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I got a call from the builder around 10 am. That was interesting. It absolutely drove the rest of the day and influenced lots of conversations. I realized that I was not saying no to things, and it isn’t free to not say no to things when designing a house. If I don’t want it, I should say no to it. So I caught up on some no’s today. No to a lot of things, oddly, that involve low-voltage wiring. It’s such an early 2000s way to do something that we now do with wifi. Really prefer the wifi version, honestly.
Also, we seem to be going in circles on the backup power issue. There’s a lot of concern about batteries being used for backup vs. a generator. We don’t want any fossil fuels anywhere near this thing (look, I get that during construction, but on an ongoing basis). Architect is trying to put the batteries outside the house, because of fire concerns. I’m like, but we’re parking cars in the house. Architect is trying to convince me that house batteries are riskier than car batteries. I’m like, lol, no, what? I found a tesla fire website — that was fun! Also, R. says that there’s some right wing push against batteries because, look, conservatives, hardly surprising.
Anyway. I decided to Ask the Stupid Questions. I _don’t know_ how many Powerwall or Powerwall equivalents are going to be needed — I’m waiting for the engineers opinion about that. But it will be more than 1. A powerwall is 13.5 units. One of my cars is 80ish units. One of my cars is 20ish units. The Powerwall count would have to hit 8 to exceed the risk from the cars, if it is correlated to number of units. Also! Cars move around and so there is potential for impact damage to car batteries; presumably not so much with house batteries.
Once I realized this — and once I thought through well, what if we have more / different cars in that garage (it’s a two slot both tandem setup, so conceivably 4 total cars, but more likely to have 3 cars and a couple NEVs)? Worst case scenario is probably 4 X 80ish units (I have no plans to buy a Ford F-150 with extended range or a Tesla Y, say)., which is 320 battery units. Two maxed out (10X) Tesla Powerwall systems is less than that (and not by a little).
I suppose the argument in favor of the Ford truck (*no* I am not serious) would be that you wouldn’t need the Powerwalls! You could run the house off the truck. And similar with buying some Teslas. I live in hopes that one day bidirectional will be available on my preferred car maker.
But either way, if I’m parking my cars in the garage, having house batteries in there is Not the part I should be worrying about.
ETA: I suppose if I lived in Florida and was worried about salt water storm surge, I might have a different set of opinions here.
ETA: FF was fun! Larkspur Landing in Renton is apparently a perfectly acceptable hotel-with-kitchens, which is good to know. T. got home late, but I failed to look at when his shift was over so I didn’t know until he told me. He got dinner at the restaurant and sat at the bar chatting with the bartender for an hour and a half. Sounds like a delightful evening. R. had a good time at his show. A. went to bed without any drama at a mostly reasonable (for a Friday night) hour. Good times.
In the course of random discussion, we got to talking about the Hajj and I found this article which has amazing pictures from the 2023 Hajj:
https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/news/world/2023/06/26/2023-hajj-pilgrimage-2-million-muslims-religious-gathering/12165996002/
We also talked a bit about Sam Altman’s ouster from openAI, his sister’s accusations, the structure of openAI the non-profit vs. openAI the for-profit arm, my hyperfocus on the copyright shield promise, etc.
Also, we seem to be going in circles on the backup power issue. There’s a lot of concern about batteries being used for backup vs. a generator. We don’t want any fossil fuels anywhere near this thing (look, I get that during construction, but on an ongoing basis). Architect is trying to put the batteries outside the house, because of fire concerns. I’m like, but we’re parking cars in the house. Architect is trying to convince me that house batteries are riskier than car batteries. I’m like, lol, no, what? I found a tesla fire website — that was fun! Also, R. says that there’s some right wing push against batteries because, look, conservatives, hardly surprising.
Anyway. I decided to Ask the Stupid Questions. I _don’t know_ how many Powerwall or Powerwall equivalents are going to be needed — I’m waiting for the engineers opinion about that. But it will be more than 1. A powerwall is 13.5 units. One of my cars is 80ish units. One of my cars is 20ish units. The Powerwall count would have to hit 8 to exceed the risk from the cars, if it is correlated to number of units. Also! Cars move around and so there is potential for impact damage to car batteries; presumably not so much with house batteries.
Once I realized this — and once I thought through well, what if we have more / different cars in that garage (it’s a two slot both tandem setup, so conceivably 4 total cars, but more likely to have 3 cars and a couple NEVs)? Worst case scenario is probably 4 X 80ish units (I have no plans to buy a Ford F-150 with extended range or a Tesla Y, say)., which is 320 battery units. Two maxed out (10X) Tesla Powerwall systems is less than that (and not by a little).
I suppose the argument in favor of the Ford truck (*no* I am not serious) would be that you wouldn’t need the Powerwalls! You could run the house off the truck. And similar with buying some Teslas. I live in hopes that one day bidirectional will be available on my preferred car maker.
But either way, if I’m parking my cars in the garage, having house batteries in there is Not the part I should be worrying about.
ETA: I suppose if I lived in Florida and was worried about salt water storm surge, I might have a different set of opinions here.
ETA: FF was fun! Larkspur Landing in Renton is apparently a perfectly acceptable hotel-with-kitchens, which is good to know. T. got home late, but I failed to look at when his shift was over so I didn’t know until he told me. He got dinner at the restaurant and sat at the bar chatting with the bartender for an hour and a half. Sounds like a delightful evening. R. had a good time at his show. A. went to bed without any drama at a mostly reasonable (for a Friday night) hour. Good times.
In the course of random discussion, we got to talking about the Hajj and I found this article which has amazing pictures from the 2023 Hajj:
https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/news/world/2023/06/26/2023-hajj-pilgrimage-2-million-muslims-religious-gathering/12165996002/
We also talked a bit about Sam Altman’s ouster from openAI, his sister’s accusations, the structure of openAI the non-profit vs. openAI the for-profit arm, my hyperfocus on the copyright shield promise, etc.