I guess you can ask yourself: "How many times have I left a light on by mistake?" and "If I leave a light on overnight how much does that cost me?"
How many times I've left the light on is pretty small, and with LED lights the cost is trivial. I'm more concerned with the "did I turn the X light off" when we're half way to the airport and won't be back for two weeks as far as that is concerned. It's also kinda nice to be able to use a remote control so you can turn the lights off without getting out of bed. At my dad's old place he had a fancy smart switch in "our" room (it used to be my bedroom until I left home and it became the guest bedroom which, for a time, meant it was only ever used when my wife and I stayed). You could press buttons on the wall to turn the light on/off or brighten/dim, and he also had a little remote control that would fit on a keychain that did the same thing. It meant you could get into bed and then turn the lights off, rather than having to get into bed in the dark. Sometimes smart homes seem like a solution desperately seeking a problem, although it is nice having a smart air conditioner so if we're out on a really hot day I can check the temperature remotely and tell the air conditioner to turn on full blast for half an hour, to either lower the temperature for the cat or make sure we don't come home to a furnace.
I'm starting to lean towards accepting a couple of hundred $$$ in cable rather than a thousand or more for fancy switches. I'm also thinking how well smart switches will work in a house that still has lots of period features (100 year-old woodwork, a hand made fireplace etc). So I guess it's going to be time to run a load of cables all over the house. Yay me. I started pulling a cable for a new circuit this afternoon but soon realised I don't have the wall boxes I'm going to need. I figured I'd wait and buy the boxes, rather than running a bunch of cable and leaving it pretty much hanging in the air. So I got busy sanding and staining a patio table I've been making. Now that is sitting in the basement waiting for the stain to fully dry, and I can put the clear lacquer coating on it. Maybe it will be ready to go out on the porch by Monday.
Prep-work before 4 twelves Thu through Sun. Tricky balance: haul carpentry work piecemeal, level area, hoist hose-house onto platform and install hosereel for 3/4" wet down at 250'. Using pressure-treated redwood 2/6s for 24" rise. Should have time to get the basic unit done by Sun pm. Build enclosure for reel later and install milk-house heaters for both reel and hose storage area. New 1-1/2" fire hoses. This is so needed. Millwrights using jury-rigged hose hookup with little pressure for wetdown. Leave hoses stewn all over. Juggling 2 trailers. Want it done before possible retirement.
Thinking about exhaust fans for the basement. I've been staining and lacquering a patio table I built out of wall studs, which needs ventilation. I put a box fan in one of the few windows in the basement but it's not an ideal solution, not least because it essentially means the only security in that window is a bug screen. I'm thinking what I might need to do is find a couple of smallish exhaust fans so I can pump air in through one window and out through another, which will be better than trying to pump air through part of a window. I also need to reconsider where I do the staining. At present it's in the same room as my big saws, which isn't ideal because it means when I've got something drying I can't be running the saws - the last thing I need is bits of sawdust getting stuck on lacquer that's almost-but-not-quite-dry. The only other obvious place to do it is in the same room as the furnace, which might be good for the extra warmth to help things dry faster but I'm not sure if the furnace will play nicely with the VOCs that stains and lacquers inevitably release.
I have a 10x10 canopy tent, but I'd rather keep stuff indoors. If I drop the sides of the tent I potentially have the same problems with ventilation and if I open the sides I gain the ventilation but also gain bugs and blowing seeds and stuff. It's also more of a drag in the winter time when the low temperatures make everything take longer to dry.
Well my wife saw the finished table and loves it. It's just waiting for the last coat of lacquer to dry and it can go out on the porch. We've been home most of the afternoon so the box fan has been running in the window for hours.
Discovered "endorphins" which the body begins to release after repeated bouts of exercise, particularly with some aerobics. Thought it might be yet another health issue, as it seems to stimulate the lungs especially. Nope. It's a long-lasting euphoria. Sheds new light on the benefits of aggresive physical activity and seems it would be well worth the strain, but offers no relief from pain and exhaustion. It's basically work and crash for some (ahem). I am told that years could be added, with continued mental acuity to boot. Interesting turn of events, as my posterior is increasingly keen about being sat upon. No endorphins in that
Locals enjoying their fireworks - money going dangerously up in smoke, imo. The formal, organized displays are pretty cool however. Sparklers for the kiddies, also.
Struggling with motivation and focus today, so did a job that technically didn't have to be done but the OCD part of me wanted done. An old armored cable that used to run between two switches (both of which are now removed) is now coiled up in the box of dead cables. It could have stayed and just been tucked up inside the wall and ceiling but I figure if I'm taking out the old wiring I might as well take it all out rather than leave bits. It took a bit of doing, part of it was flexed through a tight spot, but with a little help from Mr Hacksaw to cut it at the most awkward turn I pulled some out one way and some out the other way. Now I get to drill a bunch of holes in the ceiling and run some new wire that will ultimately power a light and ceiling fan. But for now it will just power a light.
I think we're pretty much decided on regular switches, at least for most of the house. If we go for the high-tech doodads it will most likely just be in the bedrooms, where it's handy to have a remote control for them beside the bed. In the meantime I'm going to change the existing flip switches to rocker switches so they at least look similar. Which means before long I'll have a bunch of lightly used switches and face plates to sell. Wonder what value I'll be able to recover from them....
More tinkering with wires. Looking to get rid of a single strand of knob-and-tube that has been bugging me for a while, which means I need to get a neutral feed into an old circuit. The original design was truly bonkers, linking two circuits together. One of the circuits is long gone so what is left is a bit of a botch. Once I've got this piece of work done at least all the circuits will be self-contained, and I won't have any more stupid situations where the live from one circuit returns via the neutral of another. I've got most of the prepatory work done, now it's just a matter of joining up some cable to make sure it all works and then getting inside the breaker panel to finish the job. From there I can pull down the cable that's bugging me.