All Forum Posts by: Matt R.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional electrician.

Something else that might work for you is fire alarm cable.  I have some short scraps from a fire alarm installation in a commercial building: 16 gauge, solid, 4 conductor + shield and drain wire, "type FPLP".  It doesn't say CL2 on the jacket, though.  The outer jacket is a touch under 0.25" outside diameter. The Internets tell me this is plenum-rated fire alarm cable; you can probably use non-plenum cable, type FPL, which will be cheaper.

I *think* the key to all of this stuff is that the available power is limited by the power supply or transformer.  For regular 120 V wiring, if there is an overload or short, the Romex might temporarily have to handle several thousand watts, without getting hot enough to start a fire, before the circuit breaker in the main panel pops.  That's why it has to be relatively thick wire with thick insulation.  For low-voltage wiring, the power supply or transformer just isn't going to have the ability to dump that much power into the cable, so you can use thinner wire with thinner insulation and still be OK.

Do the light fixtures already "speak" wired DMX-512?  In other words, is there a connection for DMX data on each fixture, as well as +12 V power?  If so, you should be able to daisy chain several of them on one cable.  Basically, you need three wires for the DMX data (common, positive, negative) and two wires to bring 12 V DC and ground to each fixture.  This keeps you from having to bring 64 cables back to some common point.  There are some rules about how many fixtures you can put on a single cable, but as I understand it, your "about 64" fixtures mean you can probably run two or three cables and be OK.

If the lights are just "dumb" - they just light up when you apply +12 V, and you want individual control, then yeah, you'll have to run one cable to each fixture from some common location.

Good call on looking for a good power supply.  Digi-Key and Mouser sell legit ones (CUI, TDK, Condor/Ault) with non-fake UL listings, starting around $70 for 12 V, 120 W.  They are like laptop power supplies... a brick with a 120 V socket on one end and a 12 V cable on the other.

Another suggestion: even though it's low voltage, don't "bury" the splices inside the wall or ceiling.  I think you don't technically *need* junction boxes, like you do for 120 V and up, but if you put a splice behind the drywall, it will fail about 5 minutes after you get done painting the drywall.  :)  Having the splice to the fixture wires right behind the fixture is OK, as long as you can, in the future, remove the fixture and pull it down far enough to disconnect the splice.

Final suggestion: When wiring this up, think about the future.  Apps, and the OSes they run on, have a lifecycle of maybe three years; houses have a lifecycle of 100 years or more.  Down the road, you will probably have to change out the "brain" that all these lights are plugged into, in order to get it to talk to iOS 15, or Android 30, or to get rid of the "plz Paypal $100 to hacker -at- example.ru to get your lights back" virus in it.  :)  Design it so that changing out the brain, or even just running all the lights directly into a dumb 12 V DC power supply is easy to do.

I am not affiliated with any companies mentioned.

If you think the property might ever rent or sell to people with kids, be sure to ask or find out what school district the property is in.  For example, properties with Independence addresses can be in the Independence, Raytown, Blue Springs, or Fort Osage school districts.  I have used http://www.greatschools.org/school-district-bounda... to look up the boundaries by property address.

A lot of work.  Hope it goes well for you!

IT tip: you can take a "screen shot" of whatever is currently on your Mac screen, and get an image file on the desktop.  This may result in clearer pictures than just holding up your phone to the screen.  :)  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201361 has the directions.

A screen shot won't help if somebody (like the city/county) needs to be able to "take apart" the plans - like, turning off the drywall and finish floor so they can see the framing details.  For that, they'll need the full Sketchup file.  Screen shots are good for questions like "should the walls in this room be blue or green?", if you can't get your design consultant and the computer in the same room; you can render it different ways and then email the screenshots and let them pick.

Disclaimer: This is based on adding a door in a single-family home in Missouri; the requirements for multi-family and in other jurisdictions are probably different.

If you have any electrical outlet boxes in the fire-rated wall, they probably need to be steel, or the fancier plastic ones... the cheap blue ones aren't rated for it.

If you have to bring a pipe through the fire wall, there may be some requirements about that.  At least, you will probably be required to seal around the pipe fairly well.

If you have to put a door in the fire-rated wall, it needs to be a fire-rated door - usually either solid wood or metal.  The building code may also want you to use some special caulk/sealer between the door frame and the wall, before you put the trim on; this caulk swells up when hot to block smoke and gases.  You can get this stuff at Home Depot, in a tube that fits a regular caulk gun.

My only experience with it so far is that I went to look at a SFR that had a Rently sign and number in the yard. When I punched the number into Rently's web site, it kept telling me "no such number". I tried searching by address and also couldn't find the house. I don't know whether the seller didn't have it set up right, or if Rently was screwing up, or what.

This particular seller seems to have listed the house through one of those "we list your house on the MLS for $100, showings are your baby" services.

I bought the house I live in now as an REO in 2009. I did not have warm fuzzies about the original toilet shutoffs; they worked but would drip water around the stem at certain positions. I replaced the shutoffs with new ones. The stubs coming out of the wall were 1/2" copper, and the original shutoffs were compression fittings. On the first one, I tried for a while to get the ferrule/olive off of the stub, but it wasn't going to go anywhere unless I cut off the entire stub - and then I would have had to open the wall up to install a longer stub. So I sighed deeply and re-used the original ferrule and nut with the new valves... and they have been leak-free for about 6.5 years now.

Another tip for compression fittings that I picked up along the way: put a little pipe dope compound on the male threads before you screw the compression nut down.  The idea is not to seal water; it just makes the nut screw down more easily and lets you get it a little tighter on the valve body.

You might bring a small package of file folders or big manila envelopes, in case you discover any "important" paperwork you want to keep, like the deed to the house, or the most recent house insurance bill - stuff like that.

Maybe a small household-type paper shredder if you find old bills or other financial statements that aren't current, but that you don't want to just toss in the trash.  Or, put the "to be shredded" stuff in bags and either shred it later, or take it to a place that does shredding for offices and businesses.

If you think you have a large amount (probably more than a few hundred pounds) of scrap metal in the garages and shops, and if there is a good paved driveway available, you might ask local scrap yards about getting a container delivered. Sometimes this looks like a dumpster; other times it looks like a pallet with walls on it.  Also ask the scrap yard about what you need as far as proof of ownership; some cities and states have tightened the laws on this after people stole lots of pipes, wiring, etc from houses.

Often what happens is you will have lots of iron and steel that can go in the container, and smaller amounts of brass, copper, aluminum, etc, which can go in cardboard boxes or 5-gallon buckets or whatever.  Right now, around me, scrap steel is about three cents a pound; copper is about $1.40/pound; aluminum is about $0.30/pound; brass is about $1.20/pound.

For the burn pit idea, check with the local fire department first.  Sometimes they don't care; sometimes they want you or somebody working for you to watch over the burn and maybe have a garden hose handy; sometimes they say "hell no".

Disclaimer: I'm new at this and don't own any "weird" properties.

The main thing that springs to mind is: will you have to make any updates to bring things up to current building code?  Egress windows, size of bedrooms, stuff like that.  If the current owner has held the property for a long time, there might be things they haven't done, but that you will have to do.  Maybe the asking price is so right that you can afford to do whatever it needs, but it might be worth talking to the city or county codes person.

You might enjoy the previous threads on this as well:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/84/topics/164...

As I said in my post, it was based on experiences living in Oklahoma and Missouri.  For quite a while, I used to shop at Walmart store number 12... before that I shopped at store number 101.  I think maybe I'm used to seeing Walmarts.