The cost of owning a house

[JA2340 16]

I'm quite good at that too.

 

just post here and between us well easy get that cash spent!

 

Or, better still, just post it to me and I'll spend it for you! I'll even tell you what you bought for me with your money!

Win-win!

[pie-eater 207]

I would buy lots of pies.

[Karnidge 2]

I like some of those wide front doors, they look cool.

 

Does the little bit open too, or is that an option?

[DumbStick 13]

Here waiting for the builder dude and electrician type dude to show up. Today is when I show them exactly where sockets need to go. They already have a 'map' of the ludicrous number of sockets, but today is to actually show them. Will be the first time I go inside anywhere other than the ground floor too.

[DumbStick 13]

I like some of those wide front doors, they look cool.

 

Does the little bit open too, or is that an option?

 

It opens.

 

Well it does on the one we're getting anyway, I thought that was pretty much half of the point of them as well as looking good.

 

Ours is ordered, along with this spiffy remote control thing that locks/unlocks the door when you press a button on it. As long as you have the key in your bag/pocket of course. That one was a request of the lady.

[NoFakie 45]

When you've got the key, our car unlocks automatically by putting your hand inside either front door handle or the catch on the boot. Its well handy when you're carrying stuff. Or kids.

 

Our front door is just a single width one but we have a few sets of patio doors on the same side of the house and anything big to shift comes through them. The front door is one of the wood-effect Japanese ones which I think is solid insulation foam on the inside, and whatever it is it does a great job at keeping the cold out. We don't get any draughts off it at all.

[DumbStick 13]

Yes the remokon does seem like it might actually be useful.

 

Our door will be 6cm thick, K2 standard. Hopefully it will do the trick. (it ended up costing enough!)

 

[muikabochi 208]

6cm?! I just checked my front door - it's more like 3 and very possibly less in the middle bits.

Big solid front doors are good though.

[DumbStick 13]

And, it never ends!

 

Do we want normal but very uninteresting light switches (included), or do we want fancy light switches.

 

Stuff like that, you just don't consider it! Now the question is asked, those fancier ones sure do look much better....

 

[DumbStick 13]

I'll wait for Black Mountain to tell me what to do!

 

[DumbStick 13]

I asked the electrician today how many more sockets will we have than 'normal'....about double?

 

Nah, triple or more, he said.

 

[snowdude 44]

Yes the remokon does seem like it might actually be useful.

 

Our door will be 6cm thick, K2 standard. Hopefully it will do the trick. (it ended up costing enough!)

 

 

Ours is the same and insulated but not gone for the remotecon.

[snowdude 44]

Yes the remokon does seem like it might actually be useful.

 

Our door will be 6cm thick, K2 standard. Hopefully it will do the trick. (it ended up costing enough!)

 

 

Ours is the same and insulated but not gone for the remotecon.

[snowdude 44]

I asked the electrician today how many more sockets will we have than 'normal'....about double?

 

Nah, triple or more, he said.

 

Thats good because the standard in Japanese houses is way to low.

We have a lot more than normal although I dont know how much more

[grungy-gonads 54]

Choosing light switches sonds exciting!

 

[JA2340 16]

Turns thing on ...

 

We just installed a solar "non-solartube" light from Kimproducts. They are LED "lights" driven by a solar panel.

I'll check with David about the link, and post it here if OK.

 

(Edit)

KimProducts are at http://www.kimprod.com.au/index.html - have an online purchase cart & post to Aus addresses. Do not doubt at all that the stuff will be available in Japow.

Edited July 7, 2013 by JA

[NoFakie 45]

The system you've got looks interesting. Sunpipes bring in actual sunlight, but your system is lit using LEDs. How close is the effect to having a space lit by direct or indirect sunlight?

[JA2340 16]

The system you've got looks interesting. Sunpipes bring in actual sunlight, but your system is lit using LEDs. How close is the effect to having a space lit by direct or indirect sunlight?

Actually no pipes involved! There's a solar panel outside mounted on roof. That's connected to the LED bit with a cable.

Supposed to be North facing (in the Southern hemisphere) but ours is on a West facing slope, so we angled it a bit towards North to get more sun.

It starts working just before sun hits it, and continues until well after sunset (about an hour or so). Seems to rely on light rather than actual sun on it. Will be interesting to see how if functions on a cloudy day! It has been up since Saturday morning, so no cloudy days so far.

[NoFakie 45]

As an idea, it sounds good. With regular sunpipes, you are talking big hole in an existing roof, which has to be dealt with properly. Splitting the collector bit and the light emitter bit also lets you put the collector where it will work best (sunny side) and the emitter where you need it most (dark side). However, the downside is that the light its giving you is electric light, not sunlight. Normally that's a different quality of light.

 

I've got a couple of rooms under our roof that we currently use for storage, but they could be finished off and converted to proper rooms if skylights or sunpipes were fitted. With all the rain and snow round here though, I'm very wary of having holes cut in our roof. Ours is a metal roof, so its not just a case of sliding out a few tiles.

[Tubby Beaver 209]

Pardon my ignorance but what's a sunpipe

[NoFakie 45]

Its a tube through your roof. It has a dome (!) on the top and maybe some prism thing to direct sunlight down the tube, which is reflective on the inside, to a diffuser thing in your ceiling. It brings sunlight into rooms that don't have enough windows. In our case, we have a steep roof and the rooms in question are under it.

 

Sunpipes are much cheaper than regular skylights and can be diy-ed into certain roofs. Fitting a regular skylight is a much bigger job. In reality, I don't think sunpipes produce as much light as claimed, so it's probably better to fit a generous number of them.

[pie-eater 207]

If it has a dome, I think it probably will be a good way to do things.

 

[JA2340 16]

The "hole in he roof" thing was also a bit of a problem for us, as we needed light in a room that's directly under the attic. That'd mean a super bendy pipe, OR a bloody great pipe through the middle of the attic, not our preferred option! So, the LED solution is the way to go!

 

The light is not natural sunlight, but then, neither is the sunpipe one - it has been filtered, reflected and through a diffuser, so there's not a lot of difference. Work has a couple of the sunpipe thingys, and the light they let in is quite "white" as opposed to natural sunlight. The LED light is also quite white.

 

 

Looks like this outside ...

and like this inside ...

(Thank you Mr Google!)

[Thundercat 60]

Third world solutions! Apparently PET bottles give off the eqivalent of 50W light bulbs.

 

[JA2340 16]

Yep, still needs a hole in roof, and a short "run" to the area to be lit. Plus, they tend to degrade in sunlight, so have to be replaced regularly.

 

Problem with the sunpipe thingy is the hole and the losses involved. Each 45deg bend gives a loss of around 10%+, each metre of straight length gives losses of 5% or so.

And the hole still needs flashing and sealing. The work one has been a "running leak" since installed, due to ineffective sealing around the roof cutout, and fixing it is a right PITA, it now has a flashing that goes from ridge to gutter (around 4 metres) to stop water from getting in.