There’s a reason you will never see them in a home improvement store:
Code only requires access to the connections. If the pigtail of wire from the box is long enough to be accessible with the socket extracted, then I don’t see a code problem here.
I’ll agree that it would be a shame to hide such expensive artwork by plugging something into them. (snark). Don’t you have any outlets in closets where you could plug in one of these ugly routers?
From my experience, (I was an electrician in the prior century), local codes have always allowed homeowners to do their own electrical work as long as the appropriate permits and inspections are done. Unless, in most communities, the home is a multi-family building like a condo or apartment. This is the law in NYC.
Totally agree, if the plugs are too fancy to have anything plugged in, why have them at all?
It just occurred to me that the OP said that he had “few outlets”. The NEC (used in NYC) requires that no point on a wall at the floor can be more than 6 ft from an outlet. (This is why appliances, lamps, etc come with a six-ft power cord). So outlets will be no more than 12 ft apart. Also, any wall space with a width of 2 ft or more must have an outlet. Kitchen outlets have to be no more than 48-inches apart. (Which explains why countertop appliances like a toaster have a 2-ft power cord).
If it were a rental unit (what we locally refer to as “apartment”), normally the landlord does not permit the tenant to perform significant modifications to the dwelling, such as adding a new outlet. That’s why I was curious to know what kind of “apartment” allows for that but it’s a condo (ownership vs rental).
In my province, you’re obliged to hire an electrician to perform electrical work. However, you can hire one to inspect work that has been performed (by a non-electrician). About a year ago I helped my brother-in-law add a new circuit for an EVSE in his garage and he then had it blessed by a master electrician. In this case, no permit was needed to perform the initial work.
As for the eye-watering price of 22 System’s products, you’re right, that’ll keep it off the shelves of a home reno store. I thought Legrand’s adorne outlets were spendy but these things are easily 100 times the cost of a vanilla Decora outlet.
For temporary usage like an iron or a vacuum or a mixer. But nothing stays permanently plugged into them.
Right. We’re dealing with a hallway with a ton of doors on it. So there is only space for one outlet. And that outlet is the pretty outlet. Thus me adding an outlet in one of the closets.
This is why I suggested to get those specific ones setup with a relay behind them if there is room, you keep the look and you gain a relay to extend the mesh as well as monitor power usage with the socket of anything plugged in at the time.
Interesting. I’ve never seen those outlets before. I’m sure some people find them attractive. I don’t happen to be one of them. But hey, if you like the look, why not! I’ll bet some day I find some place where one of those will be perfect.
I’m not sure what the exact plans are, just be aware something like a T2 inside the wall may not be anywhere near as effective as whatever you are testing now.
If it is inside a closet and out of site, then I would probably have the socket installed above door height and then plug in something with a good antenna like a Sonoff dongle.
Also best if you can find a second location to also span the gap to have some redundancy.
That is not how Zigbee works. No more spoonfeeding. Please read the guide.
I’ve read your very detailed guide thoroughly. But I think the guide overstates the necessity of a mesh. Zigbee devices are low power which means you need to add more routers as your network gets bigger. But the only reason to keep adding routers once you have good coverage, as far as I can tell, is to add redundancy. Which doesn’t make sense to me unless the routers are known to be flakey, which has not been my experience.
Agree that over stressing mesh is an issue in the forums. There have been some outrageous recommendations over how many routers are required in a net IMO, saying like 30% or more of the devices should be routers.
In my approximatly 4000 SF home, probably 95% of my battery devices manage to find their way to UPS backed coordinator during an extended power outage (admittedly, this is lucky enough to be in a fairly central location).
I targeted the design to have a couple router devices in “easy” range for some redundancy, but virtually all devices connect via the four ZBDongle-P routers I have sprinkled through the house, or directly to the coordinator. I could remove every other mains device and the 100+ battery devices would still be happy with the just the four ZBDongle-P’s.
