Lanx
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Home Improvement
- Thread starter Picasso3
- Start date
Intrinsic
Person of Whiteness
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Just to show the Wyze pro quality it is very nice. During the day it’s spot on. At night you can see people or cars about 70 feet away, but since it’s night vision you can’t make full details out. I mainly blame me not fixing the settings and having the porch light on. As an example here is the day time.
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Intrinsic
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Figured out today that the coat closet downstairs has a light fixture mounted to the wall with a fuse screwed in to it. So was playing with that thinking about where to centrally locate the NVR and PoE switch. It’s where the existing, non working, ADT box and stuff is from the previous homeowners.
After that went to put my SD card in the doorbell for local storage while figuring out the other stuff. Dropped it in and put the doorbell back on, but no power suddenly. Took it back off to check I didn’t strip any of the leads. Reworked one of them bc it was squirrely. Still no power.
Turns out I pulled the chain on the light fixture 3 times; so OFF, ON, OFF. That is where my chime and doorbell are getting power. Would like to rewrite that somehow. Need to take the coats and vacuum out and just do an inventory in there. The ADT stuff was powered from something and it is on the opposite wall of the closet.
After that went to put my SD card in the doorbell for local storage while figuring out the other stuff. Dropped it in and put the doorbell back on, but no power suddenly. Took it back off to check I didn’t strip any of the leads. Reworked one of them bc it was squirrely. Still no power.
Turns out I pulled the chain on the light fixture 3 times; so OFF, ON, OFF. That is where my chime and doorbell are getting power. Would like to rewrite that somehow. Need to take the coats and vacuum out and just do an inventory in there. The ADT stuff was powered from something and it is on the opposite wall of the closet.
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Lanx
<Prior Amod>
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Some lazy-ass electrician (or previous homeowner) just grabbed the nearest wire instead of bothering to figure out how the circuits were set up.
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Intrinsic
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Had to jump on a call when I got back home but snapped this.
The black box I'm guessing is part of the chime / doorbell system. Pull cord on the light turns the doorbell on/off!
May hire this one out and get the closet sorted to fully take the equipment I want.
The black box I'm guessing is part of the chime / doorbell system. Pull cord on the light turns the doorbell on/off!
May hire this one out and get the closet sorted to fully take the equipment I want.
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Daidraco
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Hire an electrician. Thats old fashioned doorbell shit with fuses / transformers etc. For what you're doing, they'll have all the tools to fish and reach for new lines since the old shit "usually" doesnt play nice with anything in the last decade. -edit- (Fairly cheap too, since in the grand scheme - you're not patching sheetrock etc.)
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BrutulTM
Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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As jury-rigged as that looks, there's nothing dangerous about it. As long as you know not to pull the chain, it's not going to hurt anything. Unless it's really bothering you for some reason, I don't know that I'd spend hundreds of dollars on an electrician to replace it if the voltage coming out is compatible with your cameras.
BrutulTM
Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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I think that was kind of standard when GFCI's were new and expensive. Since the places that need GFI protection are the outdoor outlets and the bathrooms they would just put them on the same circuit. My house is wired the same way.
Intrinsic
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Nah, no concern from me about danger or inconvenience, really. They're going to come out tomorrow and give me an estimate to do that + other stuff that I need. No commitment or cost for it so may as well listen.
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Burns
Avatar of War Slayer
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Sucks that you ran into electrical shenanigans. I wouldn't be surprised, when you climbed up into the attic, to see that ADT alarm box was also spliced into the same electrical that is tied to that fuse.
I would be mostly concerned that the fuse could not handle the equipment you want to put into the closet. I would assume you are going to move all your networking stuff into that closet as well? So at the very least, a router, PoE switch, and the DVR.
In the closet, there may be a horizontal wood frame in the way (fire block, ladder block, or top plate (?)) and if you are having the electricians run some electrical, you may ask them to put a 2 or 3 extra holes though the wood (hopefully they have a good size bit to fit on an extension). Running cables through those beams is a pain in the ass, especially if you want to make life easier by just buying Cat6 cable with the connectors already on them. From what I have read, the cameras can be sensitive to poorly done connector heads (introduces gremlins) and putting the connectors on Cat 6 cables is not that easy.
If you want to make it a bit bigger project, you can buy wall boxes to strap your network equipment in. I've used something like this: Legrand Enclosure. You can get various door types to fit your space. Pictures of a few setups below.
As an aside, make sure to label your cords; my PoE switch has the exact same barrel plug and cord as my DVR (w/ different AC adapters), and one day I mixed them up...it fried my DVR.
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Intrinsic
Person of Whiteness
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Sucks that you ran into electrical shenanigans. I wouldn't be surprised, when you climbed up into the attic, to see that ADT alarm box was also spliced into the same electrical that is tied to that fuse.
I would be mostly concerned that the fuse could not handle the equipment you want to put into the closet. I would assume you are going to move all your networking stuff into that closet as well? So at the very least, a router, PoE switch, and the DVR.
In the closet, there may be a horizontal wood frame in the way (fire block, ladder block, or top plate (?)) and if you are having the electricians run some electrical, you may ask them to put a 2 or 3 extra holes though the wood (hopefully they have a good size bit to fit on an extension). Running cables through those beams is a pain in the ass, especially if you want to make life easier by just buying Cat6 cable with the connectors already on them. From what I have read, the cameras can be sensitive to poorly done connector heads (introduces gremlins) and putting the connectors on Cat 6 cables is not that easy.
If you want to make it a bit bigger project, you can buy wall boxes to strap your network equipment in. I've used something like this: Legrand Enclosure. You can get various door types to fit your space. Pictures of a few setups below.
As an aside, make sure to label your cords; my PoE switch has the exact same barrel plug and cord as my DVR (w/ different AC adapters), and one day I mixed them up...it fried my DVR.
Appreciate it. Yeah that's a long term goal. Have to balance it by how long we'll be here since it isn't a forever home. We're looking at 5 - 8 years max, but that's another topic.
I do believe you about the ADT stuff. It runs in and out of the walls on opposing sides of that closet but is the same wire style, color, brand, whatever. It just looks all done at the same time.
On another note the Reolink NVR took all of 15 minutes to set up. From unboxing, adding the 4TB HD, hooking up to the router. Turned it on, went through about 5 screens of 3-4 set up things. Immediately recognized the door bell. App on phone recognized it since it was all on the same network. Honestly shocked at how smooth it went. My first experience with any of this and it is easy to be pessimistic about technology.
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I finally got all my kitchen cabinets completely finished. My kitchen is finished. It took 7 years. I'm a dork. Maple cabinets, cement counters. All done now. My wife said she'll reward me tonight. Gotta go.
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Daidraco
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Tenants moved out of a house Ive been managing for a few years. Handyman sent me this photo and said I should ask the landlord if they wanted us to clean the coils. Not only has it never been changed - but the owner apparently doesnt know you can get sizes smaller than 20x20.
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Lanx
<Prior Amod>
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so the one time it got changed, half of it just hanging out, lulz
actually it's about time i clean the condenser unit, yearly.
man it's gonna be so much easier now that i have an electrical sprayer.
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Intrinsic
Person of Whiteness
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Okay, after thinking it through a bit I'm going to do the equipment in the upstairs hallway closet. It goes straight in to the attic so if I need to run cables for exterior cameras it is direct to there. There's a coax run that I can pull in to there for the Xfinity ethernet. I think it makes more sense than the downstairs coat closet. The only downside would be relocating the router from one end of the house to the other but I was already planning on upgrading the wireless aspect b/c the wifi in my shop sucks.
This closet has no outlet and rather than paying the electrician to do this, I feel like it is achievable.
That switch on the left is the hallway and the closet is on the right of the picture. So it should be doable to run an outlet off of it to the closet. Going to YouTube this and put a plan together. I've done similar electrical around the house but never added a plug from a switch.
This closet has no outlet and rather than paying the electrician to do this, I feel like it is achievable.
That switch on the left is the hallway and the closet is on the right of the picture. So it should be doable to run an outlet off of it to the closet. Going to YouTube this and put a plan together. I've done similar electrical around the house but never added a plug from a switch.
Erronius
Macho Ma'am
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black box looks like a transformer for the doorbell chime, butErronius would know
God damn, that's a weird fucking place for a transformer.
It looks like a metal octagon box that they may have surface mounted to a stud in the wall. But I can't tell if it's a shallow box mounted over the drywall, or not. But I'm guessing it's a metal boc with a 1/2" knockout on the other side, with a plastic threaded piece around the transformer primary wires that goes in the hole. With a lockring from the inside of the box.
You're probably right that's it's a doorbell transformer. Would have to see the backside of the transformer. Should just be 2 exposed terminals that some small wires for the doorbell are wired to.
If you take that porcelain off, and there's only 1ea 14/2 or 12/2 feeding into the box, then they may have fished a piece of romex over for that transformer only. Which makes the fuse an odd choice, unless they wanted to fuse it lower so the internal fuse in the transformer wouldn't blow?
If there's more than 1 2-wire cable in that box, then maybe that fuse protects more than just that transformer.
Erronius
Macho Ma'am
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Take the faceplate off that switch first, and grab a flashlight.
If there's is ONLY a single 14/2 feeding into that switch box, and the white wire goes to one screw and the black wire goes to the other screw on that switch, then the original electrician may have pulled power to the box the light is on in the ceiling, and then just ran a 'switch loop' down to the switch. Really depends on how old the house is and how cheap some electrician was.
If you're lucky, they ran one romex into that box as a feed, there will be a wirenut to tie the neutrals together, a 'hot' black to feed into the switch and then another black wire for the switched hot going up to the light.
Disregard if you know all this already.
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