Frequently Asked Questions

The questions this house tends to raise, answered in one place. Where the answer is “no,” it says no; where something genuinely has not been pinned down, it carries a to-confirm chip rather than a confident-sounding guess.

Orientation and light

Which way does the house face?

West. The front of the house — the garage overhead door and the front door — faces west onto the street. The covered patio and the rear yard are on the east side, and the garage’s utility wall (the man door and the electrical service) is the north wall. Every direction used in this manual is a real compass direction, not “front” and “back.”

So which rooms get morning sun, and which get afternoon sun?

The east side — the covered patio, the rear yard, and the rooms that look onto them — takes the morning sun and is shaded and cool by late afternoon, which is what makes the patio comfortable for summer evenings. The west side — the front elevation, the entry, and the garage — takes the afternoon and evening sun. In midwinter the low afternoon sun comes straight down the front of the house, which is worth knowing before you plant anything or park anything reflective in the driveway.

Does the house have…

A gas fireplace?

Yes — a Heatilator gas fireplace in the living room, on IntelliFire ignition with a factory battery backup, so it lights and runs with no household power at all. See the fireplace page.

Security cameras beyond the doorbell?

There is a Eufy Security video doorbell at the front door, and the house was wired during the build so that further PoE cameras can be added without opening a wall.

The doorbell is the only camera fitted. One unused drop exists on the east elevation — a pair of ethernet cables hanging at the corner of the main house body, ready for a PoE camera that was never installed. The cabling is there if you want one.

A central vacuum system?

No central vacuum system is installed. To confirm at walkthrough.

A whole-house backup generator?

No fuel-powered generator. Backup power here comes from the two Tesla Powerwalls, which pick up the whole house automatically during a grid outage — there is no “essential circuits only” sub-panel. See the power outage runbook.

A fire sprinkler system?

Not documented. To confirm at walkthrough — residential fire sprinklers are not typically required at this size and type of home in Ridgefield.

A backflow preventer on the irrigation system?

Yes. A Zurn Wilkins 1" model 850 double-check valve assembly sits below grade in its own green valve box, with its own ball-valve isolation above and below the body — so the irrigation can be shut off without touching the house’s main water shutoff. Ridgefield requires an annual test on it; see Irrigation and the Maintenance calendar.

A monitored home security/alarm system, separate from the smart locks?

There is a hardwired Interlogix Concord 4 alarm panel, installed and monitored during its working life by Global Security of downtown Vancouver. Nothing on it has been enabled or active for a long time — treat it as dormant hardware that a licensed alarm technician could bring back, not as a system protecting the house today. Day-to-day access control is the Schlage Encode deadbolt, Eufy doorbell, and Linear garage controller.

Water filtration beyond the softener?

Yes. The water treatment train in the garage is three pieces: a metered water softener, a second filter tank, and the brine (salt) tank they share. Whether there is additional point-of-use filtration — a reverse-osmosis tap at the kitchen sink, for instance — is to confirm.

An accessible attic or crawlspace?

To confirm/gather.

A workshop or 220V outlet in the garage?

To confirm at the walkthrough, alongside the garage’s overhead storage rack load ratings. Outside, there is a fully installed dedicated circuit for a hot tub on the east wall, by the patio.

Living here

Are the appliances original, and have any of them been trouble?

Every appliance in this house is the original 2017 unit, chosen at build time from the high end of the market — the BlueStar range, the Zephyr hood, the Electrolux ICON refrigerator and freezer columns, the Bosch dishwasher, the microwave drawer, the laundry pair, the kegerator and the beverage refrigerator. None of them has ever failed or needed a service call. The single replacement anywhere in the house is the ecobee thermostat, swapped for a newer model. Nine years of daily use with nothing to report is the whole story here.

What stays with the house?

More than you would expect. What Conveys — in the appendix, because it describes a moment in the house’s history rather than the house itself — sets it out in three tiers: what is simply part of the building, what is intended to convey but separable, and the furniture that is available by agreement.

What happens during a power outage?

Short version: the two Powerwalls carry the house automatically, and you may not notice until you check the Tesla app. Full step-by-step detail is in Runbooks → Power outage.

Can I charge a car that isn’t a Tesla?

The installed Wall Connector is Tesla hardware; charging a non-Tesla EV from it is an adapter question with a specific answer for this connector generation. See EV Charging.

How do I get the official manuals for everything?

The Reference → Document library lists every device with a link to its manufacturer’s support page, and the owner’s edition ships with local copies of the manuals themselves.

How do I change the WiFi name or password?

It’s a two-minute task in the UniFi app — see Network & Connectivity for the exact steps.

Who do I call when something breaks?

Part 6 — Reference opens with three tables that answer exactly this: emergency and non-emergency contacts, the utility providers, and the vendor & contractor directory of the trades who built and service the house. If you do not yet know what is broken, start at Part 5 — Runbooks instead; every runbook ends by naming who to call.

What happens when I take over the house?

Everything you do exactly once — the utilities, the smart-home accounts, the credentials sheet, re-keying — is in the Appendix — Taking Ownership, and nowhere else. Work through it once and put it away; the rest of this manual assumes it is done.

Is this manual kept up to date?

The pages describe the house as built and as it runs; the Maintenance calendar’s log is the part designed to keep growing. It carries the recorded history from the 2017 build onward, plus blank lined continuation pages in the printed binder, so each owner adds to the same record by hand.

Where are the WiFi password, lock codes, and account logins?

Nowhere in this manual, on purpose.

Every password, WiFi key, and access code for this houseSealed credentials sheet

Why does the manual mention a “showing edition”?

This content exists in two builds. The owner’s edition is complete. The showing edition is the same manual with identity and configuration details — serials, network specifics, lock and camera particulars — physically left out of the build rather than hidden, so it can be handed to a stranger. Passwords and access codes are in neither: those live only on the sealed credentials sheet.

About the badges and chips

Why do some pages say “draft — not house-verified”?

A ✎ draft badge means the page has not yet been checked line-by-line against the house at a walkthrough; ✓ house-verified means it has.

I see a “to confirm” or “to gather” chip — what does that mean?

It marks one specific detail — a model number, a filter size, a vendor name — that is not yet pinned down. Everything without a chip is a plain statement of fact.