We have gone through this thread of yours & it is really great. Thanks for all the guidance you been providing to many first time builders like us.
Can you please look at our design & let us know if it is sufficient for low set home.
We have LED 12W (Lumens 860lm (Warm White), 900lm (Neutral White), Dimmable, Beam Angle 100°, CRI ≥80, IP Rating IP44) Downlight in our master, kitchen, theatre, walk in robs, alfresco & living. Fan light to remaining bed room. 28W Oyster LED to study, bathroom & laundry. 48W twin led light to garage. We are using exhaust fans in toilets, bathrooms & master walk in robe.
Pendants in Kitchen over bench, in the hallway & chandelier in living room. Outdoor lights are Twin 6W LED Spotlight & Sensor on each side of house. In the front we have 4 LED Up and Down Outdoor Wall Light 3000K Warm White with sensor. We have one bunker in the back.
Apart from that we have ducted air-conditioning & solar power for hot water. As our load was more than 63Amp we were told to go to 3 phase meter. Not sure why as I believe in one of your replies it mentioned that we could have single phase with 83Amp also.
Can you please let us know if we go for surge protector in the main meter we don't need surge protector for individual devices. Do we really need surge protector in Queensland ?
Looking forward to your response.
Thanks.
Your lighting plan looks ok to me. My suggestions:
- Try and see if your lighting budget could stretch to a better downlight, something with low glare properties (so that generally means something with a beam angle of 45-60 degrees)
- I would try and keep the colour temperature consistent throughout (garage, maybe laundry excepted). It drives me insane when a room or area has all different coloured lights. Personally, I use 3000k for residential.
- 6 watt outdoor spotlights might be a bit under powered. Fine for giving you enough light so that you don't trip over, but that's about it.
As for your power supply size, I'm not really in a position to give advice on that for legal reasons, but I can offer the following points of interest:
- In my experience it is very rare for a "normal" sized home to require 3 phase power, unless there is a 3 phase air conditioner.
- AS3000 Wiring Rules in my opinion uses very outdated and overly conservative values for calculating maximum demand. There are three acceptable methods of determining maximum demand - by calculation (using tables in the book), by limitation, or by assessment. For example, you could use the calculation method, and lets say that gives a resultant of 68 amps. The engineer/electrician could then use their judgement and use the "by limitation" method and put in a 63 amp circuit breaker, whereby the maximum demand is limited to 63 amps.
- If your maximum demand is greater than 63 amps single phase but less than 80 amps single phase then you could have an 80 amp single phase supply, which would only be marginally more expensive than 63 amps. Three phase on the other hand would add considerable cost.
- The downside of having three phase mains if you have solar is that the solar inverter will most likely be single phase, but the individual lighting, power, cooker, air con circuits will be evenly spread across the three phases - so your solar power will only be feeding back into one phase. This means you are more likely to end up exporting your solar power at around 6 cents per kWh, rather than consuming it yourself, saving you more like 26-27 cents per kWh.
When you say "solar power for hot water" I'm not quite sure what you mean? So do you have a standard electric storage hot water system or heat pump hot water system, with a separate solar photovoltaic power system? Or do you mean you have a direct gain solar hot water system (like a solahart or similar). From an engineering perspective, it would be about 4-5 times more efficient to heat the water directly using the sun (solahart or similar) rather than use the sun to generate electricity to heat water using electricity. Plus a direct gain solar hot water system is effectively like a big, cheap, reliable energy battery. Heats the water during the day (for free) and then stores the heat energy over night. Can't get much more efficient and simple than that!
As for the surge diverter, always a good idea, but not a requirement. I don't have one on my house. If you were up north with more lightning etc then probably a bit more pertinent.