The catalyst.. Due to the recent garage fire... and realizing how lucky I was, I decided to get really focused on fire and CO protection for the house. After some research, I decided to do the install updated fire alarms... that are powered (wired) if possible without crazy work. Where it would be prohibitive to wire them I would do battery ones. My requirements are: Can connect to the network and have the ability to send alerts to my phone. Check for smoke and CO Have both audible alert (Alarm) and voice. (I have 12 year old twins, and based on research, having a voice say something like “There is a fire in the garage” helps them understand they need to take action compared to just a random beeping. Can be managed by a phone/computer/tablet... I.e. turned off. For example, the fire alarm in the kitchen (which is next to the garage) had the battery pulled. I didn’t know that. When I asked the boss (my wife).. was told it constantly went off due when cooking.. was annoying so took battery out. Needless to say, that won’t happen again now that we actually had a fire. Ideally integrated with my other home automation solutions (Nest, Alexa, etc..) Devices communicate, so if for example there is a fire in the garage which is on the other side of the house.. the alarms across the house go off, not just the garage one. To me, its something you purchase once, must work and frankly the way my house is configured its worth it (my bedroom is on the main floor and on the other side of the house from my kids and inlaws who live on the terrace level.. I.e. Basement.. . So I have a lot of people to take care of and ensure are safe. If that fire had continued, it would have lit that wall on fire and gone directly to my kids room on the second floor and the basement where my inlaws bedroom is. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do everything possible to both prevent it from happening again and provide the kids and inlaws. the most amount of time and notification to get out of the house. Net result based on my research (and integration into the other home automation stuff I have... (yea I’m a technology geek).. is the Nest Protect alarms. Due to the number of alarms I need its expensive, but I found some deals etc and as stated above, this is no longer an area I’m going to pinch penny’s on. Total alarms being installed: 6 wired alarms 2 battery alarms Where are they being installed??? 1 in the upstairs garage (wired.. pretty obvious why due to the catalyst for this project) - (wired) 1 in the kitchen/entry from the main level garage - (wired) 1 in the inlaws garage (terrace level and directly below my bedroom) - (wired) 1 on the inside ceiling of the room on that leads to the terrace garage (wired) 1 at the top of the stairs to the basement (Battery) - couldn’t get a wire to it without massive wall destruction.. 1 in the inlaws bedroom (wired) 1 at the top of the stairs in the main part of the house (wired) 1 in the shed where I’m now putting all my batteries (battery) Next step was to order them and do the wiring... both are complete.. Ceiling above the stairs.. The order also came in last night... so now need to install them.. 2 up top are the battery ones. 5 on the bottom are the wired ones... the 6th I was playing with while typing this out.. Now off to install these bad boys.. and finish my updated home networking project (OK.. this was scope creep.. more on that a little later). Go big or go home as I always say..
I don't have any Nest products. I do have a RING doorbell and a few RING cameras around the house. My house was built with wired smoke alarms. It is required by building code here. But, they are builder's grade crap. I might replace a couple of them with some Nest wifi smoke alarms. The most likely places for a fire to start in my house are the kitchen or the garage. A kitchen fire would most likely start while I am in the kitchen, cooking, and I keep a good fire extinguisher handy. My garage is a separate structure, about 20 feet from my house. Both the house and garage are covered in brick. The garage door and side entry door are both steel. It would be pretty unlikely a fire could spread from the garage to the house. CD
Nice! We use Nest products too. Ease of use and accessibility is fantastic. We got the outdoor cameras, one indoor, and a couple smoke/carbon monoxide alarms. I hope next time you're notified of your garage that's about to burn down
A good friend of mine had no smoke alarms or fire suppression in his shop. He lost everything on a late Sunday night. Four classic Brit cars reduced to cinders. Luckily the shop was not close to the house.
Ok - so I set them up.. granted I’m in the honeymoon period but they are nice. I tested the “night light” feature in the in laws beadroom. Wow it works like a champ. For example, when they get up at night for whatever reason, it’s 100% black.. can’t see anything. Now when they step away from their bed it lights up.. and they can control how bright. They don’t have to find a flashlight or turn on the lamp. Really happy with that. Let’s see long term. Also in the common areas with wired ones, you can set it to a always be on. Also nice in initial testing.. I’ll report back in two weeks (on the road tomorrow through Monday else would report in 1 week. Yup - that is what saved me. The fire extinguisher was right there. That said, I did order 4 more... they will be here this week. Nice.... I dream of that. Would love to have a shop like that..
Yea - I’ve been super happy with my thermostats.. so off the bat I was leaning that way.. really are nice, well made and saved me 9 hours of AC/Heat last month.
Man - that really sucks! I wanted to say the car that you can see was a Triumph spitfire.. but its no when I zoomed in. What is it? My house is older and I don’t have fire suppression in the garage. If I did an addition/change to the house by code I would have to add... which I would. If you asked me prior to the fire I would blow it off... can’t say that now. Now I would put it in even if not required. Needless to say I went a little overboard on the fire alarms compared to what many would think. But to me, its now worth it... not only for family after but also for my projects. Almost lost the 88M5 and the boys RZR. The GP2 and 03M5 wasn’t in the garage at that point. Crazy..
Quick update - so I installed all the fire alarms. They appear to be working like a champ. I’m traveling this week. When I get back, I will take a few pics and maybe some video of them working. Really happy with this.... now for the “scope creep”.... or the normal tuner scenario of “Since I’m in there”... For this project my scope creep much to the dismay of the boss was “making sure the network wasn’t a problem”. In all seriousness, I’ve lived in this house for 13 years and the network has been an issue. Spotty coverage on wireless and I couldn’t run iRacing or Forza 7 with my kids without it randomly dropping. Literally the boys would say “Dad you just disappeared” off the track. So I’m also solving that problem. The “logic” is... since I’m going to have a drywall person come, lets go ahead and fix some other issues.... yes I could do the drywall myself. But frankly, it just not something I enjoy. I started here: Upgraded my thermostat wire to 8 strand so I could support a next for the downstairs unit.. “since I was there”... I also ran two conduit runs for future use if needed and CAT6 and RG6 to the upstairs and garage. Now every bedroom and more importantly... the garage has both CAT6 and RG6. At the same time I fixed the wireless coverage by adding in wireless access point distributed across the house. These are pretty slick. They are Ubiquity AC-PRO that run Power over Ethernet (POE). Note in the picture above, just the Ethernet cable is there powering the access point and providing a hardware communication path back to the switch. Now that I had a plan.. had to start buying the parts and tools (of course.. always need more of those)... this is just a small number of them. Here is the main trunk of wires.. already punched down in the patch panel. At that point, I then terminated them in the walls... “B” standard Then put the covers over the wires and put on the face plates.. here is the “final” wall image.. The BBQ competition trophy approved..
Now its time to setup the network cabinet... Here is the current state with me testing and configuring everything. Once I’m done, I will clean it all up and make cables to fit etc.. for my OCD.. All in changed the network to support gigabit.. with Ubiquity USG, AC-PRO, 16 Port POE switch, network cabinet.. still researching how to handle the RG6.. appears there is a different between standard cable (Comcast) and direct TV. I.e. splitters and patch panels are different.. go figure. Cloud Key - fully manageable from anywhere in the world: POE switch to power the access points.. and in the future video Initial “testing” configuration... yea its a mess.. I’ll clean it up. No worries there. Round two.. in this case (on top of the painters tape) its a Ubiquity edge router.. think I’m going to move to the USG (Ubiquity Secure Gateway).. fully integrated system with UniFi. Both have the ability to do Virtual LANs (vlans), quality of service (QOS) and deep packet inspection (to help ensure my twin’s don’t “Grow up” to fast on the internet...
You got me thinking about putting sprinklers in my garage. My garage/shop is about 100 ft from the house. If all goes well, I'll be adding three more bays to the garage this summer, that'll get it closer to the house! I can add fire suppression when I'm adding on. I already have CAT 5 up to the garage. I think I'll skip the cameras, I have windows.
Wow.. 3 more bays.. that would be nice! Wish I had a separate garage.. but not in the cards right now. Regarding cameras.. only reason I will do that is we live pretty much “in town”.. on busy road. I’ve had some crazy things happen like a stolen car out of the driveway.. but in general now issue especially once I put the gates up. That said, I have two external sheds that have somewhat valuable stuff in there. It’s really more to monitor those and scare off any would be bad actors who are thinking about doing something.. they at least would see they are going to get filmed.. at least until the knock them down. If that were to ever happen. Similar to a alarm sticker.. that’s most of the prevention right there.
You are correct Sully, that is or rather was a very clean Spitfire. There was also an early MGB, a restored Bugeye Sprite & a restored Morris Minor Traveler awaiting final assembly. All the cars were covered by insurance except the Morris Minor. Lesson there is make sure project cars are insured.
Agreed - I’ve kept insurance on the 88M5 while the engine is out.. Regarding the cars that went down.. that sucks.
Does nest offer off-site recording. I pay RING 99-bucks a year for unlimited recording on their servers. CD
Yes - that said, I don’t have any of their cameras yet. Also their doorbell is on pre-order. Its released in March... Rign is a good product. When I get the nest doorbell in, I’ll post about it.
Here you go - will find the link to the service itself. https://nest.com/cameras/ But that will be tomorrow.
When we bought a new house a couple years back, the 2nd gen Nest smoke alarms had just been released a few months earlier and the reviews were good (some issues w/ gen 1, I heard). I put 6 of 'em in the house and my wife loves the nightlight feature. I've got 2 nest thermostats (my 3rd house having a Nest thermostat) and I installed them before we even moved in... that's how much I love those things! It's great to be able to turn your house into 'eco' mode when you go away on vacation and then turn everything back to normal when you are getting on the plane to come home. My wife also likes to sleep very cold, so I appreciate a good scheduling app and being able to stay under the covers and dial up the temp when she goes too far.
So....what caused the fire? I have two good sized fire extinguishers in the shop and one in the kitchen, but my shop is under the bedrooms and my wife lives on the other side of the clock..... I'm all about buying tools when you need them and Klein makes really good stuff, but I have a punchdown tool that I doubt I'll ever use again, along with the crimper to put 4, 6 or 8 wire ends on Cat 5/6 wire you would have been more than welcome to them.