Home Automation with Schlage LiNK

Lighting my driveway and side entrance to my house has been a nightmare to date. The overhead security light had a motion sensor that required you to jump through hoops in order to trip it. The security light on the side of my house used to illuminate the staircase worked whenever it wanted to. (This was because of mixed gauge wires and loose connections, causing a small fire in an unfastened metal junction box in my attic ... don't ask). Clearly, something had to be done. 

I was on the fence - what did I want to do? Hardwired or solar? Photosensor or time scheduled? Where to place the switch(es)? After a decent amount of research, I decided on the following:

• Hardwired - solar lights just don't seem bright enough
• Timed lights on the face of the garage, motion sensor lights on the side of the house

The motion sensor lights on the side of the house are surface mounted, battery powered, LED lights. Super straightforward to install and operate. The light is a cool blue, something I'm liking less and less these days. I much prefer a crisp white light, but if I have to choose between old school yellow and new school blue, I'm blue all the way.

A nice feature of this light is it detects surrounding light and will only operate at night time - super important if you want to prolong the battery life some. I've read these things can last up to 1 year, depending on usage. Plus, using a battery powered light helped reduce the load on the circuit which started a small fire in the junction box before. A win / win.

For the face of my garage, I installed 2 ?allen + roth patio lights and ?Utilitech 18' LED rope lights underneath the garage trim. Wiring was rather straight forward. I pulled back the existing 14/2 romex going to the busted security light and ran it to the first light on one side of the garage door. I then continued that line to a GFCI outlet for the rope lights (probably overkill but whatever), then wired from the outlet to the second light. Mounting the lights was an interesting challenge. Obviously I wanted them flush with the side of the house, and mounting them on top of lap siding was not going to get me that look without shimming it. Instead, I made my own surface mounting blocks out of ?Azek trim. I basically just cut out a hole in the center of a piece of trim using a recessed light drill bit, then surface mounted a pancake junction box in the middle. I then flashed the top of the block and silicone caulked around the sides and top of the light.    

For the switch, I used a ?GE Z-Wave rocker switch. Installing this switch is slightly more involved then your average switch. For starters, it needs to be connected to your neutral run. Easy enough with a simple pigtail. Secondly, it's strict about which is your line and which is your load. Again, not a big deal, just something you need to make sure you take note of. 

For the LED rope lights, I installed a small piece of Azek trim to cover the reveal of the trim above the garage. Since the garage frame is not level, my reveal was off significantly - about an inch. By placing a piece of trim over the reveal, it hid the fact that the reveal was not even and also hid the rope lights. At night, the rope lights give off a nice glow at the top of the garage door.
Finally, I programmed 2 scenes in my Schlage LiNK account - "Garage On" and "Garage Off". All this does is activate the GE switch in the garage. I have it on a schedule to come in the evening and turn off around midnight. Pretty straightforward and got me exactly what I wanted. 

Before, During, After

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