On March 25, 2012 at 11:09, BisyB said...
House is slab and no attic, eh? Slim chance and doubtful but is the electrical wired through conduit instead of romex? I mean it could be a royal pain but one could rework the switchlegs back to the panel and work in a lighting control panel if there is good conduit in place and you can avoid those pesky code things like conduit fill and derating...
Long shot but still a shot.
Yeah, slab and no attic. Not even any space above the ceiling anywhere. It's all open beam ceilings with exposed joists. The roof/ceiling construction is 1-1/4" T&G for the ceiling with 1" insulation above that, then plywood with the roofing material.
All the electrical, plumbing and HVAC ducting was run through the slab. There is conduit in place, but the house has been expanded & remodeled a few times and everything is a mess. All the conduit is already overstuffed, collapsed and full of crap. They did a lot of saw cutting to rework the electrical and mechanical, but still didn't really resolve these 3 areas where there are big banks of switches.
The hybrid keypads will help a little, but these locations have 6-9 switch legs run back to them. I think that hiding behind art will be risky. If the art ever moves or gets replaced then you have a big bank of switches in a very conspicuous spot on the wall.
I'm still leaning towards ganging up all the dimmers down low with a blank cover if possible. Furniture and furnishings will hide most of the locations, just had to find out for sure if they will physically fit behind a blank and if there are any code issues. Hopefully sort some of this out tomorrow.
