Between 265 & 485 SQ/FT Nick's Two-Car Detached Vdub Garage

[nicholam77]

Wow, you guys really want me to get an Italian car, like... yesterday!

In my head I was picturing something newer, but I guess that visceral, connected experience is what I'd be after. Again, not on the radar just yet, but gives me some fun avenues to research!

@Bob Heine thanks for the videos, it looks like a lot of fun!

I have to mention one more problem with a Fiat X-1/9. If you are over six feet tall, you might get stuck in it. Ask me how I know.

Too funny, Dan! I am 6'1", so...

Normally agree with most of the things in this thread....however

Don't get iced coffee

Blasphemy!

How did the tree removal shake out? Although it's not something you wanted to do...happy with the end result? I definitely miss the big tree lined streets like that!

Forgot I left that hanging. Been a busy week.

It went like this:

For those who prefer a pictorial, you can see the crane is actually quite large. And so was the tree.





It all went fairly smoothly. I was impressed with the crane operation.

Maybe hard to tell but the spider-footed-cherry-picker-thing's boom could have had interference with the shed roof. Tight quarters. The machinery operation was very precise for the most part.



Once all the canopy and big limbs had been removed, the sheer size of the trunk / stump was impressive compared to the house.



Going to get a lot more sun in the back yard.



They pretty much cut the trunk at the base and pulled it down with some rope and a bulldozer.




Unfortunately they cracked our sidewalk and wrecked the back yard.




Here's what it looked like after the first day:



They came back after the weekend and spent about 6 hrs grinding the stump.

In addition to the back yard mess, the front yard has big depressions in it from the 55 ton crane.

No idea what or if I can use it for, but I snagged this log for potential woodworking projects.



It's not huge, maybe 15" in diameter, and a 3' long. Was thinking about slicing off some 'cookies' for some little 'occasional tables'. But I don't really have a plan. I also asked one of the chainsaw dudes to saw me a larger cookie that's about 18-20" in diameter. It has a few hairline cracks, and is about 3" thick, though, so not sure how to process that or if it's the best piece.

I feel like next summer is going to be a big landscaping year.

I didn't see any obviously rotten or hollow limbs, so in a way it feels like I just spent a boat load of cash to make my property worse and make a big mess. But at least we no longer have to worry about storms or a random catastrophe. Or deal with the whirly-birds.

 

[jbrentd]

That thing was massive! I don't really think I got a great perspective until I saw the guy working on the trunk. I know it's a tough bill to swallow now, but with it gone, you've opened a lot of opportunities to do some cool things to your backyard. The old tree had really taken over the space, IMO.

 

[Finallygotit]

That thing was massive! I don't really think I got a great perspective until I saw the guy working on the trunk. I know it's a tough bill to swallow now, but with it gone, you've opened a lot of opportunities to do some cool things to your backyard. The old tree had really taken over the space, IMO.

WOW, that thing was huge! I agree, you now have a blank sheet to work with in the backyard.

 

[Finallygotit]

Dan, it was a problem when autocrossing but the roof comes off for extra helmet clearance.

Bob, that was the only way I could attempt to get in the thing was with the roof off. When I finally sat down, I realized my next predicament. HELP!

 

[sawduststeve]

Nick, that’s a hard pass for the X-19, there’s plenty of less temperamental motors, triumph spitfire (good)/ tr6 (better), mgb roadster or if you really want something Italian

Alfa GT Junior.

In all honesty though, you’re on the right track with the early 911/912. The only car i have a want for.

Steve

 

[kaymccampbell]

Nick, that’s a hard pass for the X-19, there’s plenty of less temperamental motors, triumph spitfire (good)/ tr6 (better), mgb roadster or if you really want something Italian

Alfa GT Junior.

In all honesty though, you’re on the right track with the early 911/912. The only car i have a want for.

Steve

On a -30° morning, with a fleet of fuel injected wonders that won't start, with ether or block heaters. Guess what POS lit off with just a whiff of ether in the fresh air intake. Yup, the 'temperamental' X-1/9.

 

[sawduststeve]

On a -30° morning, with a fleet of fuel injected wonders that won't start, with ether or block heaters. Guess what POS lit off with just a whiff of ether in the fresh air intake. Yup, the 'temperamental' X-1/9.

Kay, so glad you got a good one. They couldn’t all be Friday afternoon cars.
Maybe I should have stated YMMV.

Steve

 

[Bob Heine]

In the 15 years I owned the X1/9 it let me down once. It was completely my fault, having inadvertently used vacuum hose for the electric fuel pump to carburetor connection. At a red light the guy behind me was honking his horn like he wanted me to run the light. Glanced at the rear view mirror to see flames coming out of the engine cover. Ripped off the wire to the fuel pump and threw the beach towel over the flames (beach towel was always handy for seat drying after those frequent South Florida showers). Happened to have an extra X1/9 at the time so the melted plastic parts were free. Cost me sandpaper, primer and paint to refresh the engine cover.

For a tiny (62"Wx151"L ~1,940 pound) car, the X1/9 has about 9 cubic feet of frunk and trunk space. The much larger (76" Wx182"L ~3,600 pound) car, the C8 Corvette's has 12.6 cubic feet of frunk and trunk space. We often traveled in the X1/9 with an extra large (32x22x14 inches) soft sided suitcase up front along with a medicine/makup bag and Igloo cooler in the back. The Targa roof stores on top of the frunk so we could always travel with the open top.

Steve, I did own a Triumph Herald convertible. While it was fun, it was pretty low on power. The more powerful 1974 Mark IV Spitfires had 63 horsepower, compared to the early x1/9 74 horsepower. Probably a wash with the Spitfire being about 200 pounds lighter. I don't miss the Triumph near as much as I miss the x1/9.

Nick, apologies for the hijack -- say the word and I'll delete this babbling.

 

[fourmotioneer]

And we’ve assembled the Italian car contingent

 

[nicholam77]

That thing was massive! I don't really think I got a great perspective until I saw the guy working on the trunk. I know it's a tough bill to swallow now, but with it gone, you've opened a lot of opportunities to do some cool things to your backyard. The old tree had really taken over the space, IMO.

Yeah, and that was not a small guy, either

WOW, that thing was huge! I agree, you now have a blank sheet to work with in the backyard.

@jbrentd @Finallygotit I agree was too big and had taken over, but because the canopy was soooooo big, it had a very protective and blanketing effect on the back yard. And of course the shade benefits were huge.

I am looking on the bright side, though. Much, much less yard clean up. The whirly birds won't ruin our grass and gardens next spring. (I normally spend days raking them out of the grass, and just when we get the gardens mulched and looking nice, it rains all over them.

The prospect of new plants and trees, and possibly bigger plans are exciting. I have a few ideas I plan to draw up and mull over this winter.

Nick, that’s a hard pass for the X-19, there’s plenty of less temperamental motors, triumph spitfire (good)/ tr6 (better), mgb roadster or if you really want something Italian

Alfa GT Junior.

In all honesty though, you’re on the right track with the early 911/912. The only car i have a want for.

Steve

Ok, aesthetically, that Alfa is my cup of tea. In a weird way it actually gives me TR6 vibes.

I am a fan of Triumph only because my dad owned a TR6. I believe it was navy like that Alfa. He bought it as a young man in architecture school on a trip to the UK, and had it shipped back to the U.S.

He always speaks fondly of it, and recalls how the door locks would freeze open in the winter so he would have to hold the passenger door closed with his hand, quick do a gear shift, and try to grab it again. The car was so narrow that that was possible.

I've seen a few around in Minnesota, they are charming little roadsters.

I actually have one of the number plates to my dad's old TR6 hanging in my garage (the black one of course )



Everyone seems to want me to pursue a 'classic' car, but I am ashamed to inform you when it comes to 911's I am not thinking 912 or an early model.

They may not be the most coveted, but the 996 and 997 is what I grew up admiring. Although I can't stand the fried egg headlights... so 997 all the way. Although I would be open to considering 993 and 964.

In the 15 years I owned the X1/9 it let me down once. It was completely my fault, having inadvertently used vacuum hose for the electric fuel pump to carburetor connection. At a red light the guy behind me was honking his horn like he wanted me to run the light. Glanced at the rear view mirror to see flames coming out of the engine cover. Ripped off the wire to the fuel pump and threw the beach towel over the flames (beach towel was always handy for seat drying after those frequent South Florida showers). Happened to have an extra X1/9 at the time so the melted plastic parts were free. Cost me sandpaper, primer and paint to refresh the engine cover.

For a tiny (62"Wx151"L ~1,940 pound) car, the X1/9 has about 9 cubic feet of frunk and trunk space. The much larger (76" Wx182"L ~3,600 pound) car, the C8 Corvette's has 12.6 cubic feet of frunk and trunk space. We often traveled in the X1/9 with an extra large (32x22x14 inches) soft sided suitcase up front along with a medicine/makup bag and Igloo cooler in the back. The Targa roof stores on top of the frunk so we could always travel with the open top.

Steve, I did own a Triumph Herald convertible. While it was fun, it was pretty low on power. The more powerful 1974 Mark IV Spitfires had 63 horsepower, compared to the early x1/9 74 horsepower. Probably a wash with the Spitfire being about 200 pounds lighter. I don't miss the Triumph near as much as I miss the x1/9.

Nick, apologies for the hijack -- say the word and I'll delete this babbling.

Babble away, Bob! I am always amazed at how you have an experience, POV, or story to connect to almost any subject on here and I am always interested in what you have to say! My thread is not precious by any means.

I'm usually pretty up on my car models, but I am embarrased to say I didn't know about the X1/9. Judging by all your guys' accounts it seems to be popular.

And we’ve assembled the Italian car contingent

Seriously!

 

[nicholam77]

I've had a catastrophic event with my home automation platform, Hubitat.

After a recent platform update, the hub was occasionally not responding. Like once a day. It was on the network... but the admin UI was not reachable and all automations would stop... frozen. I had to pull the power plug a few times (not great, can corrupt the database).

I've also been chasing memory leak issues for awhile, and as I've now learned, my hub backups have been corrupted for quite some time.



The solution is apparently to make a manual backup, do a "soft reset" of the hub which erases everything except the Zwave and Zigbee radio configs, and then restore that backup.

Little did I know my backups were corrupted, because I'd never had to restore one before. Anyways, I found out that every single backup I had on hand was corrupted, except for one from 02/03/23, 9 months ago. In fact I had only had the hub a month at that point.



Needless to say, that February backup is missing a TON of devices, custom device drivers, integrations, and most importantly, a TON of the automation logic I've spent the better part of a year working on. It's not square zero, but it's close. I had 60+ devices, and 54 automation scripts, some of which were quite complex and I don't have a reference to and probably don't even know how to recreate.

I know this isn't a home automation forum, but I felt like posting somewhere because I am absolutely gutted. This is going to take me so long to rebuild.

And of course none of my automations are running at the moment.

The other thing is if I didn't do this soft reset, my hub was not backing itself up correctly, and having other issues, so I know it would have come to a head eventually. Better now than another few months down the line I guess.

Anyways, had to vent, I am beyond frustrated.

 

[kaymccampbell]

I've had a catastrophic event with my home automation platform, Hubitat.

After a recent platform update, the hub was occasionally not responding. Like once a day. It was on the network... but the admin UI was not reachable and all automations would stop... frozen. I had to pull the power plug a few times (not great, can corrupt the database).

I've also been chasing memory leak issues for awhile, and as I've now learned, my hub backups have been corrupted for quite some time.



The solution is apparently to make a manual backup, do a "soft reset" of the hub which erases everything except the Zwave and Zigbee radio configs, and then restore that backup.

Little did I know my backups were corrupted, because I'd never had to restore one before. Anyways, I found out that every single backup I had on hand was corrupted, except for one from 02/03/23, 9 months ago. In fact I had only had the hub a month at that point.



Needless to say, that February backup is missing a TON of devices, custom device drivers, integrations, and most importantly, a TON of the automation logic I've spent the better part of a year working on. It's not square zero, but it's close. I had 60+ devices, and 54 automation scripts, some of which were quite complex and I don't have a reference to and probably don't even know how to recreate.

I know this isn't a home automation forum, but I felt like posting somewhere because I am absolutely gutted. This is going to take me so long to rebuild.

And of course none of my automations are running at the moment.

The other thing is if I didn't do this soft reset, my hub was not backing itself up correctly, and having other issues, so I know it would have come to a head eventually. Better now than another few months down the line I guess.

Anyways, had to vent, I am beyond frustrated.

And now we know why some folks write their own IoT code.

 

[Finallygotit]

And here I get annoyed when my plug-in light timers start making noise. Sorry your automation took a dump on you Nick. I'm sure you'll get it sorted out but I know it's going to be a painful journey.

 

[Lyndon]

Wow, you guys really want me to get an Italian car, like... yesterday!

Snip....

For those who prefer a pictorial, you can see the crane is actually quite large. And so was the tree.





I was impressed with the crane operation.

Nick,

Again sorry for the hijack..... but that crane is one of the weirdest combinations I've ever seen (and if you know what I do - a HV specialist in the Australian arena - you'd know that's unusual for me to say!)...

A tri-drive rigid with 3 lazy axles. I wonder what it's weight and GVM are? And I wonder if any of either the drive or lazies are steerable??? Wow - just Wow!

Lyndon
(Yeah - Down Under)

 

[jar944]

Lol...

 

[nicholam77]

And now we know why some folks write their own IoT code.

I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to by writing your own code. I'm sure it's possible for someone to do a completely roll-your-own-from-the-ground-up smart home in some sense, but it would be very limiting in terms of devices and that's not a possibility for me since I'm not a programmer.

Both of my home automation platforms (Hubitat and Home Assistant) are highly customizable, though. Apps and integrations written by 3rd party contributors. Custom drivers. A lot of from-scratch scripting and conditional logic. It's not writing raw code (although you could write components for them if you know how!), but it's far beyond an out-of-the-box solution. Which is why it's going to be such a PITA to recreate.

At the end of the day it failed on me, but I wish I had done a periodic manual backup of my automation scripts, off site from the hub. Can never have too many backups or forms of backups. I'm really kicking myself on that one.

And here I get annoyed when my plug-in light timers start making noise. Sorry your automation took a dump on you Nick. I'm sure you'll get it sorted out but I know it's going to be a painful journey.

Thanks, Dan. It's a big blow. I spent 4 hrs yesterday getting a few basics back in place. It's also hard to work on it when you're mad at it.

Nick,

Again sorry for the hijack..... but that crane is one of the weirdest combinations I've ever seen (and if you know what I do - a HV specialist in the Australian arena - you'd know that's unusual for me to say!)...

A tri-drive rigid with 3 lazy axles. I wonder what it's weight and GVM are? And I wonder if any of either the drive or lazies are steerable??? Wow - just Wow!

Lyndon
(Yeah - Down Under)

No worries, Lyndon! It was listed as "55-ton". I don't know anything about cranes so I can't help you there!

 

[Denwood]

I've had a catastrophic event with my home automation platform, Hubitat.

After a recent platform update, the hub was occasionally not responding. Like once a day. It was on the network... but the admin UI was not reachable and all automations would stop... frozen. I had to pull the power plug a few times (not great, can corrupt the database).

I've also been chasing memory leak issues for awhile, and as I've now learned, my hub backups have been corrupted for quite some time.



The solution is apparently to make a manual backup, do a "soft reset" of the hub which erases everything except the Zwave and Zigbee radio configs, and then restore that backup.

Little did I know my backups were corrupted, because I'd never had to restore one before. Anyways, I found out that every single backup I had on hand was corrupted, except for one from 02/03/23, 9 months ago. In fact I had only had the hub a month at that point.



Needless to say, that February backup is missing a TON of devices, custom device drivers, integrations, and most importantly, a TON of the automation logic I've spent the better part of a year working on. It's not square zero, but it's close. I had 60+ devices, and 54 automation scripts, some of which were quite complex and I don't have a reference to and probably don't even know how to recreate.

I know this isn't a home automation forum, but I felt like posting somewhere because I am absolutely gutted. This is going to take me so long to rebuild.

And of course none of my automations are running at the moment.

The other thing is if I didn't do this soft reset, my hub was not backing itself up correctly, and having other issues, so I know it would have come to a head eventually. Better now than another few months down the line I guess.

Anyways, had to vent, I am beyond frustrated.

That utterly ***** :-(

I have a spare hub in hand, a C8, so periodically run a C7 update to the cloud, which they let you do for migration. This restores all the devices etc. I also backup locally, which does not back up any devices unfortunately, just code and apps. Regardless, as you collect devices/tweaks/code, the time investment to recover is pretty daunting. I'm feeling for you Nick.

With Hubitat, you need a C8 hub (or C7 with a free migration backup) and a paid subscription to truly back up everything. Even then, there are always issues to sort after recovery. That said, their C8 hub seems to have Zigbee issues, not sorted yet, with the new hardware.

 

[nicholam77]

That utterly ***** :-(

I have a spare hub in hand, a C8, so periodically run a C7 update to the cloud, which they let you do for migration. This restores all the devices etc. I also backup locally, which does not back up any devices unfortunately, just code and apps. Regardless, as you collect devices/tweaks/code, the time investment to recover is pretty daunting. I'm feeling for you Nick.

With Hubitat, you need a C8 hub (or C7 with a free migration backup) and a paid subscription to truly back up everything. Even then, there are always issues to sort after recovery. That said, their C8 hub seems to have Zigbee issues, not sorted yet, with the new hardware.

Thanks Dennis, I'm sure you can empathize more than anyone...

With my ancient February backup that I was able to restore, it did restore devices (only what was installed at that time). So I think the local backups might include devices? If they didn't, that in itself would be infuriating!

I don't have the paid Hubitat subscription (and won't). I hate subscription models. I'm actually ditching my Nest Video Doorbell after 5 years because Google just raised prices and it's all cloud based. I have a Reolink PoE doorbell ready to go, just need to run ethernet. But now that's on hold until I get the bulk of my automations sorted.

I've already restored some webCoRE code, but I'm having issues with some devices being triggered slowly by the hub, especially HUE bulbs, which is odd. I don't know if the hub needs some time to "settle" or what, but if the reliability isn't there I may jump ship.

Before the big upset, everything was working so smoothly, too

I even had some cool new automations to share, like making my dumb laundry smart.

Part of me wants to ditch Hubitat and go all in on Home Assistant, but webCoRE is the main thing holding me back. It's the cleanest, fastest, friendliest way for me to write automations. I believe the built-in Home Assistant automation platform could do almost everything I have set up, but it's way less elegant and would be a learning curve. Same with Node-Red.

Still, I was getting to a point where I had most automations in Hubitat, but a growing number Home Assistant, and part of me wonders if I should take this opportunity to clean house and confine it all to one platform. It's a big decision. For now I am just trying to pick up the pieces.

 

[kaymccampbell]

I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to by writing your own code. I'm sure it's possible for someone to do a completely roll-your-own-from-the-ground-up smart home in some sense, but it would be very limiting in terms of devices and that's not a possibility for me since I'm not a programmer.

Just what I meant. I'm rolling my own. It's not limiting at all, as I'm building devices as I need them, then incorporating them into the ecology. It is slow, but there's great entertainment value.

It's too bad you're not a programmer. It's not hard to learn. It's like chess, there's only so many moves you can make. You just have to figure out how to perform an operation using that limited underlying instruction set. After that, picking up a new language takes maybe a week. Getting the major part of the nuances takes another few weeks if you do it frequently. Again, entertainment value. And Google's your friend when looking up syntax.

 

[nicholam77]

Just what I meant. I'm rolling my own. It's not limiting at all, as I'm building devices as I need them, then incorporating them into the ecology. It is slow, but there's great entertainment value.

Ok, now I am super curious! Care to share more? Like what sort of devices are you building and what chipsets are you using? Is this like ESP32 boards or something? And what programming language are you using? And where does the logic run (on-device or on a central computer?) I have so many questions!

I guess I meant limiting as far as needing to build your own devices and everything vs. integrate with thousands of existing products. Probably not so easy to build your own video doorbell with AI detection comparable in performance and features to say... Nest, for example. That all depends on your needs I guess.

Very cool, regardless.

It's too bad you're not a programmer. It's not hard to learn. It's like chess, there's only so many moves you can make. You just have to figure out how to perform an operation using that limited underlying instruction set. After that, picking up a new language takes maybe a week. Getting the major part of the nuances takes another few weeks if you do it frequently. Again, entertainment value. And Google's your friend when looking up syntax.

Maybe in another life

Perhaps once the kids are older and I reclaim some "me" time I'll give it a shot. I've never really pursued learning a programming language, but I've dabbled with major help from the internet in things like BASH scripting, HTML, CSS, JSON, YAML etc. Of course all very rudimentary implementations, and most of it used to customize my smart home stuff. I'm sure given time and effort I could get there.

Or maybe I should just have ChatGPT write all my code

 

[Denwood]

Thanks Dennis, I'm sure you can empathize more than anyone...

With my ancient February backup that I was able to restore, it did restore devices (only what was installed at that time). So I think the local backups might include devices? If they didn't, that in itself would be infuriating!

I don't have the paid Hubitat subscription (and won't). I hate subscription models. I'm actually ditching my Nest Video Doorbell after 5 years because Google just raised prices and it's all cloud based. I have a Reolink PoE doorbell ready to go, just need to run ethernet. But now that's on hold until I get the bulk of my automations sorted.

I've already restored some webCoRE code, but I'm having issues with some devices being triggered slowly by the hub, especially HUE bulbs, which is odd. I don't know if the hub needs some time to "settle" or what, but if the reliability isn't there I may jump ship.

Before the big upset, everything was working so smoothly, too

I even had some cool new automations to share, like making my dumb laundry smart.

Part of me wants to ditch Hubitat and go all in on Home Assistant, but webCoRE is the main thing holding me back. It's the cleanest, fastest, friendliest way for me to write automations. I believe the built-in Home Assistant automation platform could do almost everything I have set up, but it's way less elegant and would be a learning curve. Same with Node-Red.

Still, I was getting to a point where I had most automations in Hubitat, but a growing number Home Assistant, and part of me wonders if I should take this opportunity to clean house and confine it all to one platform. It's a big decision. For now I am just trying to pick up the pieces.

I think your devices will be there, but you'll have to reset/rejoin. This is easy enough for zigbee as it they will just slot back in once you pair them back to a new hub. Zwave, not so easy, but I believe folks are using the "Replace" function. It may be pretty time consuming.

Replace a failed Z-Wave node

1. Navigate to Settings, then select Z-Wave Details.
2. If the device is marked FAILED in the Device ID column of the Z-Wave Radio Details page, a Replace button will be available. Selecting this button will initiate Inclusion Mode so the user may add a new device or the previously joined device.

 

[nicholam77]

I think your devices will be there, but you'll have to reset/rejoin. This is easy enough for zigbee as it they will just slot back in once you pair them back to a new hub. Zwave, not so easy, but I believe folks are using the "Replace" function. It may be pretty time consuming.

Huh, my Zwave devices seem to still be connected, at least the ones that were present at the time of the good backup. I had a handful of 120v hardwired switches and an outdoor outlet, door contact sensor, etc, and they all seem to be functioning fine.

I hadn't added any Zigbee devices by that February backup, so not sure on that.

I still need to add probably 20 Zwave + Zigbee devices that were not installed at the time of the good backup, as well as LAN devices. But the Zigbee and Zwave will be the most annoying since they will have to be reset / excluded first, and figure out the instructions on how to pair each one

Rewriting my webCoRE pistons has been going faster than anticipated. I am so glad at least I had that February backup, because that was a carryover from SmartThings, and the foundation to my whole setup. Yeah I lost a lot, but at least this gave me a base to work from vs. literally starting from a blank page.

 

[Denwood]

I 100% hear you on the "instructions to pair/reset". It was a royal PITA when I switched over from SmartThings to Hubitat. Door locks were the worst as I had to essentially remove them to get close enough to the hub for pairing. Next time I'll sort a 100 foot patch..ha.

 

[kaymccampbell]

Ok, now I am super curious! Care to share more? Like what sort of devices are you building and what chipsets are you using? Is this like ESP32 boards or something? And what programming language are you using? And where does the logic run (on-device or on a central computer?) I have so many questions!

I've got a shop clock, holiday decorations, a doorbell, smart plugs, different cams. They're all waiting for bad weather for me to get back to them. Most are based on esp boards. I use the C# like mess on the Arduino development platform. Some of the logic is on the devices, some on a little server that's really underdeveloped. I use Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and espnow to communicate, depending on the use case.

 

[jonshonda]

I know I'm circling back on convo's from the last page, but I have been thinking about a vehicle that would replace our 09 Honda Fit in 4 years when our son starts driving. I like the size of the Fit and a hatchback/wagon is a must as we have yellow labs, and I like hauling my fat bike inside the vehicle in the winter, plus hauling the kids around as needed. But the NVH of the Fit is barely tolerable, and I do miss the options of heated seats, auto dimming mirrors, and nicer interior materials that I have become accustomed to with our GX470/GX460. It's amazing how going from a vehicle that is almost 100% automatic (seat/mirror memory, hvac, lights, mirrors, etc) to a vehicle w/o all the options can wear on a fella. I felt like a 4-door GTI, STI, or BMW Wagon of some sort would be a lot of fun as there are tuning options. But finding a nice used one would prove difficult and expensive I would imagine.

Also regarding the damage the tree service did. I am surprised they didn't insist that they wait until the ground is good and frozen before they removed that tree. That is the reason you see a lot of tree work happening late in the year, as when working on frozen ground the chance of damage is much less. But now with all that sunlight you will have a lot of opportunities for new plants/flowers/etc. Also hoping the guy who got the bar stuck in the tree was getting a bunch of **** from his coworkers.

 

[jar944]

. Also hoping the guy who got the bar stuck in the tree was getting a bunch of **** from his coworkers.

You know that was a brutal ride back to the shop.

 

[Denwood]

Huh, my Zwave devices seem to still be connected, at least the ones that were present at the time of the good backup. I had a handful of 120v hardwired switches and an outdoor outlet, door contact sensor, etc, and they all seem to be functioning fine.

I hadn't added any Zigbee devices by that February backup, so not sure on that.

I still need to add probably 20 Zwave + Zigbee devices that were not installed at the time of the good backup, as well as LAN devices. But the Zigbee and Zwave will be the most annoying since they will have to be reset / excluded first, and figure out the instructions on how to pair each one

Rewriting my webCoRE pistons has been going faster than anticipated. I am so glad at least I had that February backup, because that was a carryover from SmartThings, and the foundation to my whole setup. Yeah I lost a lot, but at least this gave me a base to work from vs. literally starting from a blank page.

So it sounds like if you had a current local backup, you would have been good to go on all devices with the restore? Your hub was not replaced, but just threw a database error, correct?

 

[nicholam77]

I've got a shop clock, holiday decorations, a doorbell, smart plugs, different cams. They're all waiting for bad weather for me to get back to them. Most are based on esp boards. I use the C# like mess on the Arduino development platform. Some of the logic is on the devices, some on a little server that's really underdeveloped. I use Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and espnow to communicate, depending on the use case.

Wow, that is impressive. At least to me! Kudos for doing it from scratch. Even if I knew how it would take me ages to build what I have going in a DIY sphere. I have 60+ devices on Hubitat, probably another 10 exclusively in Home Assistant, and around 80 automation scripts across all platforms.

After I ditched SmartThings, one of my goals going forward was local control and privacy. While I have a handful of devices that access the internet to function, almost all my current devices are controlled locally without cloud reliance.

What happened with my Hubitat database was unfortunate... but all computers can the bed sometimes, just got unlucky I guess. Now I will be more diligent about offsite backups and checking up on the backups going forward.

I know I'm circling back on convo's from the last page, but I have been thinking about a vehicle that would replace our 09 Honda Fit in 4 years when our son starts driving. I like the size of the Fit and a hatchback/wagon is a must as we have yellow labs, and I like hauling my fat bike inside the vehicle in the winter, plus hauling the kids around as needed. But the NVH of the Fit is barely tolerable, and I do miss the options of heated seats, auto dimming mirrors, and nicer interior materials that I have become accustomed to with our GX470/GX460. It's amazing how going from a vehicle that is almost 100% automatic (seat/mirror memory, hvac, lights, mirrors, etc) to a vehicle w/o all the options can wear on a fella. I felt like a 4-door GTI, STI, or BMW Wagon of some sort would be a lot of fun as there are tuning options. But finding a nice used one would prove difficult and expensive I would imagine.

A 4-door Mk7 would suit that perfectly. It has all the doo-dads and creature comforts (depending on trim level). Pretty good build quality, maybe a step below Audi or BMW but sometimes I refer to it as a "baby Audi" because it's not far off from the A3/S3. Reliability is good. Amazing tuning overhead, and by most accounts quite reliable on a tune as well. It's really a great car.

Used market has gone crazy and yeah they are often tuned and abused, but it's not like they're rare. I see plenty of stock Mk7's on the road (cosmetically anyways), would just need some patience and research on the right deal.

Can't speak to STI except I've heard the build quality is not on par with VW. Probably more visceral, though. My only experience with BMW is my brother got a 128i and kept it for a little over a year. Sold it after racking up $10k in repairs in that time. But that's just one anecdote.

Also regarding the damage the tree service did. I am surprised they didn't insist that they wait until the ground is good and frozen before they removed that tree. That is the reason you see a lot of tree work happening late in the year, as when working on frozen ground the chance of damage is much less. But now with all that sunlight you will have a lot of opportunities for new plants/flowers/etc. Also hoping the guy who got the bar stuck in the tree was getting a bunch of **** from his coworkers.

Yeah. Part of that is me wanting it gone before it dumped it's leaves.

Honestly it cut out a TON of yard work this season.

Sidewalk concrete is supposed to get repaired this Saturday. We'll have to deal with the grass and yard mess next spring.

So it sounds like if you had a current local backup, you would have been good to go on all devices with the restore? Your hub was not replaced, but just threw a database error, correct?

Correct, that's what it seems like to me. On the Hubitat forums that's what everyone was recommending and suggesting it was safe and easy. I doubt they'd be so quick to suggest if you lost all your devices haha. Same hub, I just wiped it clean and restored the old backup to it. All my devices that were part of that backup stayed connected and were functional. The "soft reset" feature erases all the apps and stuff, but not the Zwave and Zigbee radio configurations.

I think I had a couple of problems going on, but the main one was a corrupt "database". The "database" contains all the apps and custom device drivers and other things. I think my memory leaks might have been related. Also, the hub backed itself up nightly... but those backups were not valid. And when I'd do a manual backup, it would simply download an HTML file with the contents "backup file not found". But it still created an .lzw compression on the hub, which I could then download, so I figured it was ok. It was only until I attempted a restore that I found out they were all corrupt.

As far as how this happened... possibly from pulling the power plug instead of a proper shutdown? On a few occasions I had no choice because the hub was unresponsive from the memory leak.

I had a few pretty active apps, like a Roku integration that polled the play status every 3 seconds, and may have been using a lot of resources. For a $100 box I wish they would just put a better CPU and some more memory in the dang thing. In my "great re-do" I'll be moving that Roku integration to Home Assistant to do the heavy lifting, and just patching a virtual switch for status back into Hubitat to automate off of.

---

I still need to connect handful of Zigbee devices and recreate my laundry notifications, but I've been working on rebuilding every night and a little bit during downtime at work. I'm most of the way there. It's still been a lot of effort, but it came together faster than I thought it would and after tonight I have like 90% of it up and running again.

Despite all this I'm still really happy with Hubitat.

 

[Xti04]

You know that was a brutal ride back to the shop.

Watched some tree guys at the house next door run over a saw with a chevy 6500 the other day as they backed up to pick up some large branches. They were speaking Spanish but it still sounded like someone getting reamed.

 

[nicholam77]

A little end of weekend update.

Been busy, scrambling to get things winter-prepped. Spent a lot of time fixing the home automations this week... I'd say I'm back to 95% operational now. When I have time to document, I'm going to share a few of the cooler things I've added.

Going back to my GTI suspension, I was feeling like the rears in particular were overly harsh. I did some research about trimming the bump stops further, and some measurements, and by my calculations the dampers were *almost* touching the bump stops at static in the rear. I get that they are a little progressive spring, and a part of the suspension, but I went ahead and trimmed them another 3/4"-1".

Flush cut saw worked great for this



I do think it helped.

Overall, though, as much as I wanted to love the new dampers since I put in the DIY effort, I just... don't. They are fantastic on smallish roads, soak up the small bumps great, and not much body roll... but the reality is there are a lot of bad roads where I live. And while they seem to crash a bit less than the old tired stock dampers, they still are pretty harsh. Harsher than I was hoping for.

And, in the fronts when they hit a larger speed bump or divot or pothole, have started making a "groan" or "screech" noise on a deep stroke. Mostly on the driver's side. Now, these are on more extreme bumps, which I of course try to avoid. But when it has happened a few times, it's a terrible sound, and I can't work out in my head what it could be from. I am really quite sure I did a good job installing and tightening everything.

So in the end I am kind of wishing I had ponied up for the ST X coilovers. Or wish I could compare at least. Grass is always greener, right?

At least it looks good, though. The crashing over bumps just takes away from the premium feel the rest of the car has.



One mistake I made when installing is I forgot to transfer the dust boot on the driver's side front (driver left, passenger right, at full droop):



I'm hoping this isn't a big issue with debris and road salts.

Been fortunate with some warm days, but closing in on the end of November it was time to get the winter tires on.




Today I took care of the small gas engines, putting the mower away and doing an oil change and assembly and check for the snow blower.




I always forget when I bought the gas so I've started labeling it.



My daughter asked me to 3D print this giant Elsa figurine, but it ran out of filament the last 30min. I had no more white so she has a gray head lol. She still liked it though.



Printer did ok on this one, there's some ringing but no other major issues.

I have other projects to add here once I transfer the photos.

Hope everyone had a nice weekend.

 

[jonshonda]

Regarding your suspension woes the only time I've been happy with lowering springs and shocks is when I had higher end koni adjustable shocks (not really high end at all in the world of suspension, but better then a lot of options out there) with H&R sport springs on my GSR.

The best setups are tuned to the spring rates and travel, but the are $$$. Our 1994 Miata is in dire need of new suspension, and I know what I want....I just can't afford what I want at $2600+ for the coilover setup.

 

[nicholam77]

Regarding your suspension woes the only time I've been happy with lowering springs and shocks is when I had higher end koni adjustable shocks (not really high end at all in the world of suspension, but better then a lot of options out there) with H&R sport springs on my GSR.

The best setups are tuned to the spring rates and travel, but the are $$$. Our 1994 Miata is in dire need of new suspension, and I know what I want....I just can't afford what I want at $2600+ for the coilover setup.

That's fair about lowering springs. But I thought the whole idea of a "cup kit" was that the springs and dampers are matched. I didn't want to spend on a $2600+ coilover setup, either, but I am left wondering if the ~$1200 ST X coilovers I was considering would have ridden nicer over bumps. I've heard good things, but it's one of those situations where everyone has different tolerances and it's hard to know until you've actually driven it.

In the end I'm willing to compromise some comfort for the looks.

 

[nicholam77]

Basement Window Treatment

Going to hop in the GJ Time Machine quick for a project I completed a few weeks ago.

If you'll recall last spring I had a leak through the foundation wall in my basement, and I was 95% sure it was because the downspout extension that empties in that corner of the house was disconnected, and there was a massive melt in the spring.



I've since fixed the downspout. But there is also a fairly large egress window nearby on the side of the house that I wanted to better protect.




The land in between my house and my neighbor's house is sloped towards the back yard (direction we're looking). I figured I could build some sort of shed roof to prevent rain and snow from melting into the window pit.

I started by building up the paver wall so it was even. And then cut and screwed in a cleat that the 'roof' will attach to.



At the opposite end on top of the paver blocks will be a 2x4 with the same bevel. Despite picking the best pressure treated 2x4 I could find, it was still curved. I don't think I would have been able to cut this bevel very well without the JessEm guides.



I found some corrugated plastic material at the big box store that I could live with the price. It claims it's UV and impact resistant (even said hail-resistant!), although is quite thin so I'm not so convinced about that. But I like that it's semi-translucent and will still let light in. Anyways I built up a grid of 2x2's and the corrugated sheathing goes on top.



I had to miter some of the ends, and add some bracing in the middle. It felt like going back to when I was first starting out with 'woodworking' projects... miter saw and pocket screws all day haha.




Cut the plastic sheathing to length, and then got it all attached to the cleat on the house.




The screws holding the plastic are stainless with rubber washers.



It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but it should give this window some extra protection.

And as a happy side effect, on the inside, the window now has more privacy from the neighbors. Previously I would keep the shade half drawn at least, but now I like to just leave it open, and the plastic material lets diffuse light in, but also acts as a screener. It's kind of cozy.



We'll see how it holds up to snow and such over winter.

 

[bdbecker]

I can't quite tell from the pictures, but is that cover permanently attached to the house? If so, it might be worth using hinges instead so if the window ever needed to be used as an egress point, it would be easy to get out of the way. Might not be an issue, but just food for thought.

 

[racer-john]

I can't quite tell from the pictures, but is that cover permanently attached to the house? If so, it might be worth using hinges instead so if the window ever needed to be used as an egress point, it would be easy to get out of the way. Might not be an issue, but just food for thought.

My thoughts also.

 

[nicholam77]

I can't quite tell from the pictures, but is that cover permanently attached to the house? If so, it might be worth using hinges instead so if the window ever needed to be used as an egress point, it would be easy to get out of the way. Might not be an issue, but just food for thought.

My thoughts also.

Funny, that didn't even cross my mind. I was just so focused on getting it done quickly.

Yes, it's 'permanently attached' with decking screws to the cleat, in the sense that it would not be easy to take off in a pinch.

However, it's quite a big window well, and the sides are open, so an adult could still get out. Not as comfortably as if there were no cover I suppose, but definitely possible.

That being said, hinges are a great idea and I wish I'd thought of that! It would require some modification, but I could probably still do that. Not this year, though. It's getting too dang cold! It's a good thought, though, thanks for pointing that out.

 

[bj383ss]

Nick that looks great. However I hope that is not the same material I used to build my green house because it was not UV tolerant nor did it survive a hail storm. Fingers crossed.

When I tore down the green house the plastic roof sheets returned to the earth as I was taking them apart.

Bret

 

[nicholam77]

Nick that looks great. However I hope that is not the same material I used to build my green house because it was not UV tolerant nor did it survive a hail storm. Fingers crossed.

When I tore down the green house the plastic roof sheets returned to the earth as I was taking them apart.

Bret

Thanks, Bret. Yeah, I have the same worry.

This is the product. Based on the description it seems appropriate, but time will tell. I've seen hail storms and it's hard to imagine something so thin surviving.

 

[bj383ss]

Thanks, Bret. Yeah, I have the same worry.

This is the product. Based on the description it seems appropriate, but time will tell. I've seen hail storms and it's hard to imagine something so thin surviving.

Honestly it probably will survive until it starts to get crusty from being in the sun. Mine was pretty much in direct sunlight 90% of the day so maybe yours being on the side of your house it won't get as much exposure.

Bret

 

[nicholam77]

Honestly it probably will survive until it starts to get crusty from being in the sun. Mine was pretty much in direct sunlight 90% of the day so maybe yours being on the side of your house it won't get as much exposure.

My neighbor's house is so close and tall and to the south, that it should definitely shield from direct sun for a lot of the day. But you are right, the sun tends to get to everything eventually.