Above 1200 Sq/FT Jeff's Mountain Side Shop (Portland)

[sponaugle]

Update 95 [ Now we are mostly caught up! ]

After 3+ years of work, I can finally have a seat.

There is certainly more to come, but now is a good time to say thank you to everyone here on garage journal for the incredible support, ideas, fixes, improvements, and just being cool to talk to. When I started this build several people asked me why I would take the time to photograph, document, and share the experience. I'm not sure why anyone who could do it would not. It is all upside!

There are lots of cool projects now in the works to keep sharing about, so I'll keep things up to date as well as continue to learn from all of the cool kids.

 

[Finallygotit]

A Kodak moment........

Thank you for sharing!

 

[Ronin22]

We're almost caught up?
Cool. It means it's time to go back to Page 1 and read it all over again, in one go.

 

[polexican23]

Does the race Xmas tree get mounted at the top or bottom of the driveway. NVM, stupid me. You have one at both ends.

 

[isonic]

Awesome build. Thank you for taking the time to document and share. Please keep sharing your projects as you wish. I like reading about them.

 

[thammel]

Thanks for the explanation on the server and all the fiber! It makes sense that that is your profession and you enjoy experimentation. You are doing everything absolutely the right way the first time....it is always more difficult to retrofit! I can see all kinds of security systems, cameras, controls, etc. in your place. Why not understand everything? You could probably monitor temperatures in each room...how about infrared cameras to check for heat leaks, etc.? As an example of doing it correctly the first time, I buried pex in my garage addition for potential heated flooring...that was 12 years ago and it's not heated yet, but the reznor and mini-splits do a fine job. And, really, thanks for taking all the time to show us all the photos and describing the process. Some of us (probably most!) are living our dreams through your successes!!

 

[imjustdave]

I just stumbled across this thread

WOW just WOW I'm in ah at what you have completed here. I love the fact they you owned the fact that we need a real network open space to view the view, nice deck and oh yeah I need a shop.

Was curious what do you do for work, because I need to upgrade my job so I could work on some dreams such as this.

-David.

Please continue sharing it's been a great read.

 

[sponaugle]

Update 96 [ Moved in! ]

Now that we are moved in, time to get some of this infrastructure working. I have conduit to pull wire and fiber to the gate, but while I am working on that I want to have internet access to the gate controller. I have power, so I added a 5Ghz backhaul link to the house using some Ubiquity Nano Ms. It is enough bandwidth to do the gate communications as well as a camera.

The server room now has most of the core equipment installed, and I’m slowly bring up services.

I have my lab setup as well. Microscopes, microsoldering station, reflow oven, and the usual diagnostic tools like scopes, logic analyzers, etc.

 

[jeepxj]

mmhmm. very usual.

 

[Ralf11]

I just hope that compressor tank is bag enuff to run the logic analyzers...

 

[Arclitgold]

Wow that’s a lot of hard drives. Having done work on server hardware for a large cloud computing company you may know; I can say that’s quite a lot of gear! What’s the cooling situation the room? And what’s the lava needs in there haha?


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[sponaugle]

Does the race Xmas tree get mounted at the top or bottom of the driveway. NVM, stupid me. You have one at both ends.

You are going to like the driveway lights I'm building!

Awesome build. Thank you for taking the time to document and share. Please keep sharing your projects as you wish. I like reading about them.

Thanks!

Thanks for the explanation on the server and all the fiber! It makes sense that that is your profession and you enjoy experimentation. You are doing everything absolutely the right way the first time....it is always more difficult to retrofit! I can see all kinds of security systems, cameras, controls, etc. in your place. Why not understand everything? You could probably monitor temperatures in each room...how about infrared cameras to check for heat leaks, etc.? As an example of doing it correctly the first time, I buried pex in my garage addition for potential heated flooring...that was 12 years ago and it's not heated yet, but the reznor and mini-splits do a fine job. And, really, thanks for taking all the time to show us all the photos and describing the process. Some of us (probably most!) are living our dreams through your successes!!

Thanks! Agree... a little planning and thinking ahead of time can make all the difference.

I just stumbled across this thread

WOW just WOW I'm in ah at what you have completed here. I love the fact they you owned the fact that we need a real network open space to view the view, nice deck and oh yeah I need a shop.

Was curious what do you do for work, because I need to upgrade my job so I could work on some dreams such as this.

-David.

Please continue sharing it's been a great read.

thanks David. I'm an engineer. Albeit that skillset was parleyed into doing and selling a few startups.

mmhmm. very usual.

Exactly! The usual is what I go for!

I just hope that compressor tank is bag enuff to run the logic analyzers...

Those bits take lots of pressure. I better get a bigger one.

Wow that’s a lot of hard drives. Having done work on server hardware for a large cloud computing company you may know; I can say that’s quite a lot of gear! What’s the cooling situation the room? And what’s the lava needs in there haha?

I have a 24k BTU mini split in the room, which so far has worked well. In my use case I'm really more after constant temperature. I have it set to 73 and that seems to be a good place.

 

[sponaugle]

Update 97 - Driveway lights part 1

One big project left to do is the driveway lights. I wanted to do something special with the lights. What I want is for each driveway light to be individually addressable (can be turned on/off/color by a single controller), multi color, and multi directional. Envision the lights could follow ahead of you as you drive, with a different color light behind you. Would be cool tech. ( and yes, you could have a drag raced tree pretty much anywhere on the driveway, in any direction ). Think RGB, but bigger.

To do this, the first thing I need is power. I have power at the gate and the house, and the driveway is about 1000ft long, so powering each half of the driveway from the ends means runs not over 500ft ground distance, which is probably 600ft of wire.

During construction I added conduit for this purpose.

There are a total of 22 power drops along the driveway, covering each side.

This, for example, is a mid drop that has three conduits, one to the next box on the left, one to the next box on the right, and one under the driveway to the other side.

At each location I added a box with conduit connects and pull strings.

The issue with such long pulls is voltage drop. While I don’t need a ton of power for the lights, I’d like to have the outlets useful for other things. My design, shown on these next two diagrams, was to split the outlets into groups and have those groups on dedicated circuits. That allows the farthest plugs to be on circuits that are only used for those far locations. I also used a combination of 10 gauge and 12 gauge wire, based on the length and load. The result is a reasonably good distributed power grid for future use, especially in a residential environment. There will be a total of 10 20-amp breakers for these wires. (Note I am running each set in pairs, (2 hots and a neutral), so if I need it I will have 240Vs available at each box.

With the plan in place, I ordered wire from Platt ( it ended up being a 275 pounds of wire!)

I got the wire and put it on a movable wire rack:

I put the rack in the back of the truck and used it as a spool platform.. then it was time to pull.

The pulls went well.. I used lots of lube, which helped, but it was still a bit of muscle to get those last pulls done, and fortunately I had a few friends help out!

In the end, each box ended up with wires to terminate, and I have completed half of those terminations. I added spacers to the boxes to have enough room for the wires and the GFCI plugs.

The finished boxes looked like this:

Next up I'll talk a bit more about the lights... I still have a lot of design work to do here.

 

[Steve from Socal]

Jeff,

One feature you may want to consider on your driveway lights is, a rabbit. That is what the sequenced flashing approach lights are know as on a runway. That would be a very cool effect on your driveway!

Steve

 

[SamYoung]

I'm patiently looking forward to details on the FFR 818. With your history of modified Subies I bet it's a monster.

I've always been a fan of their kits, especially their original designs. Finally saw a GTM in person for the first time a couple weeks ago and was blown away at how low and aggressive they look in person..

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[BORING HOP YARD]

Thank you so much for sharing, well designed, well planned, well built.

 

[sponaugle]

Update 98

One other project that is nearly complete has to do with power monitoring. When I designed the electrical system I added ‘monitoring’ panels below all 9 electrical panels. I also added conduit from the electrical panels to these monitoring panels. The concept was to allow me to install current monitoring transformers on every circuit on every panel. This has applications not just for data collection, but also for use in some automation profiles. For example from the current sensors I can tell when the dishwashers are running and when they complete, even though the Miele’s don’t support any home automation.

You can see in this picture the monitoring panels below these two panels, with the conduit between them.

In the monitoring boxes I installed a power outlet inside flexible conduit.

I am using IotaWatt devices, and ended up getting 14 of them. Each one has 14 monitoring channels, and the device itself is connected over wifi so no need for low voltage wiring to leave the monitoring panel. I got 120 current transformers to go with them.

Before cleaning up the transformers:

After a bit of zip ties:

Once I got the transformers installed, I connected the IotaWatt devices to influxdb which I am using for all of the housewide data collection. I use Grafana to do some visualizations, as well as Homeseer to do some automations. (Plus telegraf for some system statistics).

I was curious to do a quick test of loading up the house a bit.

I turned on all the lights, plugged in a Tesla, turned on the outside heaters, and a few other easy to turn on items.

I was able to get total system power up to about 41 kW, which isn’t too bad considering I didn’t turn on any of the shop equipment.

I also measured voltage drop at the farthest away panel from the transformer. My voltage drop at the transformer is 1-2% under load in part because I am pretty far down the line from the substation.

This indicated a drop from 117v down to 114v during the peak load, which is acceptable given the in wall wire distances.

 

[sponaugle]

Jeff,

One feature you may want to consider on your driveway lights is, a rabbit. That is what the sequenced flashing approach lights are know as on a runway. That would be a very cool effect on your driveway!

Steve

The original idea for doing the driveway lights was driven by this very idea. With individual per element and per direction control it would be easy to simulate the lighting patterns on runways. One consideration however is that I am reasonable visible from the Portland Airport Approach, so a pattern that mimics their landing lights might be frowned upon!

I'm patiently looking forward to details on the FFR 818. With your history of modified Subies I bet it's a monster.

I've always been a fan of their kits, especially their original designs. Finally saw a GTM in person for the first time a couple weeks ago and was blown away at how low and aggressive they look in person..

They are great kits, with lots of options and flexibility. I'll post up about it soon.

Thank you so much for sharing, well designed, well planned, well built.

Thanks! I'm just happy to have moved in!

 

[Bob Heine]

Jeff, I'm a big fan of boost, with a '11 CTS-V and a PT Cruiser turbo. I've had three Chrysler vehicles with turbos and bumped up the Cruiser with bolt-ons and a Stage 2 controller with 93-octane Diablo tune. My oldest grandson has taken it a step or two higher with his wife's WRX Sti. It's barely streetable now with about 700 hp from the E85 tune (less on 93 octane). They didn't plan to go that radical but after they went for a ride in my CTS-V things went a little crazy. It's a little rough with all the hard mounts but it's nice to have offspring follow the path.

 

[Boostingaz]

Boost is both fun and very addicting. Almost every car/truck I have ever owned has had some type of forced induction.

 

[Boostingaz]

How do you guys get your photos to appear in your message rather than just as an attachment that needs to be clicked on?

Sorry for the highjack OP.

 

[sponaugle]

Jeff, I'm a big fan of boost, with a '11 CTS-V and a PT Cruiser turbo. I've had three Chrysler vehicles with turbos and bumped up the Cruiser with bolt-ons and a Stage 2 controller with 93-octane Diablo tune. My oldest grandson has taken it a step or two higher with his wife's WRX Sti. It's barely streetable now with about 700 hp from the E85 tune (less on 93 octane). They didn't plan to go that radical but after they went for a ride in my CTS-V things went a little crazy. It's a little rough with all the hard mounts but it's nice to have offspring follow the path.

Very cool! I agree about being a fan of boost. Forced induction is forced fun. 700hp in a Subaru is a blast with the AWD and low weight!

Boost is both fun and very addicting. Almost every car/truck I have ever owned has had some type of forced induction.

Excellent!

How do you guys get your photos to appear in your message rather than just as an attachment that needs to be clicked on?
Sorry for the highjack OP.

No worries. In my case I host all of the images on my own domain, and link them here with IMG tags. Some people use other hosting services like Imgur and Flickr.

 

[Boostingaz]

Got it, thank you!

 

[jimkinney]

Boost is both fun and very addicting. Almost every car/truck I have ever owned has had some type of forced induction.

Belt driven boost is a blast also, I had an MR2 with the factory supercharger. It didn't have the top end of my turbo Supra, but it sure was quick off the line.

One consideration however is that I am reasonable visible from the Portland Airport Approach, so a pattern that mimics their landing lights might be frowned upon!

Putting a big lighted X in the drive when you're not using it should take care of that issue.

 

[Boostingaz]

Belt driven boost is a blast also, I had an MR2 with the factory supercharger. It didn't have the top end of my turbo Supra, but it sure was quick off the line.



Putting a big lighted X in the drive when you're not using it should take care of that issue.

I have driven plenty but never owned anything supercharged. Everything I have had has also been big turbo set ups. My s2k was over 500+ HP at 2,500 +/- lbs and spooled pretty quick so it was dang fast! Hammer down and by 3/4 way through first gear, definitely by second, you were sideways.

 

[sponaugle]

Belt driven boost is a blast also, I had an MR2 with the factory supercharger. It didn't have the top end of my turbo Supra, but it sure was quick off the line.
Putting a big lighted X in the drive when you're not using it should take care of that issue.

Great idea with the X.

The first car I modified , and what really got me into cars was a 1996 Integra GSR. I bought it new when I was an engineer at Intel. After the first year I installed one of the first Jackson Racing Superchargers for the GSR, which was an Eaton based Supercharger. It really transformed that car especially for open track racing. Such a great setup in a light 4 cylinder car!

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[Maddog10]

Closely following your driveway light project. My wife and I are in the planning stage of a build at the top of a hill with a 1,000' "tree-tunnel" driveway similar to yours. It will also be gated, paved, and illuminated. We don't intend to go multi-color or multi-directional with it, but I do like the idea of the lights following ahead of you as you drive.

I'm curious as to why there isn't equal spacing between driveway receptacles based on your wiring diagram? Is it a visual thing due to curvature in the driveway where they are equal linear distance but require longer wire pulls to follow the curvature, or are they intentionally different?

 

[sponaugle]

I'm curious as to why there isn't equal spacing between driveway receptacles based on your wiring diagram? Is it a visual thing due to curvature in the driveway where they are equal linear distance but require longer wire pulls to follow the curvature, or are they intentionally different?

Yea, a combination of geography (trees), and how the driveway curves. Keep in mind in my case the lights are not on the same posts as the power receptacles. On each power pole there will a control box on the back side, and then buried wire to the light posts themselves, which will be evenly spaced.

Jeff

 

[Maddog10]

Yea, a combination of geography (trees), and how the driveway curves. Keep in mind in my case the lights are not on the same posts as the power receptacles. On each power pole there will a control box on the back side, and then buried wire to the light posts themselves, which will be evenly spaced.

Jeff

Got it. Thanks... I knew I was missing something because on a build with this level of detail, there was zero chance of a 20' variance in light locations.

 

[sponaugle]

Update 99:

Now that I am moved in, I need to work on getting my amateur radio gear setup. I have a vertical butternut (Hf9), but that will require some work to get a location picked out.. in the mean time I am using my line thrower to put up a G5RV between a tree and the house.

I ran a conduit from the side of the house opposite of the ham stations for the antenna feed.

I also took an evening time shot:

 

[iced98lx]

house looks absolutely wonderful lit up, must feel great to drive up to that.

 

[polexican23]

Ok, yes i LOVE the driveway light plan. I love it so much in fact I will pay you to allow me to race up and down your drive way. I just own an 06 4 cyl accord, but will pretend it is some sort of Tron race.

 

[bdbecker]

So where can I register for the 2021 Sponaugle Driveway Time Trial? I'm sure my brother (Piedmont) won't mind if I snag his Forrester to run it in the stock class.

 

[sponaugle]

Ok, yes i LOVE the driveway light plan. I love it so much in fact I will pay you to allow me to race up and down your drive way. I just own an 06 4 cyl accord, but will pretend it is some sort of Tron race.

Ha! That is a great idea. I like the Tron reference.

So where can I register for the 2021 Sponaugle Driveway Time Trial? I'm sure my brother (Piedmont) won't mind if I snag his Forrester to run it in the stock class.

Since the road up to Skyline is pretty steep, it can be like a rally stage with a hillclimb!

 

[sponaugle]

Update 100

Here are the final drone shots now that the house is done. There is still a lot of landscaping left to do, but this is a good point for a few pictures.

 

[sponaugle]

pdate 101

To help get Wifi coverage in the driveway I installed an external AP with a directional antenna that points toward the driveway. I am using Ubiquity ApPs all through the house and this is one of their external models.

I also installed a weather station, which is wired into the house data collection system.

 

[Geoff289]

Like everyone else who's followed this project I'm awestruck by it. The green glow you can see on the Southern horizon is my envy from down here in the Southern hemisphere.

I haven't posted on your thread before but I'm wondering where the driveway goes after it passes the house. It seems to head off down the hill.

 

[polexican23]

when does the year round integrated christmas (not race) lights and self installing decorations update come?

The stuff you are doing is just insane. If only our govts would have as much forethought into our country as you do into your home, we would be set.

Well done sir.

 

[jimkinney]

Update 99:

Now that I am moved in, I need to work on getting my amateur radio gear setup. I have a vertical butternut (Hf9), but that will require some work to get a location picked out.. in the mean time I am using my line thrower to put up a G5RV between a tree and the house.

I will look for you on the air. A bit of a haul from FL, but 160m has been open that way the last few nights, and should be getting better.

73, WE4S

 

[kj_mustang]

Somebody is hoarding wheels and tires.
Very nice build!