Using an enterprise grade networking equipment in the house. My setup uses PFSense (free), which runs in a virtual machine on Proxmox (free) and Ubiquiti WAPs (2 X $100). I have not heard the “Dad the wifi is broken!” call from anyone for a while.
Oh this is interesting. Have any articles where I could learn more about setting this up?
Proxmox is a Linux distro, so if you’re familiar with Linux then setting it up is fairly easy.
Here is Netgate’s guide on how to do setup PFSense on Proxmox: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/recipes/virtualize-proxmox-ve.html
It’s fun to do and while being a networking engineer helps, it’s not necessary.
Soft close toilet seats are a game changer. Now I find myself slamming the lid at my friends’ houses.
Under the sink water filtration system. We spent maybe $300 on ours and couldn’t be happier. Clear, clean tasting water where before it was sketchy at best (farm country) and no more need to fill up the Brita pitcher every single day. Took maybe an hour to set up.
I did a similar thing, but instead of under the filter system, I replaced the soap dispenser with a single hole faucet and added a faucet filter to it. Ended up a lot cheaper than under the sink filtration, and I can switch to a different brand/model without any trouble.
I did the same and linked it to my fridge’s water dispenser. No more expensive proprietary filters.
Bidet
Bidet by far. <$60 USD, easy to set up, and my goodness have I never looked back. I do a lot of home improvement (and garden work) and every time I use the bidet I think, “this may be the best purchase I ever made”.
$100 hand truck. It has paid for itself many times over. Every single time I use it, I tell my wife, “I bought that for $100! It’s totally worth every cent”
I’ve done a few really great ones. I got the UBolt Pro for a fancy lock I can track who accesses, auto lock, unlock remotely if needed, etc. It’s very handy for visitors because I assign their access code as the last 4 digits of their phone number so they never forget. I got Zigbee smart bulbs everywhere, but if I were to do it again, I would do smart switches in any places I didn’t need dimming or individual bulb control. Here’s another great idea: FANS. Ceiling fans, desk fans, whatever. You can connect good Vornado desk fans to a smart switch so you can get cooling on demand without getting out of bed. Lastly, an Aquasana under sink water filter. Only filter I know of that removes PFAS and PFOAs and is third party certified to do so. Good delicious safe water.
Fitting secondary glazing in addition to the existing double glazing. It entirely eliminates “normal” traffic noise (as in - you see cars driving past but don’t hear them) and people walking past. You still hear excessively loud exhausts, but they’re significantly diminished to not be a “jump out of your skin” annoyance.
An added benefit I’ve noticed with the recent sunny weather - a significant reduction in unwanted solar gain. Usually, I have to put up exterior solar mesh screens to shade the windows from April to September, but so far this year, they haven’t been needed. I imagine it’s a combination of both the UV-blocking properties of the secondary glazing (soft-coat low-e and laminated glass) and having the regular window blinds between the normal windows and secondary meaning that much of the energy gets reflected straight back out again before entering the room-side of the secondary glazing.
You couldn’t call it a sub-$1000 investment if doing the whole house, but doing just a bedroom or living room fits and the quality-of-life improvement if on a noisy busy road makes it worthwhile.
But also, solar mesh screens especially on south-facing windows - they’re a nice cost-effective way of controlling the summer sun.
Pertaining to Music – investing in some decent speakers and amp that wouldn’t break the bank. I leave our TV tucked away in a dark basement area and reserve the main living area for music. This turns our house into a relaxing environment. I’m not a #killyourtelevision person… but getting that out of the main space has been an unexpected stress reliever.
Katchy insect trap. My husband likes to leave doors open and I was getting eaten by mosquitoes. Katchy has nearly eliminated the problem.
You can try magnetic bug screens for door. They allow a person to go through, and close magnetically behind someone. Could lower your mosquito problem even more. Something like this. Note that I have never used this exact one.
We actually have screens on our doors. He prefers them open open. We have compromised on closing the screens at sundown to avoid getting swarmed.
+1 on the bug screens - they are nice!
Brother P-Touch TZe label writer
While the brand isn’t super important, the Brother supports e.g. iron-on label tape that I can get from the local shopping centre.
What do you use this for the most? It’s very useful at my work, but I’m curious about it’s utility in the home-- perhaps because I rent, it feels limited. 😁
Mostly for labeling what goes where - i.e. which freezer drawers have what food, whose clothes (and what kind of clothes) go where, and so on.
It’s probably not as useful if you live alone or with just a single other person and can agree about where to put stuff and remember these rules - but in a 4 person household things tend to get a bit unmanageable :-)
A good thing about the iron-on labels (besides marking childrens’ clothes) is that they stick on the cheap-ass Ikea storage boxes (Dröna?) that are just fabric on top of cardboard.
Stock Tank Pool
I have a tiny sloping backyard. A stock Tank pool was super cheap and just the right size to fit on my level ground
THIS. 👆👆 We love ours and have built a little oasis around it.
smart bulbs in the bedroom. About 50-60$ per lightbulb, control them as a group, and no fighting with the spouse “you were the last one in bed, you need to go turn the lights off” vs “you’re closer, you turn the light off”
Link them to your wiretap speaker of choice (google home or Alexa) and you can issue commands to it.
“Ok Google, turn off lights”“Ok Google, set lights to 5%” (good for just a little light, getting ready to bed, not disturbing your spouse, or sexytimes)
You can get really crazy with something like HomeAssistant, but that’s pretty technical in nature, but then you can control everything with your phone app, run automations to turn on the house lights when the garage door opens between 5:15 and 6:15pm (assumes you’re just getting home). automatically lock the doors at 11pm, let you know when the trash hasn’t been taken out, adjust lighting when the TV is turned on, etc etc etc.
Why a lightbulb though? I considered just getting a smart light switch, especially becauase most of my switches control multiple bulbs.
