Ceiling Fan Light Kit Installation – A Decade in the Making Ten years ago, when we purchased our house, we installed ceiling fans in every room. To save some money, we only installed a ceiling fan light kit on three of the six fans we installed. We recently decided it was time to install ceiling…
Author: Matt
Converting 4-pin CFL to LED
Z-Wave incompatability with CFL Ballasts A large part of my never ending list of home projects is making (almost) everything “smart.” This requires converting 4-pin CFL to LED. Nine years ago, I started on a Z-Wave journey, and have been adding to it ever since. I’ve been converting our switches and outlets to Z-Wave devices….
ShaggyMax “Screen Protector”
Protect Your MacBook Screen MacBooks are prone to the keyboard transferring oils from your fingers to the screen when the lid is closed. To protect against this, I’ve always used a thin microfiber cloth to cover the keyboard before closing the computer. ShaggyMax is a manufacturer of such cloths. This always worked well on my…
DSC Sensor Battery Replacement
Recently, our DSC alarm system started showing a low battery warning. On our keypad, you can scroll through the different warnings item by item. I found that two of our door sensors had low battery conditions. It was clearly time to perform a DSC sensor battery replacement. Which Battery to Use Normally when I replace…
Water Heater Drain and Flush
The Reason The main reason for performing a water heater drain and flush is maintenance related. Most manufacturers recommend you perform this simple maintenance task yearly, or at least every other year. For us, this is the first time we had performed this procedure in the nine years we’ve owned our home. Recently, we had…
Tesla Model 3 – Integrated SiriusXM Satellite Radio
IMPORTANT UPDATE (12/28/2023): There are reports on the TMC forums that scrolling through Tesla SiriusXM Satellite Radio favorites with the steering wheel scroll button is broken again after the holiday update. I can confirm that this still works as of 2023.44.1. However, forum users indicate it is broken as of 2023.44.30.5. I would not update…
Installing a Genie 1055 Garage Door Opener
The Genie 1055 garage door opener is a 3/4 HP opener that we purchased from Home Depot. We installed it to replace our old Genie 2024. The installation was surprisingly much easier than I expected. Background: Our opener died! On Halloween night, shortly after we arrived home, Lora noticed that our garage door wouldn’t open….
Little Giant Ladders and Wall Rack
Little Giant So many of the projects we work on in our home require the use of a ladder. With tall ceilings and needing to get to heights higher than we needed to previously, a regular ladder wasn’t going to cut it. Little Giant came to the rescue and we love it’s versatility. Little Giant…
TapTes Wireless Charger Pad
TapTes Wireless Charger Pad for Tesla Model 3: While my Tesla Model 3 has plenty of ports available for charging, within the center console and behind for passengers in the back seat, I thought having wireless charging would be ideal. It was then I found this TapTes Wireless Charger Pad and figured I’d take a…
ARKON Dash Mount
Arkon Dash Mount – Suctions Onto Your Windshield or other Smooth Surface I’ve just gone through the installation process for adding SiriusXM Satellite Radio to our Tesla Model 3. But how to prop or hold the actual satellite unit in the car. At first I just let it sit on the floor of the center…