The house we plan to build on our newly acquired site will be an unusually tall bungalow, measuring approximately 18 metres long x 10 metres wide x 9 metres high, with a steeply sloped roof and internal walls of Victorian height. The design aims for Passive House certification, requiring minimal heating and cooling systems. A heat exchanger will reclaim heat from shower waste water, reducing energy consumption. A thermal store tank will be used to pre-heat domestic hot water and provide space heating during overcast periods. The house will also feature a home automation system based on Home Assistant, allowing for intelligent control of lighting, temperature, and security systems. ...
The prototype of the Home Automation described in the first post has been built, featuring a handmade cove lighting system with 24v DC LED strip and a Devantech dS3484 board for automation. The board is chosen due to its affordability, scriptability, and Ethernet connectivity, making it suitable for Home Assistant integration. ...
The Devantech dS3484 board was received, having cost €75 inc VAT, a fraction of near equivalent boards from National Control Devices or National Instruments, yet providing similar functionality and using proper 12v powered industrial grade components same as they do. The board’s build quality is very good, with clean soldering and traces, every input and output buffered, and a wide range of voltages tolerated. ...
The Devantech dS3484 ethernet relay and input board was used to control a 24v AC power supply and MOSFET to PWM dim an LED strip. The board’s digital i/o were used to switch the MOSFET on and off, while its analogue inputs were used to read from a TEMT6000 photoresistor and a HC-SR501 PIR sensor. A dScript program was written to control the LED strip’s brightness based on the input from these sensors, as well as a potentiometer simulating a wall rotary dimming dial. The program also controlled the relay to turn the LED strip on and off based on the PIR sensor’s output. ...
The current market survey as of Q3 2021 shows that several options are available for true Gigabit Ethernet and 11ac Wifi, with the Orange Pi Zero 2 being the cheapest at €35 inc VAT. However, its chipset is not well supported, and there are question marks over its Wifi implementation quality. Other options include the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B and the Radxa Zero, which offer better support but are more expensive. The Rock Pi 3A offers gigabit ethernet and two PCIe M.2 slots, making it a good option for those who want to add their own 2x2 Wifi card. ...
The custom integration for Home Assistant was finally completed after several weeks of being stuck due to illness. It dynamically configures items in Home Assistant based on the board’s exports and switches to push updates if supported. This approach appears to be unique, making it a valuable contribution to the community. ...
The final design of the house is being submitted to preplanning this week, after months of work with architect Stephen O’Leary from Rebel Design Studio. The design has undergone significant changes since the original concept, with the master bedroom taking on a central role in shaping the layout and features of the house. The Passive House Institute’s design course was taken by Stephen, but this will be his first Passive House project. ...
The Passive House Premium is a net generating house that contributes much more to the grid than it consumes. However, due to the lack of a feed-in tariff for solar PV in Ireland and its low annual cap, it’s not economic to generate excess electricity on-site. The house design meets the RIBA 2030 Challenge embodied lifecycle carbon emissions goal if wood is chosen for all building materials. PHPP estimates that the Primary Energy Renewable (PER) demand of the house is 38 kWh/m2/yr, which is well under the Passive House Classic and Plus standards but not low enough for RIBA 2030 or Premium. The house design meets the RIBA 2030 Challenge potable water use goal. However, it does not meet the generation requirement for Passive House Plus, requiring an additional 50% more solar panels to meet the generation requirement. Diverting excess solar energy to a thermal store can significantly reduce mains electricity consumption, making it possible to meet the Passive House Premium standard. ...
The preplanning feedback was reviewed and rewritten in more concrete terms. The Planning Authority suggested changes to the proposed house design, including meeting the 2001 style guide, using only light-colored smooth-painted render on the outside, and not amalgamating sites that would reduce housing density. They also expressed concerns about the overall scale of the development and the design of the proposed house. These comments were addressed by redesigning the house to meet these requirements, including adding gables and reducing the width of the house to 17 meters. ...
The planners have moved a bit quicker than expected, with notification received three weeks ago that they intend to grant planning permission in early May if no appeals are lodged. The process of purchasing the sites will then begin, taking at least two months, and is expected to be completed once the land deeds are transferred into one’s hands. ...
The two-site planning permission for my future house build was granted, merging both sites into one. This unexpected turn of events allowed for a slightly longer house with an outhouse to be built. A thermal camera and security cameras were purchased for the site, with the thermal camera being used to diagnose faults in electrical wiring. The security cameras feature 4K resolution and can detect motion, sending alerts to a smartphone app. ...
The house build progress has been slow due to lack of replies from contractors and suppliers. Emails sent out for quotes have gone unanswered, with some respondents citing being too busy. Component suppliers are also unresponsive, likely due to high demand for solar equipment. Despite this, the author has managed to personally progress certain aspects of the project, including building a concrete block wall. The total spend on the house build is €121,481 over three months, with an average monthly spend rate of €10,494. ...
Groundworks have been laid down, including 300mm of hardcore, crushed rock, and a thin layer of gravel. Services ducting has been extended to the western wall, with mains electricity, broadband, mains water, and sewerage being installed. A new support column has been built to secure the wall, and structural support has been added to the far end. This work was completed by my sister Aoife, who pulled favours to get it done in just two days. ...
The Olimex ESP32-POE board has been running reliably for several months, with its three sensors posting readings to an Influx DB every few seconds. The board’s PoE circuit runs hot, but the temperature is well below the rating of its industrial-grade components. The ESPHome firmware has made it easy to integrate the board into a larger system, and its features have been a game-changer for my use case. ...
The past month has been blocked on finishing my 2021 company accounts before applying for a mortgage, halting progress on building my future house. Despite this, the wall of my container home has finally been painted and support beams erected, enabling subsequent work to proceed more quickly. A sheltered space has been created for solar inverter installation and wiring. ...
The earth rod installation was completed with four conduits coming out of the ground, each connected to a 16 mm² cable and a half-metre underground earth rod. A soil test revealed a silt loam soil, suitable for vegetable growth but with potential drainage issues. Wiring work on the intelligent solar charge controller progressed, including the addition of a 3Ah LiPo battery and four MOSFETs for PWM dimming. ...
The mortgage application was submitted after a long wait, with many months spent collating documentation and waiting for responses from the bank/broker. A satellite image of the site was purchased, showing detail at 75 cm per pixel resolution, although this is lower than Google Maps’ resolution. The image was bought from SkyFi, a company that sells aerial images in smaller chunks at affordable prices. ...
Despite losing two weeks to the WG21 meeting in Issaquah near Seattle, good forward progress was made on the future house build project in the past month. The mortgage broker handling Permanent TSB and Bank of Ireland applications came back with unhelpful lending conditions, requiring a €350k cash deposit for a mortgage. This creates a significant hurdle, as it is well beyond the owner’s means to save such an amount. ...
The Ground Air Heat Exchanger (GARE) installation plan looks like this: A top-down view doesn’t convey everything going on there: the GAHE enters the house via an underground pipe, and condensate from warm humid air meeting cooler earth drips downwards. The pipes are made by Rehau, a Swiss polymers manufacturer, and need to be installed this summer for optimal performance. ...
The mortgage offer was issued by AIB, with an Approval in Principle for 3.25x income, which is below the legal cap of 4.0x for first-time buyers. The valuation was carried out by Liam Mullins & Co estate agents, who valued the property at €490k, a high figure compared to recent sales in the same estate. ...
The “lego” concrete blocks, weighing 1.4 tonnes each, were purchased for €68.10 inc VAT and delivery per block. They have a volume of exactly two thirds of a m³, making them good value compared to ready mixed concrete. The supplier’s pricing was likely influenced by the blocks being made from leftover concrete in their trucks. ...
The Zehnder ComfoFond-L Q ST air-ground heat exchanger has been chosen over the Ground-Air Heat Exchanger (GARE) due to its lower cost and simpler installation process, which can be done by anyone. The buried loop is being installed with a single straight run of pipe, reducing the chance of leaks and freeze damage. The estimated cost for this installation has been reduced from €20k to €7k. ...
The earth retaining wall was excavated down to 240 cm below the top of the neighbour’s fence pole. A trench was dug using a 90 cm wide bucket, revealing subsoil that was distinctly different in colour from the topsoil. The subsoil was then tamped flat and levelled using a tamper. Crushed rock was poured into the trench and also tamped hard before the ‘lego’ concrete blocks were dropped in on a perfectly level base. ...
The house build has been stalled since my last post due to my attendance at an ISO WG21 C++ standards meeting in Varna, Bulgaria. Despite the negative atmosphere, progress was made on P1030 std::filesystem::path_view. I have now started work at Monad, a US-based crypto fintech, which should enable me to close the cash funding gap for my house build by the end of summer. ...
The concrete ‘lego’ blocks at the back of the western wall are being stacked temporarily on bare unlevelled earth. They need to be removed, the ground levelled and packed crushed rock laid on top as a foundation, and then the blocks laid into their final positions. The weather is not looking great, so it will take three days to complete this task. ...
The house build is progressing slowly, with little visible change since the last post. However, several tasks are being carried out, including the installation of blocks, a levelled foundation, and tamped earth and crushed rock. The temporary blocks installation has been completed, and a little back room has been created to gain a roof in the future. A water feature is planned for the front of the earthen mound, but it will take time and money. ...
The western wall wiring is finally complete after a good five months later than expected, with all systems fully working and functional when mains power is provided via a generator. Broadband internet, Wifi6 access points, security cameras, floodlights, LED strip lighting, lithium battery storage, and office and shipping container wiring are all operational. ...
The solar panels were installed at a forty degree angle rather than the planned forty-five degrees due to the terrain’s influence. The legs of the structure were chained horizontally to ground anchors and the top of the shipping container, with each chain capable of handling 250 kg or 150 kg respectively. The Q Cells 375w solar panels arrived, measuring 1.72m x 1.05m each and weighing 20kg. ...
The site has been prepared to receive the professionals who will turn up and start building my future house. The mains electricity is available, security cameras are monitoring the site, and there is a live feed via the internet to my rented home and phone. All lighting is working, and the work office is functional. The solar panels and storage batteries have been installed, and the system has been debugged after a week of debugging. ...
The TV is a Philips 65OLED937 which What Hi-Fi? summarised in its review as ‘One of the most all-round spectacular TVs ever made’ (having used it for the past few days, I would concur). Originally retailing at a cool €3,500 in the EU, I got it for €2,300 in the Black Friday sales. The display is indeed very good. Not quite as good as my Samsung Galaxy S10 phone’s display which remains the best I’ve ever laid eyes upon personally, but no I really could not fault the LG OLED panel in that Philips TV. ...
The post describes various components of the author’s future house build, including DC wall dimmer switches, ventilation boost fans, CAT 6 networking, and MR16 bulbs for point lighting. The author discusses their choices and experiences with each component, highlighting their features, pros, and cons. They also share empirical testing results, such as temperature readings and power consumption measurements, to inform their decisions. ...
The house build process has made significant progress since my last post. Plans were finalized and sent to the builder, who returned with questions that will be answered early next week. This marks the beginning of a series of exchanges between the builder and us before he signs off on the structural engineering design. ...
The mortgage would get drawn down before it expires in May. All was looking rosy. Unfortunately we had to go get a new builder, so we have been pushed back by six months to the end of his queue and the cost of the build has jumped by over €100k. ...
The groundworks are being laid for the house, with a layer of T2 stone crushed rock being installed around the perimeter. This will support the crane dropping in the timber frame panels and other heavy machinery, as well as serving as foundations for the footpath, patio, and driveway. The service popups will be installed later, after their locations have been marked out by a surveyor. ...
The groundworks guys double-triple-quadruple recommended to be done the sewers for the house until no more heavy machinery would be traversing the site. The completion of the outhouse has jumped up the priority queue, blocking us from moving into our house. The design of the outhouse was needed for planning permission and has not been touched in over a year. ...
The structural calculations for the outhouse buildup have been completed, and the design has been refined to remove the heavy concrete roof. A new mortgage application is being processed after the previous offer expired, and Passive House certification is proceeding slowly due to other priorities. The aurora borealis was visible in the area, with vibrant colors seen by the naked eye, but unfortunately, cloud cover obscured the view. ...
The timber frame supplier’s queue has been stalled, and the house build has made no progress for three weeks. Meanwhile, a 1:200 scale model of the site was printed using an Anycubic Kobra Go printer, and a full-size print of the main house is being prepared for a commercial online printer. ...
The first draft of General Arrangement (GA) drawings arrived from our Timber Frame Supplier, finally enabling forward progression in my house build. This starts the clock, and the Gantt chart can now be shown with some expectation of accuracy. Assuming no unpleasant surprises and sufficient cash flow, the outer walls should be up by February 2025, and it would be complete enough to move in before April 2025. ...
The past two months have been marked by stagnation in the house build project, with little progress made on the GA and SE drawings. Despite initial optimism, the first draft of the SE drawings was completed, but subsequent work has come to a halt due to summer holidays. The likely erection of the timber frame is now pushed back to Spring 2025, a disappointing development. ...
The BTS7960 H-bridge is being used to drive a ventilation boost fan, which has been successfully tested and found to work well with an ESP32 controller. The fan can be controlled at any speed by adjusting the PWM output from the ESP32. However, there are still some issues to resolve, such as detecting air flow direction and dynamically adjusting the fan reverse to keep air flow stopped. ...
The ESP32-C3 Super Mini boards arrived from Aliexpress, but mine are the flawed design which puts the Wifi antenna too close to the external 40 Mhz clock, impacting reception badly. Despite this, it found an identical list of Wifi APs as my phone and reported signal strengths only a bit worse. The boards have 400 Kb of RAM, 4Mb of flash, run at up to 160 Mhz, and have a 32-bit RISC-V instruction set. They are single-cored, missing hardware floating point, but do have hardware crypto acceleration. For €1.50 inc VAT delivered, that is a whole load of computing for the money. ...
The structural engineering design for the house has finally been completed by Structural Engineering on November 11th, marking a significant step forward in the build process. The designs were completed after a formal complaint was made regarding the lengthy timeframe, with the company subsequently improving their work rate and quality of output. ...
A year-long project to automate the blinds in a house using 3D printing and motorization has finally been completed. The original IKEA Fridans blind was chosen due to its low cost and simplicity, with the goal of creating a fully automated system that would be affordable for a large number of windows. The project involved designing and 3D printing custom parts to replace the manual stick at the side of the blind, as well as selecting and integrating a motor and driver board that would meet specific power requirements. The final result is a functional and efficient motorized blind system that can be controlled using an ESP32 microcontroller. ...
The first post of 2025 has finally arrived, after a week-long Christmas break in Cornwall with Megan’s family. The house build project has made some forward progress since November, when it exited structural engineering and entered joist design queue. A draft of the joist design has been received, which proposes running joists left-right, but this conflicts with the highly insulated fresh air duct for ventilation. ...
The solar panel system has been performing well since its installation in Autumn 2023, with only a few uncontrolled outages due to configuration issues. The Sungrow hybrid inverter has worked flawlessly, and remote management and monitoring have been enabled through cloud service integration. However, the time series data from this integration does not capture the nuances of solar irradiation and battery charging, making it difficult to estimate total power capacity. ...
The BMP390 barometric pressure sensor was tested with the ventilation boost fan, and it showed a relative accuracy of +/- 3 Pa, which is four times better than the BME280 sensor. The sensor was attached to the fan using sellotape, and measurements were taken for various fan speeds. The results showed that the BMP390 sensor has a stable reading with minimal drift, unlike the BME280 sensor, which had a strong bias towards air direction. ...
It has been a month since my last post about house building, and there is big news - not of a ‘yay they’re going to start building my house next week variety’, but rather of a ‘I probably will have to hit pause on building this house’ variety unfortunately. The end of last month saw the termination of my contract with my current client, leaving me without a regular income and unable to complete the house build. ...
The house build timeline is being updated, with a set of design plans being provided by the timber frame supplier in 2025. These plans are being signed off by the architect, while the builder’s design is being derived from the architect’s design and modified to match the constraints of the build technologies used. A series of images and videos is being shared, showing the different stages of the design process. ...
The post describes a project of building a video AI inferencing PC out of old spare parts and hardware from Aliexpress, using Blue Iris software for IP security camera control and analysis. The system is powered by an Intel Pentium G3258 CPU, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, and an nVidia Tesla P4 card, which provides 192 GB/sec of memory bandwidth and can do about 5.7 TFLOPS in FP16. The PC runs on a 2008-era case with a custom fan adapter to cool the AI accelerator card. ...
The HLK-LD2412 human presence detection radar sensor is a small, low-cost device that can detect the presence of humans in a room. It uses radar technology to achieve this and has a range of up to 6 meters. The sensor can be configured to detect stationary or moving people, and it can also track multiple people in an X-Y space. However, its algorithms can either do stationary human detection well OR multiple human tracking well, but not both at the same time. ...
The Naber Thermobox non-return valve has been tested and found to have a u-value of 0.775 W/m²K or lower, making it a suitable solution for extracting cooking fumes in a certified Passive House without compromising its thermal integrity. The five-chambered unit is expected to have an air leakage rate of around 5 m³/hr at 50 Pa, meeting the requirements for airtightness. ...
The CFSensor XGZP6897D differential pressure sensor has been tested and compared to the Bosch BMP390 barometric pressure sensor. The results show that the XGZP6897D is stable, reliable, and good for its price, but it has a high noise level as a percentage of signal, which makes it less accurate than the BMP390. However, the XGZP6897D’s differential design eliminates the problem of absolute drift in barometric sensors, and it doubles the signal to be measured. ...
The proprietary cloud solutions used by the site were replaced with a custom infrastructure to run GrapheneOS on the new phone, which requires segmenting Google Play Services and only running necessary apps. This means notifications cannot be pushed through Google Firebase, necessitating a separate notification push solution. Ntfy was chosen for its large user base and reliability, offering simple text message pushing with optional attachments and configuration options for access control and TLS certification. ...
The design goals for the Outhouse were met with a nearly complete set of construction detail, allowing for a long post. The architect’s original design was modified to meet minimum legal habitable standards in Ireland while minimizing costs per square meter. The use of bulkier and cheaper insulation, such as white EPS70 board, was chosen to reduce thermal bridging and simplify calculations. ...
Contact the webmaster: Niall Douglas @ webmaster2<at symbol>nedprod.com
(Last updated: 2025-10-07 18:15:55 +0000 UTC)