Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Cost of a Light Bulb

Back in 2007 I wrote about the cost of running various things from a Christmas tree to an Xbox360. Maybe I’m a cheap skate, but I’m always amazed at the cost of the simple light bulb. Now that we have a bigger house, I’ve been looking for bulbs to replace to save money. It can make a big difference!

Take for example, your basic 60W old-school incandescent light bulb. If you left that on 24 hours a day, every day for a year, that would cost $52! That’s just ONE bulb. I had 100W equivalent exterior CFL bulbs that go on with my fancy timer every night, and I figured out that if I replaced them with 60W equivalent bulbs, I’d save about $20/year and it was plenty bright enough.

Or let’s say you have a living room with 3 100W incandescent bulbs that you use an average of 3 hours per day. If you replace them with 3 100W equivalent CFL bulbs, you’ll save $25/year.

I know it’s not really that much money, but you do that here and there a couple times and you’ve just paid for a Netflix subscription.

Generally you can run about 4 CFL bulbs for the cost of one incandescent bulbs. In a few years, the cost of LED bulbs will come down enough that we’ll all be buying those instead of CFL. You can run about 10 LED bulbs for the coast of one incandescent bulb, and LED bulbs don’t have the warm up time that CFL bulbs do. They’re still pricey but they last longer. You’ll want to do your math before you switch to LED.

By the way, if you’re at all interested in this stuff, you should pick up a Kill-a-Watt. I still find myself plugging various things into it and seeing how much power they use.

benmartens November 4, 2011 Geek, Home Improvement

Light Timer

Every night since moving in, I have been doing battle with the external light timer. The previous owner left instructions, and I found the manual online, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get them to work correctly. Even when I set the program, the timer drifted and would be wrong by the next day.

I finally gave up trying to get it working and ordered the fanciest light timer I’ve ever seen: a Honeywell Econoswitch. It’s a digital timer that fits right into the light switch panel. You can do a separate program for each day to turn the lights on and off, or the really cool feature is that it will calculate the sunrise and sunset based on the latitude and longitude that you enter in. The installation was simple and this one is a breeze to program. It’s well worth the money!

benmartens November 1, 2011 Gadgets, Home Improvement

Motorcycles in the HOV Lane

One of the best laws I learned about when I got the motorcycle was that motorcycles are always allowed in HOV lanes (also known as carpool lanes and diamond lanes.) Now that 405 is the fastest route to work, I’m on the motorcycle a lot more because it’s so much faster than sitting in traffic.

But why are motorcycles allowed in HOV lanes? Because Uncle Sam says so. US federal law states that HOV lanes "must allow motorcycles and bicycles to use the HOV facility, unless either or both create a safety hazard." On a side note, I expect that in most places, bicycles aren’t allowed because they are a safety hazard.

I’ve spoken to some drivers who are annoyed by this, but frankly, having motorcycles in the HOV lane is probably a lot safer for everyone. How many rear end accidents do you see when traffic is backed up? Now imagine that you just rear ended a motorcycle instead of an SUV. Yuck.

Buzzing past in the HOV lane on a motorcycle makes me smile, but I’m also on high alert for anyone deciding to whip out into my lane especially when the rates of speed are very different. I generally try not to leave a big gap between myself and the car in front of me, ride on the right side of the lane so I’m more visible to people looking for an opening, and I pay extra extra attention after an on-ramp as people make their way over to the HOV lane.

benmartens October 25, 2011 Motorcycle

Projector Mount

The first step after getting the projector running was getting it mounted. One reason I picked the Epson 8350 is that it has a huge amount of available vertical and horizontal lens shift. This allows you to place the projector just about wherever you want and then place the image at the right spot with no distortion. It will move the image about one screen above and below the lens and one screen right and left of the lens. There aren’t many other projectors in this price range that will do that.

As you can see in the picture, I didn’t purchase a fancy mount. And because of the lens shift capabilities, I didn’t even do an upside down mount like you would normally see. I grabbed a couple shelf brackets from Home Depot along with a 2’x4’ sheet of 1/2” MDF. I originally tried 1/4” MDF but it bent quite a bit with the projector on it. I built a little lip all the way around so it won’t slide off if we have a little earthquake or something like that.

The mount is far from beautiful, but it’s functional. Once I get around to painting that wall, the shelf will be painted to match. The next step is probably going to be running the wires down from the projector inside the wall. That’s not going to be simple though because it’s mounted up in the trusses of the elevated ceiling and I’ll need to cut the wall open halfway down to get through the horizontal piece of the truss.

It works wonderfully though. It creates a lot more seating area underneath and feels a lot more professional. It also means that when people get up they don’t have to walk in front of the image, and if we ever get a Kinect, we’ll be able to play it without blocking the screen.

There are a lot more projects like this coming, but it has gotten to a point where I can focus on a few other more pressing house projects.

benmartens October 24, 2011 Projects

Network Cabling

While I would love to have network cable installed in the entire house and run to a nice patch panel, realistically that’s either going to take me forever or cost a lot of money. So for now I’ve settled with running a couple wires from the family room to the theater room. The rooms sit on top of each other and share a wall in the garage, so it was a pretty simple job. I ran the cable out through the wall in the family room to the garage, up the other side of the wall, and then punched through into the theater room. It ended up looking really nice because all of the networking gear can stay upstairs in that room and the family room just gets the TV and a PC to drive it.

One great tip I got from Logan was to drive a six inch nail through the wall before cutting into it. This not only helps you locate where you need to cut on the other side of the wall, but it will also give you a hint if you’re trying to cut through something solid between the walls.

This is a tiny step forward, but I’m excited about what this room is going to turn into!

P.S. You may have noticed that I started a new blog category called “Man Cave.” Any time I do an improvement to that room, I’ll be posting it with this tag so that you can find them all easily if you are interested.

benmartens October 18, 2011 Home Improvement, Projects

The Home Theater Begins

Tyla thinks we bought this house so that we’d have more room, own some dirt, etc etc etc. Wrong. We bought this house so that I could have a projector again. Those of you who have been reading for a while may remember that back in Jersey, we had a little theater room set up on the ground floor. That projector was only 800×600 but boy was it fun! There was no room for a projector in the condo, and ever since leaving that projector behind in Jersey, I’ve bided my time waiting for the opportunity to arise again.

As we walked through various houses, the thought of “where can I stick a projector” was never far from my mind. When we walked into this house, it was obvious. Upstairs there is a 15’x25’ bonus room with a huge wall just begging for a projector. I patiently (I’m lying) waited until we bought the important things like a fridge, but it wasn’t too long before I couldn’t wait anymore. I pulled the trigger on a new projector.

I present to you the Epson 8350. It’s a 1080p 3LCD projector, and depending on how it looks, I’m shooting for roughly a 120” diagonal screen. It’s going to blow my mind when it arrives. I won’t even have any furniture to put in that room yet, but details details, first things first! You can expect a lot more photos of this as soon as I get it set up. After that I’ll have a lot more projects lined up to make this into an incredible man cave!

benmartens October 14, 2011 Home Improvement, Projects

Another Weekend of Work

Last weekend we spent a lot more time at the house getting it prepped. We owe another huge thanks to Don, Nancy, Logan, Megan, Andy and Stephanie for coming over. We’ve gotten so much more done than I thought would ever be possible! The projects for this weekend were painting a weird bar in the master bedroom white, painting the hallway (vaulted ceilings), and cleaning out the pantry and painting it. We were home before dinner on both days which is a testament to how much help we had. The house is really looking great!

There are eight new photos available under the House tag. In the photo of Don in the kitchen you can spot our brand new fridge. That was delivered earlier in the week along with a washer and dryer.

benmartens October 13, 2011 Home Improvement

Werner Multi-Function Ladder

We spent a lot of time painting this weekend, and before we got started, I knew I was going to need some ladders. I figured I would need a step ladder and an extension ladder, but being the geek I am, I found one ladder that does both. It’s available from a lot of places, but one of the cheapest is Amazon and you can get it with 2 day shipping if you have Amazon Prime!

It turned out to be even more useful than I thought it would be. You can use it as a regular step ladder but you can set it at different heights between 5’ and 9’. As an extension ladder, it will go all the way out to 22’. And as an unexpected (and probably not recommended) bonus, when you get close to a corner, you can decrease the height of one side of the stepladder to bring you closer to the corner. The same idea applies if you want to set up the ladder on the stairs.

The biggest drawback is the weight. It’s a heavy ladder, but given it’s flexibility and price, I’m very happy that I bought it.

Plus, you get to have this video run through your head the whole time you’re using it. (No, the ladder in the video isn’t the one I bought and the one I bought doesn’t support this configuration.)

benmartens October 11, 2011 Home Improvement

First House Pictures

After a long and crazy journey, we finally closed on the house on Friday! We were very thankful to finally have the keys in hand and be the proud owners of a house that exceeded our dreams.

Friday night we went over after work to meet with the carpet guy and have dinner on the floor. Logan was nice enough to bring over a little fridge so we could keep beer cold over the weekend.

Saturday morning started with spending a lot of money at Home Depot (a theme of the weekend) and then painting and cleaning. The whole Brandt family came over to help for the entire day. We got the whole kitchen deep cleaned and painted the living room and taped the family room.

Since we were going to church on Monday night this week, we were able to spend all day Sunday at the house. The whole family came over AGAIN and Tim and Chelsea were there too. With all that help, we were able to get both bathrooms cleaned, two coats on the family room and kitchen and one coat in the master bedroom! Tyla and I finished the night by putting a coat of purple in the laundry room.

It was a long weekend, but it was a blast to be in the new house and show our friends and family around. Appliances come later in the week and carpet comes next week. Combined with all the paint and little projects we’re doing, it’s really going through a big transformation.

We can’t thank you all enough for helping out! It would have easily taken us a couple weeks to get this far on our own. We’re both eager to get moved in and have you over for relaxation instead of work!

Photos are available under the House tag.

benmartens October 6, 2011 Home Improvement

Three Pass Blast

The day before my birthday, I headed out on one of my favorite local rides. It’s called the Three Pass Blast because you head through three very different mountain passes: Snoqualmie, Blewett and Stevens. I’ve done this before (and incorrectly counted it as four passes) and it’s a beautiful ride. I did it clockwise this time, and since I set out to do as little on two lane roads as possible, it changed the route a bit for me. I headed down 203 to Fall City and headed up past Snoqualmie Falls to North Bend. I hopped on I-90 for a few miles and then got off at exit 47 to catch NF-56. It’s a fantastic little twisty road that I’ve videoed before. When I’m king of the world, I will block off this road and stage a motorcycle race. After that I pounded the pavement on I-90 through Snoqualmie Pass before hopping off to catch US-97 north through Blewett pass. The dry, arid land is a stark contrast to Snoqualmie Pass. The heat was also starting to build so I didn’t waste any time getting to Leavenworth. I stopped for a quick lunch and then finished up with a beautiful ride through Stevens Pass.

It was a gorgeous day for a ride, and I was having so much fun that I didn’t stop to take any pictures. Sorry! You’ll have to take my word for it. I timed the traffic well and had fairly clear sailing until about 10 miles west of the Stevens Pass summit. It wasn’t anything too bad though and the 240 miles flew by.

benmartens September 20, 2011 Motorcycle