Ask Slashdot: If You Were Building a New Home, What Cool New Tech Would You Put In? 557
An anonymous reader writes: I am starting the process of building a new home, and I would like to make the house as wired (or wireless) as possible. At this stage I can incorporate new tech in the design. What features do you have in your house that you just couldn't live without? What features are nice to have? What features do you want? In-home Fiber? Solar? Audio/Visual? Heating/Cooling?
My lawn (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
We call those shotguns. With bean bags or rock salt, of course. Wouldn't want to "hurt" anyone.
Re:My lawn (Score:5, Funny)
Do you mean something like this? How to stop cats pissing on your car, The best cat video ever! [youtube.com]
I'm pretty sure it could be scaled up for a complete lawn.
Re: (Score:2)
Hilarious!
I wouldn't include any new tech in my home... the tech I'd include is like that system was. It doesn't exist yet and I'd have to create it myself.
Re:My lawn (Score:5, Informative)
I would look at alternatives to having a "lawn" in the first place. In almost any climate, there are a lot more productive ways to use your land than raising an eternal crop of stuff you just cut and throw away. Put that surface area to work, harvesting solar energy in some way, even if it's nothing more than composting your grass clippings to feed a backyard garden.
Also, look into "integrative" housing design, which means a more holistic approach based on first principles, rather than tweaking the status-quo with than latest gizmos. For example, if you spend enough on insulation, you might not need a heater in winter, and end up with a lower total capital cost. Or by including a water feature, combined with appropriate shading and ventilation, you could reduce your summer A/C bills by 90 percent, and thus save a bundle on the A/C capacity to install. There are lots of people preaching this sort of thing, but the most prominent voice among them is probably Amory Lovins [youtube.com] of the Rocky Mountain Institute. [rmi.org]
As for your lawn look into permaculture. [wikipedia.org] There's a ton of stuff on YouTube about this, and numerous blogs, groups, etc... Basically, you can set up your yard to be a "food forest" that naturally produces food, year round, at no cost and with very little maintenance. Checking out this trend will be very worth your time.
Re:My lawn (Score:4, Interesting)
Be careful with water. Don't get me wrong, I plan to incorporate water features into my house. But humidity has profoundly negative effects on many aspects of housing, from the walls to your furniture to your books and so forth, and a water feature with inadequate circulation is a good recipe for high humidity. In a bad case (as a plant nut I've had this happen), in a cold winter it can make its way through the ceiling and the insulation and freeze out on the roof, and then when it warms up melt back into your house.
Water can be nice, but don't skimp on the ventilation! :)
Re: (Score:2)
Water can be nice, but don't skimp on the ventilation! :)
This - especially in Western Oregon, where doing that indoors without adequate ventilation is just begging to be plagued with black mold, dry rot, and worse.
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Checking out this trend will be very worth your time.
Just to emphasize this point: With the amount of land you're talking about, you could easily feed a large family, in abundance, indefinitely, for free.
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Having grown up on a farm where we raised approx. 90% of the vegetables, 50% of the fruit, and 25% of the meat we ate, it is a hell of a lot more than a few hours a week. Unless you are averaging in the winter months of no weeding. Harvesting season though is practically every spare hour picking, peeling, canning, stewing, freezing, jelling, etc. You don't can 15,000 quarts of food from just a few hours a week.
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OT: I'd lay in a shitload of 3/4" conduit from room to room, and from a central closet/location to all rooms (in case I wanted to put in some sort of server). Terminate each with a blank wall-plate until/unless I needed one for something. That way I could always upgrade any wiring. The rest is simply fungible at this point.
In almost any climate, there are a lot more productive ways to use your land than raising an eternal crop of stuff you just cut and throw away.
Err, not really. Some of us have dogs (makes dealing with dog crap easier, and gives them an open area to play on). Others of us have kids (which are usually happy to have something relat
Low Maintenance (Score:3)
Your first principle should be aiming for low maintenance costs. Minimize the cost of *owning* the house, in terms of *money*, *time*, and *complexity*. It makes a huge difference--much easier to hold onto the house over time if your finances change, for example; much easier to have time to spend with people or on new productive projects rather than doing the same old maintenance; less to remember or coordinate between multiple maintenance people; more return if you ever want to live somewhere else and de
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There's nothing wrong with open space, and nothing in permaculture argues against it. Grasslands are ideal for grazing livestock of various kinds... anything from chickens to rabbits, cows to kangaroos... And with Managed Intensive Rotational Grazing (MIRG) [wikipedia.org] you can use these open spaces to sequester carbon and create new topsoil. [youtube.com]
Re:My lawn (Score:4, Funny)
What about CompuServe integration?
Future proofing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Future proofing (Score:4, Funny)
This.
I'm in the early stages of building an underground steampunk cave home, and "futureproofing" is one of my design principles. I'm going with a very open floor plan, on the concept that it's easier for people to add in walls than to take out walls that were never designed to be removed (and may consequently be providing structural support). I'm not including any drywall; the exterior walls, a pozzolonic concrete, will be pressure-washed to remove the cement from the surface, exposing the aggregate. All piping / conduits will not only be visible, but shown off as part of the style (as is typical for steampunk). If someone wants to change something that they can't just feed into an existing conduit, they won't have to rip out the drywall, change what they want to change, reinstall the drywall, and then repaint. Plus, there can be no "critters" living in the crawlspace when there is no crawlspace.
Even if I never want to change the house, I want it to significantly outlive me, and whatever future owners are around may want to change things. Plus, it's kind of fun when you keep future owners in mind. For example, I plan to paint a really creepy, gigantic (meters across) blood-red sigil underneath the flooring - an inverse of the ægishjálmur (protection against all evil), pointing inwards as if to trap evil in, with some runic writing along the lines of "All May Enter, None May Leave" (hopefully my Old Icelandic is passable :) ). I hope that whoever owns the house after me and decides to redo the flooring gets a kick out of that one. ;)
Re:Future proofing (Score:5, Interesting)
All piping / conduits will not only be visible, but shown off as part of the style
This is genius (assuming people get to like the style). It is such a pain to try to work on anything around the house when you have to guess where the conduits go, or fiddle with a plumbing trap through a one foot opening that can't even fit a slip wrench. Walls covered with pulverized rocks made a lot of sense when they were just there for privacy but now that the lifeblood of a house is running through them architects should figure out how to make the whole system more accessible.
So to OP, even if you don't go this far, make sure that things can be worked on! Pipes leak and room configurations change and if you designed the house without flexibility for infrastructure then one day when you (or a professional) have to deal with an issue it will suck.
As a side note, IANAL but whenever you sell you may need to disclose the fact that you are storing evil spirits in the floorboards. [legalzoom.com]
Re:Future proofing (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks for allowing me to remember how I felt before I got married and had my design decisions told to me.
Re:Future proofing (Score:5, Interesting)
Infrastructure wise, only what would differ from 'standard'. Also, assuming I'm not in a mansion, but still 'decent' sized house.
Proper telecommunications closet. Should be fairly centrally located, but 'out of the way'. Remember to put venting/ac in here.
It should have room for at least a small rack holding my patch panel(s), switch, router, and a server or two.
Conduit to all the rooms, with at least 2 boxes per wall, even if I end up drywalling over most of them.
Right now I'd pull cat6 cable and probably a bit of coax. I don't use cable other than internet, but who knows?
The conduit makes repair/replacement 'easy'.
Electrical plug-in spots at the top end of standard in number
New idea - have a second run of conduit placed fairly high up. Suggested uses: Wall mount speakers, TVs, and such.
Basement: Pour a secure vault as part of the foundation, get a good door. Good for storing guns, valuables, and as an emergency shelter.
Shooting range: Length ultimately depends on budget and location, but a hallway that doubles as a 10 yard plus* firing range. Maybe even have it extend out from under the house, doubles as a secondary exit. Put the bullet trap on the far side, lock the distant end down *tight*. Probably even hook up a light & siren to that door opening. Safety first!
Construction wise I'd want it to be mostly a 'passive house'. IE built such that it doesn't need extensive amounts of heating or cooling.
Also, solar panels on new build is cheaper enough that there not real reason at this point to NOT have them. Depending on where the house is being built, a few solar thermal panels for hot water would be a good idea as well. Depending on region, there's even tricks with underground air circulation for cooling and/or heating as well. Geothermal heat pumps. Don't forget heat exchanger air vents - they save energy by conditioning the air while still giving you much better ventilation than a 'tight' modern home without one.
I like swimming, so an indoor pool with automatic cover.
Crazy wise - use one of those 3d concrete printers to make the walls, as they can 'print' the conduit basically right into the walls. Also, the concrete they use is surprisingly insulating and still serves as thermal mass to keep temperatures even.
*IE don't bother if it'd be less than 10 yards/meters, but I'd prefer at least 20. It would start being silly at 100.
Re:Future proofing (Score:5, Insightful)
I built my current house in 1998. Having built a house in 1994 and in just a few years been geek-frustrated with it, I did some things right the second time, and they've stood the test of time, mostly.
One, I set the entire house up as a star-configured system. No daisy-chained networks or wires. There's a central patch panel to which EVERYTHING runs. This makes debugging and tweaking far, far easier. I would absolutely do this again.
Two, I ran far more of everything than I needed at the time. That hasn't eliminated issues, but it decreased them significantly. Two Cat 5 cables, two three-conductor speaker cables, and two RG-6QS cables to every room, period. I'd do this again, but with the latest (and anticipated coming) technology.
Three, I built in an attic-to-crawlspace cable pipe. It turned out barely big enough for the four RG-6QS cables for two satellite dishes. Now with DirecTV's new combined LNBs, I'm back down to one cable and have plenty of spare room. Next time I'd put in a couple of 2" pipes instead of one 1" pipe; it would be no significant cost delta but add significant margin.
Thinking ahead, even though I have been okay for 17 years, I am still somewhat limited on expansion. I have since built on two extra rooms, and it's nearly impossible to add them to the star-configured patch panel. I am not sure I would try to do comprehensive room-to-room cable piping, because it takes a TON of piping and a very large network room to pull it off properly. Space is money when you're building a house.
What did I do WRONG?
For one, not enough photos of infrastructure before putting up the insulation and drywall. I took a ton of photos, but nearly every time I've looked at them for answering a question, I found I had somehow missed the precise shot I needed.
For another, too many places where messy infrastructure limited my options. Like cables and piping exactly where I found I wanted to add recessed lighting. I would be a lot more picky about directing the plumber and electrician where to run their stuff.
Also, I would pay more attention during design to the HVAC setup. It takes up a lot of volume, and tends to interfere with flexibility later. So I would do a better job of pre-thinking where it would go, and leave more built-in space for it.
Finally, I didn't give enough thought to house-to-street connectivity. It changes faster than my in-house systems. Every few years I have needed to have my yard dug up by the cable or telephone or electric or plumbing company. I wish there were a fairly large pipe running underneath my 150 foot driveway, through which all the necessary services could be routed and rearranged as necessary. Sort of a personal manhole thing.
Here's a helpful baseline (Score:3, Funny)
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Geothermal Heat Pump (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't very cost effective for existing homes, but for new construction they can save you tons on money on heating and cooling, giving you up to a 5x multiplier for the energy you put in. All new construction should have them.
Re: (Score:2)
Ditto solar PV on the roof, unless you live very very far north/south or don't have any suitable roof space. Cheaper to put it in now, guaranteed to pay for itself before the house's warranty expires.
Re:Geothermal Heat Pump (Score:4, Funny)
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They aren't very cost effective for existing homes, but for new construction they can save you tons on money on heating and cooling, giving you up to a 5x multiplier for the energy you put in. All new construction should have them.
1) I've been looking into this recently, and there's something you may not be aware of. There are absolutely VAST differences in what you'd be charged for the same in-ground loop in different areas of the country. Note, there are legitimate big differences in how much the in-ground loop will cost based on your local geology. I'm not talking about that--I'm talking 3-5x differences in pricing for the SAME conditions and type of loop. As you can imagine, that greatly influences whether or not geothermal is a
Just GBE everywhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just GBE everywhere! (Score:4, Insightful)
You cannot do the other way around, though.
Re:Just GBE everywhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
abso-fing-lutely. Cat 6 everywhere. Drop at least one in every room, and put one in every wall in the room you plan to use as you main media room.
The 2.4GHz band is totally congested and 5GHz doesn't go thru any kind of decent wall worth a shit. Leave wireless for mobile devices and wire everything that doesn't move. The idea that an 80" TV should be wireless is ridiculous.
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You should run 4 cat6 (that's a nice round number) to every place you are going to run a cable outlet or phone jack. Many builders use cat5 for the phone system anyway; I rewired the phone lines in my last house to GBE and used intellijack PoE switches on the walls. Would have been easier to just run 2 or more drops to each. With 4 ports you can handle a "smart tv", media streamer, HTPC, and a spare for something else. Cat6 is cheap compared to your construction costs; just run it all inside a 2" PVC pipe.
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Cat7 is not considered a true standard yet as TIA does not recognize it. Not only that it is extremely expensive for only a minimal upgrade from Cat6A (which is a huge pain to work with, I have some of it). Very few homes would need 100m run of cable that needs to run at 10 gbps and Cat7 anything is REALLY expensive (so is Cat6A to be fair). Many standard pieces are also not made to support wiring that thick, I have enough issues trying to crimp a Cat6A cable (with connectors that are rated for 6A even..
Re:Just GBE everywhere! WITH PATCH PANEL (Score:4, Insightful)
Terminate half the wires to one jack and half to the other.
You shouldn't even need to do that. I set up a simple patch panel of female ethernet connectors in my wiring closet, each connected to the female ethernet connectors all over the house. My POTS line comes into that wiring closet (well, my DSL line does, and my box has an RJ11 POTS connector). Plug the phone's RJ11 into the RJ45 where you want the telephone (yes, male RJ11 plugs into female RJ45 by design), find a male-male RJ11 to connect the corresponding patch panel RJ45 to the RJ11 POTS line, and bingo you can have your POTS telephone wherever you thought to place an ethernet outlet.
You probably want to avoid messing up connections between ethernet and POTS though. I've done it without ill effects, but no one phoned me during the time it was misplugged.
Now that I've wasted the mod point I awarded here before posting, some other tips, not all cool new tech:
- some place with ethernet that you can have a noisy server. Servers aren't that noisy any more, but I've had to junk one supposedly silent server because the power unit emitted a very annoying high-pitched whine, and cheap hard disks still make noise. This could be the wiring closet, but not necessarily.
- there's a (maybe European) quality of cable called "grade 3" that is better than cat6 (cat6e?) in that you can wire a satellite (coax) signal directly to it.
- if you use contractors, watch them. Every day. Get them used to the idea that they can ask you things. I put double RJ45 outlets in a lot of places, but the only place I really wanted two was where I was putting the television. Guess where the cabling guy decided on his own to only put a single because the patch panel had one hole less than needed?
- if you use contractors, watch them even more than that. I have a friend who used to change out of business work clothes into worker's coveralls in order to walk around his future house every evening. One evening he sees something bad (ISTR isolation) and calls it to the attention of the guy working nearby. The reply was "Oh yeah I know I messed up but it's too much work to correct, it'll be covered by drywall, the owner will never know".
- why not run cable to the fridge? To somewhere you might want a (PoE) surveillance camera? Wifi repeater?
- battery-powered doorbells suck.
- easily accessible storage space for things like vacuum cleaner, mop, dry food, clothes
- BTW, central vacuum cleaning, but storage is good anyway.
- I put washing and drying machines on the bedroom floor instead of basement or kitchen. No more carrying dirty clothing up and down stairs, but YMMV if your sleep patterns might clash with the noise. BTW, drying machines are better and cheaper if they have a hole to the outside.
- depending on your local weather, DFV (double-flow ventilation) with heat exchange so you don't lose heat, and cheaper electricity and heating mentioned by others
- Kitchen: granite desktop. Draw-out trash can just underneath so you can just sweep peelings from the working area directly into the trash can. Dishwasher a foot or two above the usual level so you don't have to bend (you put your hand in the dishwasher a lot more often than in the oven, and kids can fall on the upwards-pointing knives in a dishwasher just like they can burn their hands on an oven). Power plugs for kitchen appliances of course, maybe ethernet?
- going to have animals? Where are you putting their food, will you shut up the dog during the night and if so where, do you need a cat door, etc.
Lots more of course, I have often heard that that the house you get perfect is the third one you build!
Conduit (Score:3, Insightful)
So you can run other stuff later.
Re:Conduit (Score:4, Insightful)
Retractable Outlets (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd like the outlets in my home to be retractable, similar to the way some vacuum cords work. Click a button to unlock it, and then pull it out of the wall for ~30 feet. Press another button to retract the cord back into the wall.
Re: (Score:2)
I saw a somewhat related concept that was sort of cool for the kitchen where there were large drawers with outlets. The concept was that instead of having to choose between too many appliances on the countertops, or having to get out and plug in your appliances on the countertop everytime you want to use them, you could just leave your appliances plugged in and pull them out just by opening the drawer, all ready to use.
Energy Conservation (Score:5, Interesting)
Fiberglass windows, geothermal heat, a good in home battery like the new Tesla product, wind and solar power generation, and wicked good insulation. Ideally something like the blow cellulose or cotton fiber, but even just a thicker layer of fiberglass, so that my heating and cooling needs are few. LED lighting throughout. Tankless water heaters. Natural gas for heating, cooking, water heater and dryer.
Drought tolerant landscaping. Because even though I live in a water rich region, I hate having to pay to water my lawn (city water, no options) just for the priviledge of cutting it later. Nuts to that deal.
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http://www.technologyreview.co... [technologyreview.com]
I don't know why it hasn't been commercialized yet (they've been stewing on it for years, and some places in Europe already have it), but it sure seems like a good way to make use of the latent heat of wax.
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Phase change drywall. Like this stuff, called "ThermalCore" from National Gypsum:
http://www.technologyreview.co... [technologyreview.com]
I don't know why it hasn't been commercialized yet (they've been stewing on it for years, and some places in Europe already have it), but it sure seems like a good way to make use of the latent heat of wax.
I believe it isn't approved in the US over concerns with fire safety. Something about lining your walls with hydrocarbons doesn't sit well with some people...
They probably just have to do some demonstrations that prove it isn't more flammable than traditional drywall.
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Why Natural Gas for heating? That's what Geothermal is for. You can cool and heat with Geothermal. Maybe natural gas as a backup but I would think electrical backup is good enough for the few times it may be required.
1. If you go geothermal you have to use an air system which means you should get a zone control. There are affordable solutions that provide up to 8 T-Stats with individual room control. It will only heat/cool areas that need it. It's nice because it provides a more comfortable living environm
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Energy Conservation tax incentives (Score:2)
Does it make sense to do all of that energy efficiency stuff upfront? Or spread it out the installation over the years to maximize, uh, tax incentives?
It's hard to find a good resource... need updated versions of http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroo... [irs.gov] that include the plug-in electric vehicle chargers and solar cells.
There are lots of weird restrictions... for example, you can get some energy efficiency credit for installing sunroofs in the ceiling only if they are attached to a home HVAC automation system s
A holographic TV and a quantum teleporter (Score:5, Funny)
Here is my quick list:
- 80' holographic TV with 360 channels 4D surround sound
- Two parking spots for the hovercars
- A quantum teleporter (ask for the free subscription to Andromeda Quantum Tours Weekly)
- A six terawatt home battery and thorium / fusion nuclear reactor (don't go for the cheap Tesla stuff, nuclear is what you need)
- A robosquid and a set of batteries
- Six packs of pills for instant beer
- An iPhone9 with the Apple Watch, Apple Pay, Apple ID, Apple Travel, iThink, assortment of overpriced cases, cables and chargers
- At least one DNA decoder / recoder per room
- A 65536-qbit game console for the kid
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Um ... what exactly do you need the battery for ?
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Something has to hold the build-up charge for the home-defense particle accelerator...
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Fuck yiss, you're speaking my language, which is English mixed with unbounded tech dreams!
First, I'd have me a Hobbit hole, you know, full of comfort and relics and maps and shit.
Roof is half sod, half 100% efficiency solar panels with sweet lime-green metallic bezels and some kind of mounting poles that looks like skinny bird's legs.
Cat fucking 8 EVERYWHERE, even in the walk-in, underwear and T-shirt holodeck.
All computing devices centrally located, nearest the center of the hole, mind you; comfort.
The wal
Re: (Score:3)
that thorium reactor is fission, not fusion. Not exactly interchangeable.
Obviously, which is why I wrote thorium / fusion, with a slash. You want the combo. Jumpstarting a fusion-only reactor from the wireless power line? That takes forever! Last time I checked, you need at least two to three frigging minutes!
A thorium reactor, on the other hand, is a good little backup, underpowered, sure, but largely enough to fire up a Fusion Drive 6G almost instantly. Also, many small thorium generators fit in your pocket, whereas even the latest Mr Fusion are big enough that you need a car
Heating and Cooling (Score:5, Informative)
When the power goes out, it would be nice to have some sort of battery backup and/or renewable source of electricity on hand. I also like the EPA certified wood stoves [epa.gov] that are now available, like those made by Quadra-fire. [quadrafire.com] They're much more efficient than old fashioned stoves, and don't require electricity. However, their output is likely too high for a house that meets the Passivhaus standard.
What can I say, I work in the energy field. Saving energy is fun to me.
Wire Runs (Score:5, Informative)
a Whole-House Faraday Cage (Score:2)
You insensitive clod (Score:4, Funny)
I would spend as much money as I could (Score:3)
to buy the biggest chunk of land I could, Put up trees/super tall hedges all around, build a nice funky house in the middle and get the biggest cable/adsl/etc connection I could from any local small ISP. Then I pup up a huge pirate or penguin flag in the center so it would just stand above the trees so people would go WTF?
Then I would build a green house for hydroponics and grow my own food and weed.
Business-grade features (Score:5, Informative)
I'd install a central vacuum system. It could be used for cleaning and for a tech bench to clean up dust when working on things, and with a proper filter might make for a good soldering station to get the fumes away. I would also run 1/2" or 3/4" soft copper in a giant loop above each room, probably "K" or maybe "L" rated, that could be hooked to an air compressor for things like cleaning, airbrush panting, etc.
I'd define an MDF and run several service-entrance conduits from the expected service-hookup locations on the outside of the house, so that whatever subscribed, hard-line services come, there won't be a need to drill more. Probably 1" conduit.
I'd use all 20A circuits for all electrical outlets. Circuits would not cross rooms. Some rooms would get more than one if they have more than ten outlets.
I would completely skip on consumer-grade faucets. Chicago Faucets or T&S Brass everywhere.
Behind the main panel I would define a room that could be a battery/inverter room. It would be climate controlled.
I would plan on running Ethernet everywhere. I would install conduit to later let me place cameras on the outside of the structure if I was at-all concerned that they'd be needed.
I would look into those windows that are effective large single-pixel LCDs, so that one can turn-off the view by applying power to the window.
Re: (Score:3)
Thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)
Some thoughts:
Wired Networking: Wireless can never touch the bandwidth, latency, or collision handling of wired networking. Provide wired access for all stationary devices, and use wireless only for those devices that are mobile or wireless-only by design (laptops, tablets, phones, WiFi lightbulbs, etc.). As much as possible, avoid wireless for things like smart TVs, set-top boxes, game consoles, etc. The more devices you have on wireless, they less bandwidth is going to be available to any one device. Unless you're going to invest in some pretty expensive networking gear, I'd stick with Cat 5e or Cat 6 cabling for now (Cat 7 is budget isn't an issue), however, ensure you use some form of wiring duct behind the walls: should the day come when you can reasonably wire everything with fibre, it will be a whole lot easier to pull it through wiring duct than it is to remove all your walls.
Geothermal Heating/Cooling: Again, if you're not constrained by budget, invest in a Geothermal system for your heating and cooling. This often needs to be done rather early in the house design/build phase (due to the need to dig deep holes into the ground), but once in place you'll have nearly free heat in the winter and cooling in the summer (usually you just need to pay for enough electricity to run a heat pump and a fan, which is negligible). I'm fortunate enough to live in a home with community geothermal, and the system has been flawless for us (albeit not as cheap as a DIY system, as the community treats the turmoil energy as a utility. Still cheaper than the alternatives, however).
Solar: Even if you don't plan on installing a solar system (ha!) right away, I suppose you could at least get the basic wiring done, such that when it is time to install such a system you already have a suitable location for the banks of batteries (if you're building from scratch, this could be part of a custom utility room designed for this purpose), plus the necessary wiring between that location and your rooftop panels. That way you're future-proofed, and the rest would pretty much be plug-and-play.
Yaz
KISS (Score:5, Interesting)
Beware of making your house too gadgety. In 10-15 years most of it will be outmoded and junk and you will spend a lot of time and hassle keeping it going (and if that is your schtick, why are you asking for ideas?!). Don't become a slave to your house if you can avoid it.
Nice to haves:
1) Extra outlets and breakers. Having fewer rooms per breaker is nice to avoid finding out that a hairdryer plus your gaming PC will pop the breaker even though one is upstairs and the other is downstairs.
2) Speakers and speaker wire in your living room is really nice, and hard to add later.
3) Pull Ethernet cable where you can do so. Most stuff will be on wireless, but it is nice to be able to put a wireless router where needed once you find out the hard way where the dead zones are.
4) Good insulation. A cheap house to heat/cool is golden. Consider a heat exchanger to keep fresh air in your house, which is a bigger issue once you make a well sealed up house.
5) Storage, storage, storage. No modern house seems to have enough good storage in it.
6) Good sound deadening in the interior walls, few houses have this, and it sucks to try and add after the fact. Solid core interior doors help too.
7) Glue and screw your base flooring in you minimize how many squeeks show up over time, which can slowly drive you insane.
8) Low maintenance yard. Mowing every week sucks. Paying for yard guys sucks. Allergies suck. Unless you want to be a gardener, put in slow growing low maintenance plants that don't trigger your allergies.
A few tips... (Score:5, Informative)
I built a custom home a few years ago.
A few tips:
- Cat6 everywhere. At least 4 near every TV/Receiver
- In wall/In ceiling speakers in all rooms These should be tied into setups for receivers in most rooms. For the dining room (if you have one), kitchen, patio, and other areas you wouldn't want a receiver, have them go to the basement. When you buy receivers, make sure they have a cat5 input so that you can control them remotely.
- Wire for central alarm system for fire alarms, burglar.
- Wire the front door for a video camera. You don't need to install it, but having the wiring done is a nice thing to have just in case.
- Run empty pipes to each room from the basement or attic so you can pull wire easier in the future.
- Have your basement ceiling be 1 foot higher than your first floor ceiling. It costs little to do in the planning stage, but makes the basement look humongous when you finish it.
- Just before they drywall everything, take pictures of every wall. This is your x-ray vision for the future.
- 240V/30A line to the garage. Who knows, you may get an electric car in the future.
- Have one closet on each floor which has a power outlet and cat6 cable.
- Central vacuum. Once you have it, you will never go back.
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Get a washlet toilet seat, or at least put the wiring in for one. Bathrooms can have odd rules for electrical items depending on your jurisdiction, and having the writing there at built time makes it a lot easier if you decide to get one in future. Having said that, get one now and you will never go back to a plain old crapper.
Heated seat in the winter. Water jets leave you cleaner than when you went in. The soothing sound of running water to cover up embarrassing noises, and a deodoriser as a courtesy to t
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I would add to this: plan heating / cooling in the design phase as well. It'll look way better than having t
remote controllable room vents (Score:2)
I always thought it would be awesome that all the forced air vents in rooms were remote controllable so you could only heat or cool the rooms were people are. seems like a no brainer.
Well... (Score:4, Funny)
If you want to go full-on nerdy, a pneumatic tube system can't go awry... ;) Bonus points if it connects to your mailbox. Extra bonus points if there's an outlet on your roof that you can fire things from.
Energy efficiency (Score:2)
Make sure your house has a decently sealed envelope, and use a heat recovery ventilator to ventilate it. Saves a ton on electric bills, and is more comfortable. Also make sure it's decently insulated, for the same reason. This probably seems pretty pedestrian, but it will make a much bigger difference in your daily life than gadgets. That said, we also wired our house for environmental monitors (temperature, humidity, air quality), and that has been kind of cool, and we have energy sensors on every c
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Yup. Humidity is the one thing HRVs don't control well. Although I've found that strategic operation of the HRV can have a big impact on indoor humidity: turn it off at night if the house isn't full, for example, and you can ride over some high and low humidity events. But you have to be careful--forgetting and leaving it off for an extended period isn't a good idea, obviously.
House wiring needs (Score:2)
In-Wall speaker wire and other entertainment system wiring (with lines to a projector mount in the ceiling.).
12 Volt DC electrical wiring in addition to standard AC wiring. That way if you go Solar or Battery, you can keep your electrical systems from doing multiple wasteful conversions.
Ethernet wiring and Cable wiring. While wireless is handy, you need a good wired infrastructure to get your gear in to optimal places. Wired fixed equipment frees up your wireless bandwidth for your portable stuff (and is
Been there; done that (Score:2)
I built a house many years ago and very carefully wired it with telephone wire terminated in standard D-blocks so I could run the Lantastic WAN system.
Then along came Wi-Fi.
I also pre-wired speaker wire into a second set of electrical outlets, which worked pretty well, actually. But today I would use conduit because, well, Lantastic was great, but....
I've maintained a list :) (Score:4, Insightful)
Cat 6, Cat 3 and Coax to every room. Cat 6 + power to a few closets for WiFi APs.
Structured wiring to a central ethernet/phone/TV distribution hub with media server, UPS, etc...
- The above can cost thousands of dollars if done professionally. My brother-in-law did it himself (before his house was drywalled) for a few hundred dollars.
Solotubes in the bathrooms (basically mini-skylights that collect enough light at night to act as a nightlight)
Hookup for solar - the tech isn't *quite* there yet.
Hookup for garage EV charger - see above.
Multiple passthroughs for wires going outside - for future expansion (ham radio antennas, sprinkler systems, whatever)
If you're really into gardening, a hookup for an outdoor sink (with warm water) is *really* nice.
A properly wired OTA TV/FM antenna - for cord cutting.
Depending on the size of the house - multiple thermostats.
IP thermostat with integrated humidistat to control the humidifier. I like the Nest.
An attic fan with a nice controller - won't live without one of these now - we can go for most of spring without A/C by just using the fan.
Metal roof - recommended by a roofer friend who has them on his house - if properly installed they will last practically forever.
If you don't want a security system, at least run some LV 2-wire to each window and door so you can add one later if you change your mind later.
Also run wiring for connected, powered fire alarms. At the very least - one in each bedroom, one in the kitchen, one in every stairwell and one in the furnace room.
Ideas from a local builder:
2x6 framing - allows for more insulation and is more durable.
16" poured reinforced concrete foundation - recommended by structural engineers as ideal for residential construction.
Remember this - building to code is like getting a C on a report card - you're doing the bare minimum to make sure the house won't fall apart, flood or catch fire.
Conduit (Score:2)
Houses last a long time, tech moves much faster
Remember the houses of the 80s, pre-wired for cable TV?
Nice, large conduits allow cat-6 today, fiber tomorrow..something else later
Yeah, wireless can be useful, but a wire is always better
Actually mostly old tech. (Score:3)
Like actually having long eaves, thick walls, real designs like a central solid brick or concrete wall for heat storage. Things that the idiot architects today seem to not do.
the new stuff will be home run all electrical to a lighting control panel from Vantage, Lutron, or Crestron (technically old tech as it's been around for 30 years)
Conduit to all low voltage locations that all home run to a set of inset wall panels for easy infrastructure upgrades. (Again old 30 year old tech)
The only new-new tech would be fiberoptic lighting from solar light collectors on the roof. The light tube skylights are horrible at insulation and are just holes in the ceiling. The fiber optic stuff does not impact the roof insulation value. Plus it is a lot easier to run.
The last thing I would love that is a new-new thing. Aero-Gel as the wall and ceiling insulation.
Everything else is easy. Home theater, a real one not the lame tv in the living room "home theater" is simply a spare room set up with only a few grand of gear. Even good 4K projectors are only $3000 now. If your house is set up for easy upgrade, the tech can slide in and be upgraded regularly.
insulation, wires in pipes, simple things (Score:2)
A (Japanese hi-tech) hybrid Toilet-Bidet... (Score:2)
Toilets NOT in the bathroom (Score:5, Interesting)
Because whatever idiot came up with the idea of having your toothbrush, comb, shaving gear exposed to the same air as your toilet had never heard of germs or fluid dynamics.
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I'm more concerned about needing to take a shit while you're mother or father is having a bath, or wanting to e.g. wash teeth while $very_important_person is shitting and is taking long.
Re:Toilets NOT in the bathroom (Score:5, Informative)
You missed the Mythbusters episode where they proved the toothbrush got just as much fecal coliform on it when stored in the Kitchen as did the one in the bathroom, didn't you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
Build a green house OVER my house (Score:3, Interesting)
Literally just put the entire house inside a green house. Have the green house extend as far away from the house in all sides as I can afford.
Then manage the internal temp and humidity of the green house to create a year round micro climate for my house.
First, you have to make use of as much geo thermal energy as possible. The ground stays stable at the same temperature all year round. If you're in an area that gets cold in the winter, then what you want to do is cycle all the air in the green house through the ground. The ground stays at about 55 degrees which is well above freezing. Just using some shafts and some fans, you should be able to keep the green house at 55 degrees.
You can push it higher by storing heat collected during the day. Even in the dead of winter, a green house will get warm in the middle of the day. Often so hot that you need to vent heat in the middle of a winter day. Instead of venting, store the heat in the ground. Just pump air from the top of the green house through pipes about six feet under the ground. You'll heat up the earth under the green house which will release that heat all night. You also don't have to lose humidity if you're in a dry area if you're cycling the air that way. If you vent, then you'll equalize the humidity inside with outside. If you don't need to vent then you can keep it trapped.
After that you can play with aquaponics... get yourself a fish pond and cycle the water through a hydroponic grow bed.
Inside the house, I really liked that idea about switching to low voltage DC. It makes going off grid more affordable because you're not wasting so much power converting things to and from AC all the time. You just go DC to the batteries, then DC from the batteries into the home grid, and then from the home grid right into the appliances etc which will use DC natively. All you'll have to do is watch voltage and amperage.
Beyond that, I'd smart house the whole house with arduinos.
So... all the boring stuff like lights, power management, water management, doors, security, etc. But go farther with a sprinkler system, etc.
Then for the entertainment system, I'd go with a black screen projector for my home theater. These are neat because they work in broad daylight. No wash out of the picture despite having a huge screen or the lights on.
I'd keep the house to one story and might even sink it into the ground a bit. Keep in mind that most windows don't touch the ground in the first place. So why have the window be that far above the ground on the outside? This is relevant to the green house concept because you want the house to be in the green house but to block as little light as possible.
The roof of the house could be flat and planted or have a deck on it or something. Remember, the roof doesn't get rained on. The rain falls on the roof of the green house. It never touches the actual house.
The garage for the car should either be a separate structure or be under the house. There's no reason for a car's garage to be on the first floor. That space is too precious. Have a ramp go down into the basement and have the car kept there.
An interesting idea is to CNC mill the bricks or stones that the house is made out of. A CNC machine capable of doing this isn't that expensive and you wouldn't need to mill literally every stone. Just enough to get the effect you were going for.
A few ideas that are interesting to me are perfectly fit stones. If you look at neolithic buildings they don't use mortar. They use perfectly fit stones that fit together like a jigsaw. Gravity holds the whole thing together. You can and probably should use mortar and steel reinforcement. BUT if the stones fit together like that, you don't have to do that. They click together like legos.
Another thing you could do with that is have the entire structure carved... or milled. Imagine some sort of pictogram or pattern in the stone.
Lighting in the green house would be a big deal. You'd want the green house to be able to
Heated driveway (Score:2)
It's not really new tech but a heated driveway, patio, and stairs which would be great for me since I get a lot of snow and ice.
I'd put in: (Score:2)
Secondly, I'd put conduits in the walls, ceilings and floors, as needed, from a central location/utility closet so that c
Shipstones. (Score:2)
Here's a few idea (Score:2)
At first I would think about a pipe complex in the structure of the house so I could easily wire anything anywhere. But with the future going more and more wireless (even charging battery), it could become obsolete in a few year.
A few other idea are power outlet with USB and wireless power meter, wireless locking system, LED light bulb, smart thermostat, Solarcity's photovoltaic system with Tesla Battery, camera and security system connected to the network (and your cellphone) if your neighborhood isn't com
Conduits everywhere. (Score:3)
Make sure that they run whatever cable you decide to run (ethernet, fiber, whatever) in conduit, ideally with junction boxes on a relatively regular basis (at bends, etc), so it is easy to draw new wire through when you need to.
Yes, the electrician will say "you don't need to do that; that's silly." Ignore him. Do it.
I just recently moved into a house with ethernet run through to all of the rooms from an access point in the basement. Unfortunately over the years some of the runs have deteriorated--but sadly, the ethernet wire was simply threaded through holes in the studs, making it virtually impossible to pull new wire through. Had it been drawn through relatively large conduit, and had there been boxes on a regular basis, it would take just a few minutes to draw a new wire.
That also goes for conduits where you may want to put a big screen TV on the wall, low voltage systems (like door bells), and other runs where you may want to add something new (like in-home speakers or whatever). I know it's impossible to plan for everything, but at least you'll have a fighting chance when some new technology comes around (or something in the wall breaks), that it can be easily replaced without having to tear up a whole lot of drywall.
A couple of quick things ... (Score:2)
Cat6 network cables everywhere, running to your central cabling hub, possibly 2 per room.
Cable TV outlets liberally sprinkled around.
Speaker wires to multiple locations for your stereo with wall plugs for speakers.
They make in-wall HDMI plates to keep your wires tidy.
A couple of them newfangled wall plugs with built in USB charging ports.
A heat pump which does both heating and cooling.
Sound proofing for wherever your TV will go.
More plugs than you think you need, and a larger electrical panel than suggested
Floor heating (Score:3)
Floor heating/cooling/ Far more efficient than forced air and no worries about the crap your moving around your house (mold, pollen, etc.) so fewer respiratory issues. We kept our house in Korea at 17C (~63 F for the US folks) in the winter and would sweat if we wore anything other than shorts and t-shirts. You can also tie into your geothermal/solar for even further reduced costs.
Definitely solar/wind power capability-- as close to "off grid" as feasible in the desired footprint. Tie in to grid but be self sufficient when necessary.
Along the discussion of the DC home, a good inverter and maybe dedicated DC outlets. Maybe just feed outlets directly from solar/wind battery bank.
I'd add switchable glass windows to go "opaque" whenever I wanted, at least in the bedrooms.
Intercom with a console in every room, and one on the back patio/deck and garage. Less of an issue if you are building a single floor house, but quite helpful if you live with folks who are hard of hearing or you're building a reasonable large or multi-story house.
The obvious speaker, network, and coax wiring throughout.
A "dark" room with full faraday cage built into the walls. Turn it into my home theater or something. Nothing in, nothing out. Nice for private conversations and no distractions while otherwise entertaining.
Obviously some of these assume a fairly large budget. The geothermal with floor heating shouldn't be too much more to invest in initially than a "conventional" forced air system, though and will pay for itself fairly quickly. (In the central Atlantic region of the US, my calculations were about 7 years for initial install and something like 11-13 for a retro-fit). Adding solar/wind won't cost significantly less than they would as a retrofit, except possibly the grid tie-in. Do the grid tie-in either way and save yourself some trouble down the road.
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Man I hate making spelling and grammar mistakes. Sometimes it takes more than two readings...
Easily Accessible and Pervasive Conduit Path (Score:2)
No doubt about it, at all. Design around a beautiful skeleton and your future can be as beautiful-and mutable-as you want.
Fiber, For Sure (Score:2)
Keep it simple but useful. (Score:2)
1. No central thermostat, each room shall have an individual thermostat. This because the amount of equipment and sunlight impacting each room differs.
2. Some areas can have movement sensors for support light, helpful when you need to visit the facility in the middle of the night or have your hands full with stuff coming home from shopping.
3. Timer outlets for stuff like coffee maker. No need to have it going for hours making tar.
4. Outlets with CAT7 - you can POTS on them if you want, and fixed networking
Not so high tech... (Score:2)
A central vacuum...
A whole house fan. The one I put in [airscapefans.com] uses server fans and has motorized baffle to seal off the vent in the winter (to keep warm air from going into the attic). It uses less power than my TV and is amazingly quiet. Most of us remember the attic fans that sound like helicopters. I have a 1700sqft house and if it's cooler outside than inside, like in the summer evenings, I can cool down the whole house in about 10minutes. Just remember to open up a few windows, otherwise you could be pul
Dome construction. (Score:2)
Mr Fusion (Score:2)
Old tech first! (Score:2)
Build with concrete. Dig deep, to put most, or even all of your home underground. Some wise guy posted about lawns up above. I say, plant your lawn on top of your house. Heating and cooling are minimal, and there is virtually no maintenance on the structure. You're safe from tornadoes, and safe from flooding unless you build in a flood plain. A few solar panels, and there's no need to have the electric company come out to hook you up to the grid!
Oh, great thing about the concrete shell of your home.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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The problem is twofold: one, you don't see the massive temperature reduction at night. Two, if you don't have the A/C removing humidity from the house then you're going to see rust and you're going to be uncomfortably sweating a lot of the time.
cat6 (Score:3)
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Check my sig then. Unchanged since the mid '90s.
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You put your beverages in the fridge and won't get any washed soda any more.
You just need what you already have and a little bit of planning.
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Big conduit between the "network closets" on each floor.
I'd also run (4 conductor) power cables from the breaker box to each outlet/switch INDIVIDUALLY - no need to worry about not having enough power at an
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You'll eventually run out of ammo. If you really want to zombie-proof your house you need automatic steel shutters.
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I'd go the opposite direction and build a monolithic dome house with few or no internal walls.
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There is a house in my area that is almost completely under ground it has an above ground entrance that looks like a big concrete igloo and a concrete slab. I bet their heating and cooling bills are almost non-existent.