Make Your Home Bright With Smart Lights! - ambiLite Wifi LED's

Check out this awesome smart lighting solution for your home. This is the latest addition to the Simple Suburban Living smart home and we absolutely love them so far!

These WiFi LED lights from ambiLite are easy to setup and can be used in any standard socket (U.S). The Simple starter kit that I have comes with 3 LED lights and the control module (Genie) that connects them to your home WiFi network. The range on the Genie seems to be pretty good and can easily reach from the top floor all the way to lights in the basement with no delay.

The Simple bulbs are adjustable from the app to any color temperature from 2700K to 6500k. This makes them great for use in any fixture and even grow lights if you do any type of indoor gardening in the winter months. I liked this feature as my wife and I sometimes disagree (what?) on the color our home lights should be. So now, I can switch them to 6500k(blue/white light) when she is not looking:)

The app also lets you control the brightness of the bulbs and for all of the controls you can group bulbs together or control up to four individually. the response of the controls is instant even if you are controlling them from away from home.

The app also has an alarm and sleep feature that is quite handy. The lights or group of lights can be set to come on at a certain time each day. This is a neat feature for hallways or even bedrooms where you want them to accompany your alarm clock or come on as the family is waking up for school or work. The sleep feature just allows you to delay the off command by slowly and gently dimming the bulbs to 0 over a minute or two. This is nice if you want to switch them off but still need to see for a minute before you are left in complete darkness:)

All in all these are the best value on the market for the features and easy of use. The kit can be added on to with the full range color Nabe set or more of the Simple bulbs as I have here. I will also be combining these with other smart home products for more control including motion, alarm systems etc. so stayed tunes for those products and videos in the future.

Check out the full video here

Simple Starter Kit - http://amzn.to/1Q3vv5H
Nabe(full color) Start Kit - http://amzn.to/2358Ahi
Simple Add-on bulbs - http://amzn.to/1OTV764
Nabe add-on bulbs - http://amzn.to/1OTVjlA

All of these products and more recommended items from the SSL Family are available at the

Simple Suburban Living General Store

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Wood Burning Pool Heater - Upgrade and Update

We have loved having this pool heater available to boost the pool temps a bit in the spring and fall. It has worked great although over the last year and a half has lost some efficiency. Taking the advice of some great feedback on the first build I am going to try a few new ideas with this and see if I can't get a more efficient heat transfer and boost the temps up even more!

The most common feedback I received was "Why don't you wrap the copper tubing around the outside of the barrel?" This is a great idea and one that I had considered before I started the first version of the pool heater. I ended up deciding to put the tubing on the inside of the barrel because I wanted it to be engulfed in the flame with no tubing exposed to the outside air and I also didn't like the look of the tubing on the outside. In the end this is what I have found...

The coil on the inside is much more efficient at absorbing the heat; however, it does not hold up as well over time since it collects soot and creosote over time and becomes less efficient. Overall this is the best approach but you will need to take the coil out each year and clean it up.

The second approach was to wrap the coil around the outside of the barrel. This also works very well but in order for it to be most efficient it will need to be covered in some sort of insulation to keep the heat around the tubing. I noticed that the outside area of the tubing is actually working like a heat sink and cooling the outer side. With good insulation wrapped around the barrel with the tubing in between the heat would be trapped and provide the best heat exchange to the water. I am currently looking for some good outdoor insulation that I can use for this application.

In the meantime I have both the coil on the outside and the one on the inside in use and the temps I am getting are fairly close to what I had when I first started the project last year.

This has been such a fun project to work on and experiment with and I am excited for the winter season so I can test it's use heating my garage again! Stay tuned for updates on that and thanks for stopping by!

Soldering equipment -

Spark start torch head - http://amzn.to/1BMl54f
Mapp Gas cylinder - http://amzn.to/14G5DdF
1/2"-3/4" pipe and fitting cleaner combo tool - http://amzn.to/1BSy2ao
Tight spaces pipe cutter - http://amzn.to/1y0INKD
Pipe cutter - http://amzn.to/1xP2qDj
Lead free solder - http://amzn.to/1wGPqvL
Flux - http://amzn.to/1yPxXqA


The Vogelzang single barrel kit can be purchased here - http://tinyurl.com/onurub9

Fiskars X27 splitting axe - http://amzn.to/1QEOfrG

All of these products and more recommended items from the SSL Family are available at the Simple Suburban Living General Store

Please follow us on....

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Outdoor Wood Burning Garage Heater - Heat Your Garage For Free Using a C...

 

Recently I made a homemade outdoor wood burning boiler system to heat our garage. I have been excited to get this put together ever since I built our wood burning pool heater earlier this spring. I realized that with the same setup I was using for the pool, I could also heat water for an indoor heat system. All I needed was some sort of indoor radiator and fan and some underground tubing to cycle the water through. 

I am planning to expand my small garage wood shop this winter and did not want to have to run an electric heater all the time to heat the garage. My other options were to purchase a small propane heater, kerosene heater, or some other type of more powerful heat system but those can be expensive.  So, I decided on the wood burning heater instead. In most cases people will just put the barrel stove right in the garage, and that is a very efficient way of heating. However, my insurance company would not allow any wood burning stove (especially a homemade stove) inside the home. So this is where the wood burning boiler system design works the best. Although it is not quite as efficient as having the wood burner right in the garage it works very well to heat up our small insulated garage.

 

We've been running it for approximately three weeks now, and with the temperatures dropping like they have, we're really happy with the results.

 

For information on how I built this system, watch the video below.  Thanks for watching!

 

 

 

 

 

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Update on the Wood Burning Pool Heater - How Well Does it Work?

I have had quite a few requests to provide some more detailed information on how well the wood burner works.  I would like to share some temperatures with you using a AGPtek Dual Two Channel Digital Thermometer.

I have been very happy with how well this pool heater has worked for us this year. We have had such a cold summer here in Michigan this year and this heater has been one of the only reasons we have been able to enjoy the pool. Normally, the solar heater and solar cover can keep the pool comfortable but this year it has just not been adequate. I have run the wood burning heater only when needed, maybe once or twice per week at the most. We have been able to easily keep the pool temperature above 75 degrees so far this year.

The numbers and methods here are just for rough estimation of how well the heater works, this is not meant for the science books, but should hold true with a heater of similar size and efficiency.

I measured about 69 gallons per hour with a 33 degree average warm up to the water. This was with an average sized fire going as the temperature here will fluctuate as you add wood and let it burn through. I have seen it as high as 45 degrees and as low as 15 degrees, so it just depends on how much and what material you are burning.

Calculations I used:  15,000 gallon pool divided by 69 gallons per hour (filled one gallon in 52 seconds) gave me 217 hours to heat all of the water 33 degrees. Or if you reduce, it comes down to about 27 hours for 4 degree rise for the entire pool. You can also just divide 33/217 to get a coefficient that can be used to create a formula. Y = .15x where Y is the degrees you will heat 15000 gallons of water and x is the number or hours you run the heater. So if we plug in 24 hours for x we get y=3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Hopefully that makes sense to be used as a ROUGH estimate for calculating how much you can heat a similar sized pool.





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This post has been shared at:  The Homestead Barnhop, Simple Saturdays Blog Hop, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop, Natural Living Monday, Frugal Crafty Home Blog Hop

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How to Build Your Own Solar Pool Heater and Add a Diverter

Watch this video to see our solar pool heater design and learn some tips and tricks when building your own. We are in the second season of using this solar pool heater to heat our pool and have been very happy with the results thus far. The heater is made of 2 x 4 construction and 3/4" particle board for the box. The tubing is 500 feet of 1/2" irrigation tubing which was purchased for less than $20. Once I get the tubing back into place I plan to cover the entire box with a piece of glass, plastic, or some other transparent material that can hold some additional heat in around the tubing. 


The diverter that I made diverts some of the flow of pool water from the pool pump for both my solar heater and the wood burning heater.

I let this run continuously through the solar heater when it is sunny. I will post a separate video on the exact temperatures once I get some figures put together but the heater helps keep the pool temperature around 80 degrees with less than 8 hours of sunlight on the solar heater or pool. I also use a wood burning pool heater if we have a few days of rain or clouds to boost the temp back up. Click here if you'd like to read more about wood burner.


The overall cost of this project with the irrigation tubing, fittings, PVC pipe for diverter, valves, and wood for the stand was about $80. I also used some stain that I already had to seal up the untreated wood a little bit as well. Compared to the cost of the solar heaters that you can purchase this project is a fraction of the cost with more surface area of tubing that can capture more heat energy.





This post has been shared at:  Homestead Barn Hop

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Wood Burning Pool Heater - Heat Your Pool For Free!

 

 

You do not have to own a large homestead in order to produce your own food, live sustainably, and save money in the process.  Our goal for our family is to find ways to save money, reduce our waste, and reuse the things that are normally thrown away or recycled. 

Of course we recycle in our home.  But reusing is even better.  And landfill waste is a last resort.  This Ted Talk completely changed how we think about recycling.

Our green scraps are composted or fed to the worms or chickens.  Our paper and cardboard waste is reused.  We shred all of our paper and cardboard.  The shredded paper is composted and the shredded cardboard is turned into briquettes that we then burn in our wood burning stove.   We will post soon on that process.

I converted the Vogelzang Barrel Stove Kit I built into a simple pool heater and so far it has been working great. In this video, I show the conversion process and how I am diverting the water using the existing pool pump. This is an excellent way to heat your pool for free! I have been using recycled paper logs as well as free pallet wood for fuel and a few seasoned logs to extend the burn time.  I will post actual temperatures as soon as I get the thermometer installed into the diverter.

Copper pipes coming out of stove:

Diverter:

Watch this video to learn how to heat your pool using an inexpensive wood burner!


Todd





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This post has been shared at:  The Homestead Barn Hop, Simple Saturdays Blog Hop, HomeAcre Hop, Simple Lives Thursday, From The Farm BlogHop, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop

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Constructing the Vogelzang Barrel Stove

Need an inexpensive wood burning stove?

The Vogelzang barrel stove kit can be purchased for under $60...

...and converts any 55 gallon steel-drum into a small wood burning heater/stove.

This stove can be used to heat a garage, pole barn, or other structure. We burn free pallet wood and biomass briquettes we make from our recycled food cardboard boxes in our new stove.  Free energy! 

In this video, I document the easy process to assemble the wood burner and will convert it into a pool heater in another video.

Thanks for watching!

Todd




This post was shared at:  From The Farm Blog Hop, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop, Homestead Barn Hop

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Repurposing Solar Landscape Lights for the Chicken Coop

In this video, I am repurposing some solar deck lights that we decided not to use. In this case, I used them to provide a little bit of light in and around the chicken coop.  Around our suburban homestead, we try to use everything we have before making a trip to the hardware store.  We are also moving in the direction of using alternative energy resources to power our home.  My wife found these lights somewhere in our garage and I was determined to install them somewhere.  And we're very happy with the results so far.


Before.....

 

After....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This same process can be used to light a shed, playhouse, tree house, or other out-buildings you may have.


Let me know if you have any questions or run into any trouble.


Todd
 

            

 

 

This post was shared at:  The Homestead Barn Hop, Simple Saturdays Blog Hop, The Homeacre Hop

 

 

 

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SSL Dad: Powering Your Home Safely with a Generator Using a Transfer Switch

This is an overview of the Generator and transfer switch setup that we use for backup power to our home. I am using the Reliance 10 circuit transfer switch and would highly recommend this product. The generator that we are using is a Generac GP7500E 7500 Watt generator which powers everything we need in the home for during an outage. This video will give you overview of one of the best options for connecting a generator to your home electric panel.

Thanks for watching!

Todd

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SSL Dad: Generac GP7500E Consumer Review - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

This is a general overview and review of the Generac GP7500E electric start generator. I have owned this for about 4 months now and have been impressed with the power and performance. I use this generator to power our entire home through a transfer switch tied into our breaker box. The generator has no problem powering all of our essentials and more when needed.  There have been some complications with the generator however that I discuss in the video. I do hope that this helps anyone out there looking to purchase a generator by giving a fair and realistic review of the product.

Todd

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