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What Would Be Your Ideal Futuristic Home?
deman1985 asks: "As the owner of a small commercial and home integration company, I'm exposed to a wide variety of customers with differing tastes and needs. I'll get requests for anything from the ordinary audio distribution systems and full home theater systems, to downright bizarre requests like having bubble baths run automatically, when they walk in the door. However, the vast majority of customers I encounter are not technologically inclined and are more interested in simplicity rather than impressiveness. What would your ideal integrated home look like? What's the most unique feature you would like to see? If you had access to an unlimited budget, what would you spend money on to make your home stand out? Whole-house audio? Hidden video screens? Automatic locks? Do most people view home integration strictly as a toy for entertainment, or is the technology ready for prime time?"
I wouldn't want a complete turn-key solution, I'd want to have the infrastructure in place so that I could tinker as I chose.
My new house would have a wiring closet/server room that would be the electronic equivalent of the furnace/AC/water heater room. There would be racks and/or cabinets for various computers and A/V equipment. The room would be properly ventilated. The house would be wired to hell and back before walls went up.
Then leave me to my devices. I'll handle the rest!
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
A touch screen near the door that allowed me to walk in, and pick from a simple list of pre-programmed profiles for lights, music, and TV.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
But the thing about it all that bothers me, is that it is all dependent on the precarious infrastructure for power and telecom. I would love to have solar and wind power backup.
Get yerself an RTGs for your back up power needs.
No matter what the house of the future would be like, it will need to have at least one room that is devoid of tehnology and gadgets (things like lighting and HVAC aside.) Specifically, no computers, Internet, TV, radio, etc.) It would be a room where you can sit and think, read, ponder, whatever, without the distractions and temptations of technology. A place where one could "focus"--reminding us we shouldn't completely rely on technology for everything. While I certainly love Techmology, there are times when I just have to get away from it for sanity sake.
-Jim
http://jimstips.com/
http://gmailtips.com/
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Tech != electronics (at least not exclusively). I want pneumatic tubes to deliver items across the house, powered lifts, etc. ;)
I wouldn't mind a bit of green tech, either - houses designed with big south facing windows and large eaves to let in lots of sunlight in the winter but little in the summer, perhaps solar water heating, perhaps a heat pump, perhaps a wind turbine if in a windy area, etc. For really esoteric, on a big house you could go with a solar thermal evaporative cooler/heater: noiseless, takes no power, and has no moving parts except for the fan; heating and cooling are done by the same device.
As a gardener, an automated greenhouse would be neat (maintains temperature with opening and closing of flaps, and an internal heater if needed).
By a scallop's forelocks!
Considering that the first things I did when I moved into my house were to build a movie theater in the attic and wire the whole house for audio, video, and Internet, I'm definitely in your target market ;-).
Here are the things I would love to have but am too lazy to have actually gotten around to:
The ability to wirelessly stream TV from any of my DVRs to any of my laptops.
Ringing the doorbell should automatically pause any television, movies, or music playing and bring up the front (or side) door-cam
Similarly, video and audio should pause when the phone rings.
Be able to use any device in my house as the source for my whole-house audio-video system (currently only the devices in my living room system can function as sources).
I want a security system that allows me to check the status of my house (hopefully including seeing pictures) from an internet connection. I travel a lot, and it would make me feel better to be able to see that everything is okay.
And some general comments:
After playing around with a bunch of universal remotes, I can categorically state that the Home Theater Master MX-850 (Aeros) is my favorite. I have played with a bunch of high-end touchscreens like Crestrons, and actually have a HTM MX-3000 for my theater, but I find that the "wow!" factor is offset by the day-to-day reality that hard-buttoned remotes are easier to live with.
I don't give a rats' ass about having video screens hidden. I paid a lot of money for my plasma screens, and I'm perfectly okay with having people able to see them. However, while I don't want to hide them, I am perfectly okay with disguising them. I would love to have my main plasma framed so that it looked like a painting on the wall, and I think the ones that look like mirrors when they are off are awesome as well.
I do like to have video in unusual places. I have a high-def TV mounted over the master bathtub which can receive audio and video from the whole-house network. We don't use it very often, but it's great for escaping from reality for a little while. Similarly, I would like to eventually have a weatherproof TV mounted next to my hot tub.
I guess basically the bottom line is that I want to be able to get my video and audio from any device to any device easily. I am unfortunately very busy, and really don't have a lot of time to watch TV or movies -- so being able to fire up a recorded copy "The Simpsons" on my laptop (without the bother of downloading a torrent or ripping a DVD) would make it easier for me to enjoy those few minutes I do have.
Now, that said, I have no intention of actually work with a company like yours. I mean no offense, but in my experience, installation companies like to choose absolutely ridiculously expensive equipment and spend far too much time trying to maximize their profits. The simple fact is that in many cases white paint (cost: $20) provides a projection surface superior to even the much-vaunted Stewart Firehawk (cost: $thousands), and yet I don't think there is a theater company in the world that would actually admit that.
My screen (160" with an Infocus 7205) is white paint. Sherwin Williams Ultrapaint, to be precise. It looks like a real screen, because I have the projection surface framed off with duvetyne tape and the rest of the wall painted dark blue, and I have had very knowledgeable people comment that it's the best image they have ever seen. And it's just white paint. Similarly, my DVD player cost me $50. The output is completely and utterly indistinguishable from a $1500 Denon (and yes, we have run blind tests -- nobody could tell the difference). So I'm very jaded about the home theater industry in general.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
I love the idea of "green" backup power via wind and/or solar so that a power outage will no longer mean that I'm without PC/TV/fridge/water/etc. I'd like one of those flash water heaters, too, so that I only heat as much water as I need. And can I have windows that automatically adjust to the outdoor light level, with optional manual override? Oh, and I don't need carpets, so how about one of those cool radiant-heat under the floor systems?
I'm a EE senior specializing in controls and also working for a small scale home automation company. My senior design project is a built from scratch auomation system offering wireless light control, temperature control, and media (IR) control. It will also provide energy monitoring.
The fun part about the project is coming up with ways to intereact with the system. I want to make it as scalable and expandable as possible, allowing any hobbyist to add functionality as they choose. How would you readers like to interact with your house? Voice seems simplest and the least messy, but what creative ways would you enjoy interacting with your home?
As EVERY good geek shold know Alton Brown shold design the kitchen to be mulitasked, and well hacked.
There are lots of things I could do today that I can't afford to. For instance, I'd love to be able to put a bunch of wireless cameras throughout the house that can be remotely activated and viewed on a handheld. That would allow my wife to keep an eye on our kids without having to search through the house every time. But even though a cheapo webcam is $40, such a configuration would cost thousands with the products that are available on the market.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
1) The entire house being a Faraday Cage would be very nice. I'm not sure how hard it would be to build it perfectly without doing silly things like getting rid of windows, but it shoud be possible to get one that is substantially intact. With the prevalance of wireless *everything* nowdays, I enjoy being able to keep it all on the outside. Probably do good things for my risk of getting cancer and whatnot too. (and becomes an eternal cellphone black-out zone as an added bonus...)
2) Shielded power supply that keeps electronic stuff from interfering with each other.
2b) UPS protected power supply wired in for a small range of "essential" stuff, and for those things that really shouldn't be at the mercy of power fluctuations and what not. Along the lines of a single pair of plugs per room (using different colored plugins to differentiate)
2c) Alternate power supplies: Whether it be solar panels, a small wind turbine, or whatever, something would be good. Understandably, it might not be able to keep the entire house running, but it'd be good to have *something*, anyway.
3) Phone and network jacks in every room. Standard phone jack, and whatever one desires as a network interface for that. But one port for each in every room, and all wired into a nice spot for a router. In my case, I'd want it on a shelf out of the way in my comp area where I could still see it/acces it, but it'd never get in the way.
4) Alternate heating: If at all possible, solar water heater tank, maybe even full scale solar heating. If local terrain permits, geothermal heating/cooling. The fridge could be tied directly into the later, making the kitchen quiter and reducing inefficiencies in the system. (heat inside the fridge isn't stuck into the area immidiadly surrounding it to warm it up again)
5) Good, variable, lighting: Sometimes I like to have bright lights illuminating everything, sometimes I don't want anything more than indirect gentle lighting. Likewise, the option to let good large amouts of natural light in would be a deffinite plus, although the blinds or covers would also be desired. I'm not a fan of those big glass houses with zero-privacy.
6) At least two exterior doors, on opposite sides of the house from each other. Not that I feel the need to always have escape options, but sometimes I may just need to leave the house in the opposite direction of the front door, for whatever reason. That, and I like having equally easy access to both front and back yards.
6b) That being said, having at least one door being wheelchair accessible would be nice. I don't have very many friends in wheelchairs, but should I invite them over, I'd like at least the public part of my house (aka living room, dining room, entryway, and a bathroom) to be accessible. Note that doesn't necesarily require that the house have each of those as seperate rooms (depending on budget and design, the first three could very well be a single room). And as far as that goes, if chance should happen that I am in a wheelchair for some reason, I'd like to be able to live in at least part of my house without problem.
7) Garages: A garage is optional, I don't really see much need for one, unless I'm located out of town a long ways or need to comute long distances for some other reason. But a half-sized garage would be nice, about the right size for a couple bicycles or a motorcycle... Regardless, though, the garage should NOT be a central feature in the house. All those houses that look like someone designed a garage and stuck a house on the back look, quite honestly, extre
Z
I've spent quite a lot of time thinking about this recently, as I'm getting ready to move out of a condo, into a house.
I'd like a house which is relatively self-sufficent: grid connected is fine, but I want solar/wind/hydro backup power, and a good battery bank so when the power lines go out, I can keep reading without having to dig out the candles. Something that's cheap to heat would be a plus, too: either high insulation values, or good passive-solar heating, or, more ideally, both. Sustainable heating would be a tremendous plus: either wood, or a multi-fuel furnace.
Built in conduit for running whatever the networking preference of the week is would be nice, as well as an electrical system that can handle a few additions to the house.
Oh, and one other thing: it needs to look like a HOUSE. Not a flying saucer. Not a pile of concrete. Not a space-ship, a dinosaur, or a giant fuzzy pumpkin. A house.
"If you had access to an unlimited budget, what would you spend money on to make your home stand out? "
Everything in my power to make it NOT stand out. I want the benefits of high-tech with the clean living of low-tech. One of my favorites are the speakers that you install in your walls, and then pain over the fronting when you paint your walls. Totally invisible, and great for playing pranks on unsuspecting houseguests.
The only constraint on everything being hidden would be that everything needs to be easily accessible for tinkering/servicing.
My biggest pet peeve, however, is the control systems for a lot of home electronics setups. I don't want to have to access my PC to change the thermostat setting, nor do I want to have a ridiculous remote or set of remotes. I would like to be able to control everything via my cell phone or PDA, locally or remotely.
Finally, I want an army of fembots at my disposal, along with a place to store them.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I was thinking about how much water is wasted each morning waiting for the shower to get to the right temperature, and it occurred to me that much of that water could be saved if the temperature could be set before turning on the water. The interface could be as simple as 4 buttons: (On/Off, C/F, Warmer, Colder) and a display just large enough for a 2 digit number representing the temperature. After the first time you set it, you know what temperature you like your shower to be at, and on each subsequent shower, you only need to press any button to activate the display, then the up/down arrow to adjust the temperature, and the On button to turn on the water once you have confirm that its at the correct temperature. I know nothing about plumbing, so I'm not sure how it would actually work, but you would at least be able to get rid of those unsightly knobs and have a flat wall there. Am I dreaming, or is this possible?
Reality has a liberal bias
Yes! I see all of this stuff about monster technology and all the rest, and I'm realizing that even though I'm a nerd who has 5 computers in my living room, I've spent a lot of time getting as much of that stuff out of my house, or at least as unobtrusive, as possible. And those five computers are as hidden as I can make them (three are laptops, one is a small server in my stereo cabinet, the display for the desktop is an LCD in a bookshelf with a pull-out drawer for the keyboard and mouse). I want much of my furniture, especially anything holding computers or whatnot, to be fold away and to have blank faces when it's closed (I've already built myself such a workbench, it's just a large cabinet in my livingroom when I'm not working on stuff).
Lots of shelves/cabinets and lots of storage, I've got gobs of projects and parts for projects, and I want to keep them organized and close to my life, but I don't want to have to have separate spaces for entertaining and for living, 'cause that's just spending money on half-used space. I haven't actually lived in or used a house with these amenities, but since a lot of projects seem to happen on the floor anyway, I think I'd like hatches or similar floor storage.
However, no unnecessary nooks or hallways or connectors, I want my rooms rectangular, easy to clean, with simple openings between spaces. If the climate demands it (and most do), I like to compartmentalize the house for heating and cooling (and maybe here's your application for technology, a centralized place that I can say "heat the living room, let the dining room and bedroom sit at 50 degrees"), but I don't buy into this crap that some architects push about hallways to provide transition areas in between parts of the house. Make it a door or an opening with a curtain and be done with it.
I don't need a large kitchen, but I want prep room on both sides of the stove, and a veggie sink as well as a clean-up sink. Whatever the entrance to the house, I want a little space, maybe just a few feet of hall, with shelves for shoes by the front door.
Technology-wise, the only really geeky thing I want is a smarter cat door (Yes, I know about Flo Control, but I'd settle for "after dark, opens from the inside only"). I want room to run cables under the floor and through walls, as I'm sick of slap-dash phone/cable installations run under the siding around the outside of the house, and I want lots of power outlets, but I'm less concerned with built-in lights or any fancy technology to switch them; I'm fine with having desk lamps and similar per-application lamps. Don't build crap into the house, as it'll only be made obsolete (and this especially applies to lighting technologies right now). If you do have built in lights, they should be able to make that room like daylight; my alarm clock is currently a big bank of daylight balanced flourescents, and when that lights up the room I'm happy, even in the doldrums of the rainy season.
I want good fitting doors, double-paned glass, good insulation (for conventional construction types, I'm interested in the folks doing 2x6 studs at 19.whatever centers, more room for insulation, cheaper materials costs). Yes, I know that a house needs to breathe, but let's make that a specific function of the design, not a byproduct of skimping on materials.
And, if I go specific to my particular needs, parking for a bunch of bicycles out of the elements, including long ones (tandem/recumbent).
All this rock moving required years of heavy equipment operations. The construction site looked like a mall was going in. All this rock had to be not only placed, but anchored; the house is near the San Andreas fault.
The house is on Mountain Home Road in Woodside, recognizable by the gatehouse that looks like a Japanese teahouse. In the end, it looks rather modest; it just has a landscape that belongs to a rockier area.
So that's a real dream house, built for someone with a mania for big rocks.
I'm just a geek, not a home-automation expert, but the house I've been designing (for when I'm rich and/or famous) will have quite a bit of (in my opinion) useful automation (In no particular order):
... And so it comes to this.
Exactly! I attended a speech here not to long ago by someone who had built their own earthship. Essentially the idea is to pack sand in tires for thick mass around 3 walls and then face the sun with a wall of windows and the house regulates its own temperatures. They built their home (somewhere in the 2000-3000 sqrft size range) for $40,000 CDN. The house regulates its own temperature from outdoor conditions of -40C to +30C here in Ontario. They use a composting toilet, well water with a waste water system using plants, woodstove and solar power (including computers). For $40k (they say they could do it for $30K knowing what they know now) they are completely off the grid and as a bonus financially independent other than property taxes. As an interesting aside in some municipalities your property taxes are based on the amount of greenspace your house takes up and since the roof of the house is actually earth and grass you loose no greenspace....
Anyway, this my new dream home. As it is completely self-sufficient, low cost, and there have been many projects to show that you don't have to sacrifice luxery (including running many computers and HDTVs and the like) when living in this sort of home. About the only trouble seems to be getting building permits (did I meantion they are certified earthquake safe in california?) Many of them are very gorgeous as well. I would recommend checking out earthship.org for examples.
I live in a climate with some big temperature swings, and I'd like to see an automatic way to do something that I have to do manually currently: "bank" some extra heat or cold in anticipation of the next change, usually day/night but sometimes a change in the weather too.
I'm talking about things like opening the windows on a warm day to let in a lot of heat (for free) then the furnace doesn't have to work as hard to maintain temp at night. Similar for cooling: open the house up at night so that the a/c doesn't have to work all day. Also take into account the side the sun is hitting from and set up fans to draw in or exhaust as appropriate to the thermal direction you're trying to take the house.
Not every climate has large enough temp swings to take advantage of throughout the year, but a lot can do this in the late spring and early fall.
. . .the Monsanto House of the Future; it's time.
I decided that behaving ethically was the most nihilistic thing I could do. - Paul Pavel
Never design a house around it being "cool" because that wears off. Instead, make the "cool" factor easily swapped out and replaced with the latest style. The rest of the home should utilize tech that benefits it's occupants in efficiency and ergonomics.
My ideal home specs are thus:
* Every room has it's own air return and heat/cool zone with their own thermostats. That way you can "turn off" unused rooms to save energy.
* Insulated interior doors that are weather-stripped like exterior doors to make the previous suggestion work better as well as provide soundproofing.
* Utilize the geography of the home to ease the energy burden. If you're building in a hot, sunny environment, install solar-powered water heating. If you're in a cool, dry environment, build the home into the ground to utilize natural insulation. You get the idea.
* Utilize sunlight-piping to light hallways and non-open rooms during the day.
* Use fiber-optics to provide accent lighting in the living areas.
* Install insulated vents so that hot air can be utilized in the summer to aid the water heater and cold air can be utilized in the winter to aid the refrigerator/freezer.
I have a lot more, but I've run out of time.
-Riskable
http://www.riskable.com/
"I have a license to kill -9"
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
hmm. the lot is filled with trees, yet you expect to get enough solar exposure to generate a substantive fraction of your consumption? sounds like the lot will be less filled with trees by the time you are done.
instead of contributing to the steady spread of the eastern megalopolis, why not pick up the split level heap of crapboard, demolish it and build something in a place where people have already trashed the landscape? you'll have neighbours, amenities, and probably lots and lots of solar exposure available without cutting down any more trees.
just to be clear, what you describe was once my dream too.
If you really want a "futuristic" home that won't become an anachronism eventually, there is one (and only one) option: make the house as flexible and updatable as possible.
That means you can't just run wires in the walls; you need low AND high-voltage conduit that runs places you don't think you need cables right now, and with lots of extra capacity -- and, ideally, that allows you to break through the wall and "punch into" the conduit at any point within the wall that it runs.
That means you need to allow for reconfiguration of ducting, gas and water lines at will.
That means you need some walls to be more than just non-structural -- they should be freely reconfigurable.
You get the idea. The future is DIFFERENT, and your house needs to be able to accommodate that.
The house of tomorrow looks an awful lot like the house of yesterday. I'm a homeowner, so I can pass along some of my own observations about how I would change my house if I had the chance:
1. Insulate, insulate, insulate. You can never insulate too well. Even if you think you've insulated well enough for thermal control, extra insulation is also sound deadening, which is nice. While you're at it, seal up the house really well. BUT if you do that, make sure you install a heat-exchanger venting system to replace the house air. This isn't so much a health issue as much as it is an aesthetic one. When you drop a deuce in the master bath, a well sealed house will help make the, uh, memories linger unless you are changing out the air. And leaving the bathroom window open on a cold, rainy night is never a great plan.
2. Put the laundry "room" (alcove, closet, whatever) near the master bedroom. It takes some extra work and some extra space, but you'll thank me. Especially if you have a two story house. You didn't install the dishwasher in the garage, did you?
3. Nice big conduits to every room for low voltage / communications wiring. Yes, for today I want 2 cat 5 and 2 RG6, but what about tomorrow?
4. Oversize the utility inputs as much as you can. We swapped out our stove/oven for a gas model. This required bringing a second gas line in through the garage - a fairly ugly hack. It would have been much better to future-proof this up front.
5. Tankless water heater. More reliable and longer lasting, more energy efficient, more graceful failure mode. Who can argue with that?
6. A basement. Obviously in some places this is actually required to insure the foundation is below the frost line, but even in Silicon Valley I'd like to have one for storage and to make repairs and improvements easier. We have a crawl space. It's not so nice. If you have a basement and a single story, then you probably can strike out #3 above.
7. Attic stairs / finished attic. The trend nowadays in making your house bigger is to replace the attic with a 2nd story. The 2nd story winds up with rooms with angled ceilings and the like, and you don't get to have an attic at all. We don't have a big family, so we don't really need that. But we are storage-poor, so it would be really helpful to be able to conveniently use the giant, cavernous triangle above the ceiling to store stuff.
8. If you go with 2 stories, try and arrange to have a pair of closets vertically lined up. If your health declines as you get older (a house is a long term investment, mind you), you can convert them into an elevator.
9. Every (non Amish) modern house in America has a home theater. The only difference is how nice it is. A 23" TV in the den is the home theater if that's where you watch TV. I'm not saying you should plan your house around home theater, but if you know some of the rules of good theater design, you can decide how many of them you can try and incorporate in the place where the TV goes:
A. Sunlight is the enemy of your TV. The room doesn't have to be windowless, but try and avoid large picture windows facing West or South.
B. The distance between the screen and your eyes ideally should be about 2-3 times the height of the screen (at least, if we're talking about high definition TV. Sit further away, and you'll lose all of the extra detail you paid for when you bought an HD set).
10. Let nature help your HVAC situation. Plant deciduous trees to the south. In the summer, they'll shade the house. In the winter, they'll drop their leaves and let the sun through to warm you. Plant evergreens between your house and the prevailing winter wind (usually from the North).
I'd like a house whose 1/3 is in the ground, basement poured out of CEMENT, the other 2/3 made out of REAL brick blocks actually supporting the house and bound with mortar, the roof made out of terra cota, and I want that house to be heated by water pipes embedded into the cement floors, in short, centrally water heated system.
Also, I'd like every floor to be poured out of reinforced concrete instead of plywood planks, and I'd like mortar insulation both on the inside and on the outside, as well as a white facade on the outside.
And, I want solar panels with both water pipes and cells in them, so that they generate both heated water and electricity. This implies batteries for storage. While we're on the subject, I'd also want a diesel or a gas generator with a distribution panel, so it'd automatically kick in if the power goes out.
In short, I'd like to have a typical environemnt-friendly, energy conserving, european family house. Which doesn't get blown away when the hurricane or a tornado strike.
Really simple.