Lyndhurst Garden House

Lyndhurst Garden House
Lyndhurst Garden House

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Lighted Address Sign

For the gable front of the new carport, above the larger round vent hole?

http://www.comforthouse.com/ovaladdress.html

Lighted address signs work on doorbell power, 24V AC or less, which the code basically lets you do anything with.  You can drill a hole in the wall and run doorbell wire right through the hole.  For 120V AC, code requires Electrical Boxes, which must have covers or access panels.  For a long time I had this idea of having the address light up from within the round or oval vent hole.  I could find nothing of the kind, and of course it would be illegal to do this with 120V AC power.  Where would the Electrical Box be?  Obviously the Electrical Box cannot just be in the vent hole.  However, it would be possible to add a lighted address sign to a gable vent cover IF you use Doorbell Power (I think).

Nobody makes something like this…but once I have my vent cover I could re-manufacture it to have lighted numbers.  An interesting project…

But I have to remember to ask the carport builders to run a doorbell power line through the carport roof structure (I'm assuming there is a ceiling below the roof, not an open roof.  A ceiling provides better insulation and looks nicer).

I had been thinking no ceiling lamps.  The Luddate-Job (which I'm thinking is a great place to start) has ceiling lamps.  But that adds the electrical expense, and I was thinking my new outdoor Happy Trails sconce was sufficient lighting, with or without a carport.  But ceiling lamps are a nice touch, and the comfortable house is all about nice touches.  With ceiling lamps, you can see where you just dropped your keys.  And the ceiling lamps could come on automatically when a car enters the carport.  And it's far harder to add the electrical afterwards.  Afterwards it would have to be external through conduit, which has an industrial look (though I think OK basically).

So I think I'm going to start by asking for the Whole Ludgate, lamps and all, plus the doorbell line to the the front vent (leave it to me to run the rest of the way), 22.5 ft inner distance between the all brick posts, 4 posts for the carport and one for the walkway (just like Ludgate).

Funny thing is, I think I once drove past the Ludgate house. I couldn't believe it, it looked like a hotel here in the middle of a subdivision I had accidentally turned into.  I got in to check it out, and actually my first impression was the carport was too cheap to be the luxury hotel I thought it was, and it wasn't as big as I thought it was.  But it was fine, very fine, for an actual house, as I could simultaneously see it was.  An all metal carport even like the Kirby-Job, which at first I liked better than Ludgate, would not have that same feel.  It's cheap country ranch style, not pinnacle affluent district style.  The Ludgate approaches the affluent district style, but if you look close enough, you can see it isn't the real affluent district style, it's a metal framed carport disguised as brick and wood.  (Here where I live, "the district" would be Olmos Park.  I'm trying to emulate that a bit here, though I more often promote the name East Alamo Heights for my increasingly-surrounded-by-expensive-subdivisions ghetto that I'm struggling to transform.)  But the Ludgate-job is close enough to affluent district style for my house.  In fact, I've generally thought it out-of-reach (and it may be, though I'm going to try, try).  The brick would be new, I might ask if I could also brick the front sides of the garage just like Ludgate (though my sides are smaller, much smaller, but so much the better as it needs far less brick).

I think the Ludgate is Real Brick, though clearly it's a metal pole wrapped in one and one half brick sides.  I think that's a great design, far more narrow than the space wasting Craftsman style supports I often see.

I not only drove past the Kirby carport, I saw it being welded.

When you look at carports at Houzz, you see many people take them very seriously, and they are often built to exactly match the house, with exactly the same or even more heft than the actual house.  Now as far as affluent district look goes, you couldn't do much better than this:

http://www.houzz.com/photos/61519/The-Cliffs-Vineyards-traditional-exterior-other-metro

Now look at the brick sides supporting that carport roof.  They look suitable for a major bridge.  Actually I think this whole house looks obscenely affluent from the outside.  I might partly be the camera lenses they are using (much with the Ludgate-job pictures, I think, which used a very wide angle lens).  The inside doesn't look quite as obscene, and I didn't think the floor space was too far beyond the usual rich folks place these days.

But it illustrates my point.  You shouldn't go cheap on the carport.  That's the first impression right there.  If I can't build my NeoLudgate now, I'll try to get there somehow.

Update: just after writing this, I had my estimates from Stephen's Roofing.  As to my specifications, a metal frame carport like the Kirby, but nested just over the roofline for almost full coverage, would cost $15,900.  This was with standing seam panels, which I would mandate.  With a hand wave he said a wooden carport like the Ludgate would be $29,000, and I don't know if he was counting the brick, which he said was an extra $1000 or more for each pole.  They said the Ludgate was real brick with wood framing.

Well this proved my worst fears, it was actually higher than the high prices I feared.  I feared paying $20,000 for the Ludgate, but I might do it.  At $30,000, it's a clear no.

I suppose I could get other estimates, and I was thinking after reading reports on Stephens that I WOULD get someone else anyway, but now I feel I just won't bother soon.  Although I've been re-thinking the solar idea again.  Not being attached to the house doesn't sound so bad anymore, and it could be little more than a carport now that I've given up the Ludgate.  If it's detached, it might as well be some solar thing.

I got a cement estimate, and I didn't even like that, remembering far less from an hand waved estimate several years ago.








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