Advice The Home Improvement/Automation Thread

Valve1138 said:
Enjoy having so many garage projects you can never park in it.
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Garage project #1 is the early 80's Murray riding mower. It doesn't run, but I had a good look at it today and the rest of the thing is fine, just gotta get the engine (a 12hp Tecumseh) going.

Garage project #2 is gonna be stuffing a ductless heat pump in the garage, because right now it's electric baseboard and that sucks ass.

Garage project #3 might be a TDI swapped Corrado I'm trying really hard not to buy off a local kid. It'll make a fabulous daily driver, especially now that my daily commute is 50km each way on the highway.
 
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gee said:
Garage project #1 is the early 80's Murray riding mower. It doesn't run, but I had a good look at it today and the rest of the thing is fine, just gotta get the engine (a 12hp Tecumseh) going.

Garage project #2 is gonna be stuffing a ductless heat pump in the garage, because right now it's electric baseboard and that sucks ass.

Garage project #3 might be a TDI swapped Corrado I'm trying really hard not to buy off a local kid. It'll make a fabulous daily driver, especially now that my daily commute is 50km each way on the highway.
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I have, somewhere, an 8" thick book of Tecumseh manuals and parts and shit. Let me know if you need anything looked up, I'll dig through it.
 
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gee said:
Garage project #1 is the early 80's Murray riding mower. It doesn't run, but I had a good look at it today and the rest of the thing is fine, just gotta get the engine (a 12hp Tecumseh) going.

Garage project #2 is gonna be stuffing a ductless heat pump in the garage, because right now it's electric baseboard and that sucks ass.

Garage project #3 might be a TDI swapped Corrado I'm trying really hard not to buy off a local kid. It'll make a fabulous daily driver, especially now that my daily commute is 50km each way on the highway.
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ive had that engine. The carb is a big old ugly long body honker. Rebuild kits are still readily available.
 
I'll get the engine model # later today and see what I gotta do.

The deck's in decent shape, which is amazing for an 80s riding mower, pretty much every yard tractor on the local buy'n'sell groups is being sold with a rusted out deck. I'm curious what a good way of preserving a deck is... Like, should I haul the thing off, get it painted or powder coated, then coat the inside with asphalt undercoating or something?
 
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gee said:
I'll get the engine model # later today and see what I gotta do.

The deck's in decent shape, which is amazing for an 80s riding mower, pretty much every yard tractor on the local buy'n'sell groups is being sold with a rusted out deck. I'm curious what a good way of preserving a deck is... Like, should I haul the thing off, get it painted or powder coated, then coat the inside with asphalt undercoating or something?
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Paint the bottom of the deck in POR-15. It's kept my mower deck from rusting away (I have a craftsman now, which has a stamped steel deck instead of the cast aluminum deck my old Toro had when it expired, after 30 years of use).
 
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Jehannum said:
Paint the bottom of the deck in POR-15. It's kept my mower deck from rusting away (I have a craftsman now, which has a stamped steel deck instead of the cast aluminum deck my old Toro had when it expired, after 30 years of use).
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i did this too. Its peeling a bit now, but its been great overall
 
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Domon said:
i did this too. Its peeling a bit now, but its been great overall
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FYI, I've had peeling problems with POR-15 in the past, but it had to do with improper preparation.

You've really got to use some kind of rust converter beforehand (whether it's the aqueous MetalReady from POR-15, or something heavier like Naval jelly), even though POR-15 itself is lightly acidic, it doesn't cope well with anything more than a light coat of rust.
 
oh, i did not improperly prep. I know better.

I ground the whole deck down with a cup brush to bare (albeit pitted) metal. Then passivated the entire thing with naval jelly. Then used the POR15 metal wash prep solution, then POR15ed.
 
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Home automation Q:

My HRV has a humidistat panel in the kitchen, that switches the thing between normal and high speed mode. Which is kind of useless.

Since I'm gonna be throwing Ecobee 3's throughout the house... how feasible would it be to have a computer/Raspberry Pi/Wemos board/whatever remotely grab the humidity readings from the Ecobee's, and make a decision to run the HRV at full speed?

Openhab seems to have the capability to do it, but I don't really know a good way to start.
 
gee said:
Home automation Q:

My HRV has a humidistat panel in the kitchen, that switches the thing between normal and high speed mode. Which is kind of useless.

Since I'm gonna be throwing Ecobee 3's throughout the house... how feasible would it be to have a computer/Raspberry Pi/Wemos board/whatever remotely grab the humidity readings from the Ecobee's, and make a decision to run the HRV at full speed?

Openhab seems to have the capability to do it, but I don't really know a good way to start.
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I'd see if there's a way to get either an MQTT broker to poll the ecobees or get the ecobees to update an MQTT broker on their own.

Then you run the MQTT broker on the pi/wemos board/microwave/nintendo64 and have a consumer on that end of the queue make the decision.
 
Jehannum said:
I'd see if there's a way to get either an MQTT broker to poll the ecobees or get the ecobees to update an MQTT broker on their own.

Then you run the MQTT broker on the pi/wemos board/microwave/nintendo64 and have a consumer on that end of the queue make the decision.
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The way to do this is via homeassistant, which speaks via MQTT to most everything. Itll pull in the ecobee data, ingest and process, and spit out MQTT as appropriate.
 
gee said:
Home automation Q:

My HRV has a humidistat panel in the kitchen, that switches the thing between normal and high speed mode. Which is kind of useless.

Since I'm gonna be throwing Ecobee 3's throughout the house... how feasible would it be to have a computer/Raspberry Pi/Wemos board/whatever remotely grab the humidity readings from the Ecobee's, and make a decision to run the HRV at full speed?

Openhab seems to have the capability to do it, but I don't really know a good way to start.
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easy. Id go with smartthings and a webcore piston, but thats just the world i work in. Homeassistant would be the second choice, but I havent written code for that. Openhab and such are geezer unix greybeard solutions these days :D
 
Domon said:
easy. Id go with smartthings and a webcore piston, but thats just the world i work in. Homeassistant would be the second choice, but I havent written code for that. Openhab and such are geezer unix greybeard solutions these days :D
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Sick and tired of this "It's old, so it's bad" attitude from you fuckers.
 
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