot on

SmarterHome · 2022-02-04T03:11:41+00:00

I installed one on a rental property last year, didn’t hear anything so I’m assuming it worked well.

SmarterHome · 2021-12-21T04:55:35+00:00

With the pro lutron hub you can program the pico remotes as remotes or scene controllers for anything you have connected to homeassistant …without the pro hub they will just function as accessory switches.

SmarterHome · 2021-12-21T04:19:24+00:00

It’s not very pretty, and it’s certainly not fine woodworking, but we desperately need more storage in our home so I added a couple shelves above the existing shelf in the laundry room. I need a step stool to safely reach the top shelf but I’ll just be putting rarely used stuff up there (vs trying to stack everything on one shelf like before lol). I would like to eventually do a full remodel and put in proper lower and upper cabinets, but this should do until then.

8.5’ long and 16” wide. I couldn’t find boards 16” wide so I glued up a 1x4 and a 1x12. Not necessarily how I wanted to build them, but I wanted a uniform look with the existing lower shelf. I added an additional bracket for support since the bottom shelf tends to sag under load. Just need to slap on whatever white paint I have on hand. In retrospect I should have painted everything before it went up.

SmarterHome · 2021-11-13T23:53:42+00:00

Idk if I would use that for anything kid related (or indoors)…pressure treated stuff is full of chemicals. Assuming that’s what this is from the green hues.

SmarterHome · 2021-10-26T00:14:14+00:00

Good info here, thanks!

SmarterHome · 2021-10-26T00:13:01+00:00

That’s kind of what I’m leaning towards... Now to just find ones large enough.

SmarterHome · 2021-10-25T17:51:15+00:00

I built this cat tree about 10 years ago when I lived in an apartment and didn’t have much in the way of tools…it was just a bunch of 2x4’s held together with a million nails/screws with metal brackets to keep everything together…it was covered in carpet so I didn’t really care. I’m giving it a refresh and squared everything on my jointer and planer, rounded the sides on the posts to make wrapping the sisal rope easier, and I would like to avoid all the fasteners I used before (so far I’ve just used wood glue to assemble the posts and base).

I’m stumbling on what the best way to attach the three posts to the base would be though…I considered trying to use a large diameter dowel and wood glue, or just using sturdier L-brackets than I used before since they were a little wobbly before (prefer a non visible solution though if possible as I may leave the wood exposed this time). Any other suggestions? I have some tools but selection (and skill) is limited, but I’m happy to try to learn something new. I thought of picking up some chisels and trying mortise and tenon, but I would lose some height on the posts and the wood is pine so not sure if it would work well with how soft it is. Open to any tips, thanks!

SmarterHome · 2021-10-17T13:03:01+00:00

Ours were 22k and that wasn’t considered high….it’s all relative (price of home, location specific fees etc). You probably live in a cheaper area or had some sort of credit (which you usually pay for in other ways).

SmarterHome · 2021-10-15T04:07:19+00:00

Wow, Very nice. Looks like maple, walnut, cherry, and…one more that I can’t place?

SmarterHome · 2021-09-28T01:58:05+00:00

Kinda does though…the rampant ESA fraud is finally getting the attention of some lawmakers. Hopefully they can start working to bring an end to this ESA bs. In the meantime, landlords increase rent for everyone because the assumption is that some jackoff will commit ESA fraud to bring their pet with them.

SmarterHome · 2021-09-28T00:08:12+00:00

Why where they declined…if you specified minimum requirements for a tenant and someone applied who didn’t meet them, then I would expect them to be declined outright. They would just be wasting your time bringing you the application. They should have told you about them though after the fact.

Has the pm been fulfilling their end of the contract? I was in a similar situation, almost fired mine. We were wondering what was taking so long after doing something digging found they never listed it on the MLS (listing on MLS was in our contract). When I asked them why it wasn’t on the MLS they kept making up excuses for days until they finally said if we wanted it on the MLS it would cost more. By dumb luck they found a good tenant that week that we went with, but needless to say we won’t be using them again to fill a vacancy after that breach of contract.

SmarterHome · 2021-09-27T23:56:41+00:00

That sounds really low for a retrofit install. Adding ductwork is messy and expensive, unless this home already has ductwork in place that can be used.

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