

What do you find most annoying in your house? - mrb

What do you find most annoying in your house/apartment? Or in other homes you have visited such as your friends' homes? Is it a bad design, construction defects, noises, smells, lighting, lack of space, etc?
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RDDavies
Unusable floor space, higher than necessary vertical space. Seems largely
inefficient to me. I don't need ten feet I'd be very happy with 8. This could
theoretically fit 1/6 more people into the same amount of "square land"
without any drawbacks other than cosmetics.

Inventions I'd like to see: Solar / radiant heat rechargeable thermostat.
Annoying to have to replace mine with a watch battery once every six months.

Dual-filament bulbs that only fire one at a time. First one burns out, second
one still provides light (perhaps at reduced output?), but indicates it is in
need of replacement somehow. Not necessarily needed for standard bulbs, but
the recessed lighting in my current place needs this badly. Bulbs are
expensive and I don't keep them on hand if I'm not going to need them. But
when I do need them, I'd like to have a bit of notice to get them before I
lose light in a certain area of my home.

Flux (brightness / color adjustment for OSX) for all lighting in the home.
Adjust amount of lighting based on time of day.

~~~
akavi
Regarding your first point, I've lived in small apartments with high ceilings
(12 ft) and small apartments with low ceilings (~8 ft, if I remember
correctly). The low ceiling'd one actually had higher square footage, but
_felt_ noticeably smaller and more cramped.

Yeah, the space isn't useable, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful to the
psychology of the human's occupying it.

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bbissoon
No readily accessible universal electric kill switch.

I've been working on a prototype for a switch that can turn off programmed
areas in the apartment to help save electricity and subsequently Mother Earth.

On my way out my apartment - I hit this one switch, and everything programmed
cuts off. It's not enough to just turn off appliances and various devices but
to disconnect them all together from the power source is even greater.

Electric Kill Switch AND ... a way to set the clocks on everything that have
been disconnected once power is restored :)

~~~
chc
There are remote-controllable power strips that seem to serve this purpose. Is
there some nuance that makes them unsuitable?

~~~
bbissoon
I think it's great for houses without a full module wired for the same purpose
and it's not programmable.

There are often designated slots for devices you wish to stay on - no more or
less unless daisy chaining power strips.

It's a great step - but I know we can do better.

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codegeek
Most annoying: Changing the batteries of smoke detector/alarms. This usually
includes using a high chair/stool to try and reach the ceiling (being tall
helps), then fiddling with the smoke detector case, open it, take the dead
battery out, put the new battery in, the alarm might go off for test etc etc.
Very annoying to me. Imagine when u have to change more than 1 at different
floors of the house.

~~~
mchannon
Makes you wonder- there isn't that much juice in a 9V battery- why not replace
the battery with a NiCad and a solar panel? As long as your unit isn't in
complete darkness it seems like it'd get enough light to run the logic if the
panel was big enough.

I'd put one on kickstarter but they don't sell Americium to just anybody.
Yeah, they require Americium to work.

~~~
brudgers
High reliability and continuous standby are primary considerations. The more
components one adds to the system the harder these are to achieve. Best
practice is to use the battery only for backup and grid power for the primary
source. It would be hard to achieve similar life safety protection in the
scheme you propose (i.e. it would not meet current US building and fire codes
for new construction in most jurisdictions and would not meet similar
requirements for existing in many places).

~~~
mchannon
While I can agree that a convoluted system has more points of failure, it
would only add one more component to the system, could still chirp when its
battery was low, and would eliminate some situations where no one heard it
chirp and it was just dead.

Grid power would be ideal but most homeowners don't have conveniently-located
wall sockets for this purpose. I suppose there's nothing stopping from me
taking an off-the-shelf unit, installing a NiMH 9V, and adding the panel.

~~~
brudgers
"Hard wiring" means running conductors to the service panel or subpanel.
Plugging in to a recepticle outlet is not hard wiring.

In addition, solar panels have their own increasingly complex electrical
requirements due to the unique life safety risks they present, i.e. they
cannot be readily deenergized during daylight hours. In situations involving
emergency response personnel, pulling the service meter or throwing a main
breaker does not eliminate the risk of electrocution. Likewise, during routine
building repairs and maintenance portions of the electrical service are likely
to remain live.

~~~
mchannon
Thanks (?) for the vocabulary lesson on hard wiring, but I never used the
phrase.

A 9V battery can't be readily deenergized during daylight hours either. At a
storage capacity of 5 kWh and a lifespan in service of approx. 360 days, we
can guesstimate a daily power consumption of ~14 watt-hours. If placed
outdoors in the midwest, the solar panel would need to be about the size of a
DVD. There's often little in terms of light that hits a smoke detector but
between natural and artificial light there's more hours of light hitting it.
I'd estimate a typical household could get by with something twice the size.

Dunno about you, but I think there's more to fear from a 9V battery than a
solar panel that size, esp. with the whole thing comfortably sitting on the
wall.

~~~
brudgers
I used the term "hardwiring." Since your post mentioned wall sockets, it
appeared there was miscommunication regarding what is required by the NEC.

If the idea is to create solar powered smoke detectors as a market disruptor,
then it's a non-starter because they do not meet current code requirements for
primary and secondary power supplies.

In an alternative case, homebrew electrical installations are why building
permits are required and construction by intuition is why building codes have
existed since the time of Hammurabi.

Few homes have one smoke detector and thus using one larger panel has some
attractiveness. With surplus capacity, why not throw some LED lighting on the
circuit? Etc. etc. down to the turtle.

~~~
mchannon
The NEC has a nice big book I can consult when in doubt.

While one may or may not plug in a smoke detector, the point I was making was
that the wiring and junction box were not in a convenient location for the
typical homeowner.

The NEC also doesn't regulate portable, battery-powered devices. If I'm
concerned about fire safety then I can get UL, TÜV, or similar safety
certification for insurance purposes. Most solar battery powered nicknacks
carry no such certification nor do they need any to be sold legally.

Thanks for the vivid account, but some of us choose not to believe that
everything novel is a slippery slope toward the bronze age.

~~~
brudgers
It is a category mistake to consider smoke alarms as nicknacks. They are life
safety equipment with a proven track record of reducing deaths.

The regulations and requirements surrounding them are based on the experience
of firefighters and after action analysis of fatal fires over the past 100
years.

The point I was making is that smoke alarms are unlike other devices which may
appear similar to a lay person - i.e. smoke alarms are held to much higher
standards than thermostats or the DVD's remote. Hence, the annoying chirping
sound to alert one to the dead battery.

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brudgers
The way in which possession of a home limits the spectrum of opportunities I
am willing to consider as practical. And its not so much annoying. It's a more
profound emotion, perhaps more akin to regret.

Ideas that my dwelling should be a certain way are driven by beliefs that I am
stuck with it for an extended period of time.

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Harvy
Lack of low level floor lighting which turns automatically when you walk on
the floor at night. That would be awesome.

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factorialboy
* External noise (traffic, neighbors etc.)

I probably don't realize it's a pain yet but having a centralized 'dashboard'
to control things like locking doors, tuning the heating system, controlling
lights etc. could be handy.

~~~
ScottWhigham
I'd give half an upvote for the external noise part but I don't need the
central dashboard part :D

In all seriousness, I think many of us struggle with noise - both external and
internal.

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hollerith
Noisy neighbors.

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jameswyse
Not having AC. It was 40°c today :/

