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Pimping Out a New House
Jason Michael Perry writes "I just got pre-approved to buy some gutted property in New Orleans. A lot of the houses I'm looking at are blank canvases that need new wiring, new walls, new everything. I've always dreamed of a high-tech house that says my name when I walk in the door and now is my chance to get a close as I can with current technology. So I'm looking for ideas to pimp out a newly renovated house with all the best technology. If you had a blank canvas to start with, what would you do? Run CAT-5 or fiber optics? Build a closet for servers and A/V equipment? Build a 7.1 speaker system into the living room walls and ceilings? Install automated lights and intercom (with support for Apple equipment)? How about appliances, the kitchen, and other spots... what cool tech can I use there? My only rules and requirements are support for the four Macs I have in the house, and reasonable support for technology on the fringes."
Build flood wall/stilts for the house (or more realistically, Flood Insurance).
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I'd do the networking all as Cat5-e with Gigabit Ethernet...
Its a lot of bandwidth, cheap, and a universal lingua-franca.
I'd also have 802.11whosiwutzit access points, and more specifically cubbies with power so you can upgrade the access points.
Also, don't just string cable, string CONDUIT so you can upgrade the networking should you ever need to.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Since you're trying to future-proof the place, I have one word for you:
Crawlspaces.
If that's not practical, try to have a few key walls with hidden corridors in them so you can run conduit or whatever you might need in the future.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
And definitely a watertight room for all the fancy toys you plan to buy.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
Demolish the property and stick a nice sized Yacht on top of supports right where the house used to be.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
I would (and have for both houses I have owned) install CAT5e. It's cheap, you can install it yourself, and all the computerized crap you'll need (or want) will have NICs.
Also keep in mind that you might not want to live in that house forever so whatever crazy crap you put in there might be a turn off for a prospective buyer. In that aspect, make sure you document and have layouts of all your excess cabling (network, cable, telephone, speaker cord, etc...).
Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
Start off with the basics. The data network and the home automation network should be separate. Data should be old school for any slashdotter, but home automation is where you can really do something impressive. And for that, I would recommend that you look into CAN or Controller Area Networks. This is the primary system used by the automotive industry to make cars "smarter".
The reason CAN is so special is that it drives decision making into the network level. It's like taking Sun's motto of "the Network is the Computer" and applying it to large scale automation tasks. Most people try and go the easy way by using the off the shelf crap that is out there but the truth is that home automation has hardly begun because the real power tools are being largely ignored by the less than technically courageous types that typically do home automation.
I suggest a change in perspective. A good piece of technology is one that doesn't intrude on your life and doesn't have to be maintained. If you start adding all kinds of technical gizmos and gadgets to your house, you will become a slave to maintaining them. Home automation technology just is not to the point yet where you can install and forget. It's constant tweaks and upgrades, failed components, trying to figure out odd configuration files, languages, and protocols to get things to work correctly and with each other. At the end of the day you will spend far more time maintaining it than it will ever give you in improved lifestyle or productivity. Focus the your technical research on the low tech items that will make your house easy to live in, like good electrical wiring, good plumbing, good toiliets, sinks, and energy efficient appliances. You've got hundreds of hours of research to do on that front before you should even think about Star Trek style housing.
Don't forget that the basement will need a pool with sharks. With freaking laser beams on their heads...
Oh, sorry. You're pimpng your house, not building an evil lair. Never mind. Big hat with a feather should do.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/duh/ Although this doesn't really address your technical questions exactly, there are surprisingly a lot of good ideas in there.
Author of Enyo: Up and Running from O'Reilly Media
Yeah, second that. Run some cheap 1" id tubing from your central computer closet, to the same places you run your cat-5. Leave pullcords in each tube. When the next big thing comes along, you have an easy job of rewiring.
We are all just people.
My understanding is that at this point cat6 or cat7 is just overpriced hype with no practical use at the time. I'm not sure anything requires it to function properly.
When talking Tech and all, it isn't a real good idea to stock up on unneeded supplies for future use. The industry ends up going other directions to often. Imagine if you stocked up on a bunch of sdram because you thought your wouldn't need to buy memory again. Imagine if you purchased the top of the line P4 in 1999 thinking you would never need a new computer. If you have the money to waist or a need for the stuff, go for it. If your thinking of the future, keeping your options open is more important then top of the line.
I recently had the opportunity to do so. What I did was, I ran cat5e throughout the house. Instead of using cat3 for the telephones, I just put the phones on the unused pair of the cat5. This allowed me to have ethernet at every phone outlet, just having to install an RJ45 Jack. I ran all of the wires to a large switch, and the phone to the phone box. I didn't get around to it, but essentially I could have set a computer up as a router/home control system. You could theoretically have ethernet-aware appliances, speakers, etc. You would control those from your home control system.
I second the point on documentation. I've been in a couple houses where there is a wall full of RCA/Ethernet/phono/etc outlets and built in speakers all through the house but the owners had no idea what connects where or how to use any of it. Thousands of dollars of wiring and technology that is totally useless to the current owners. I had to DJ a gig at a mansion that was decked out with this sort of equipment and had a closet full of connectors and knobs but the owners had absolutely no clue what went where or what controlled what. I played with it for over an hour and couldn't make anything work, so I wound up setting up separate speakers in one room only; it worked fine of course but it would have been great to use the built in system. They had a ton of ethernet connectors in there too; I imagine there was cat-5 throughout the house but again they had no idea what to plug in where so it was useless. Besides, even if you never sell, it's a good idea to document everything in case you forget what goes where.
Invariably if you ask a geek crowd what sorts of custom modifications they would employ for a new house, you get some really mundane solutions, like "Well I'd run cat 7 copper everywhere", or "wifi every floor", et cetera. These are all things you could learn in any 60 second trip to a Radio Shack.
Instead of considering what sorts of technology might create an interesting environment, focus on what you want the house to do. Will you have lots of local friends? Think of the things people do at home. Sleep, relaxing, and entertaining. Try to use available tools to facilitate these activities. Simply filling a new house as a tank to store electronics is pretty boring, and probably a waste of cash, too. Intercoms? Server racks in closets? These are well and good if you're trying to run an ISP or a galaxy class starship, but ditch them otherwise. And don't buy any 400 dollar kitchen-aid appliances just because they "look good on the kitchen counter".
Back to the local friends thing-- Set things up so you can watch some movies, sit people down, and have a nice comfortable flow between the living room and the kitchen. Entertaining friends is 50% food, 50% chat. If you still have the ability to control the layout of the kitchen, do it such that you can prepare food in front of your visitors. This lends incredibly to socializing. It reduces the rush to finish, perhaps even extending the process moreso. The best kitchens I can think of have a center island with plenty of chairs and a nice work area for the host to do all the focused work. Toss all the ranges and ovens on a back wall because they are rarely visited. I know that's not really in line with your question, but I'd personally like to hear someone reply to this particular thought with improvements as it's personally interesting to me.
In the living room, most of your guests won't care if you have the 8 thousand or 15 thousand dollar 7.1 surround. Just drop a reasonable amount of cash on yesterday's receiver, dvd players, and speakers, and get a screen just big enough that everyone can get a good look at. Best Buy and friends wouldn't have you believe that after three beers, you won't be able to tell that the 1500 you spent is roughly enjoyable (I didn't say comparable) to the rest of their stock.
If you just sit back and think things through, maybe you'll decide that some must-have item on your list doesn't actually make a lot of sense, and you'll save some cash... or find something else just as silly, but will get more use.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
No, Cat5 isn't a waste of money. Wireless N may have 137mbps or whatever but it is a shared medium- you only have one wireless channel for your network to run on (unless you turn your RF power down and split up into cells). So assuming 1 AP for your house, ALL your devices have 137mbit to play with. That's like running gb ethernet into a HUB- data between machine a and b, will slow down transfer between C and D.
An example might be if you have a central mythtv box, and several TVs. If you stream from the box to one TV, that may not use up all 137mbit, but add a second stream and you might.
So yes, run Cat5.
Also conduit runs to everywhere (leave the pull string in) and cubbyholes for APs are great ideas. That will future proof almost anything- and if you add something with the conduit, pull both the cable and another pullstring so you can keep adding stuff.
--IronHelix
Since the house has been gutted, you can install an entire system of pneumatic tubes, one to each room. Send a sandwich from the kitchen to the garage; send your laundry directly to the laundry room.
Electric trains running from room to room along the crown moulding, and through tunnels in the walls.
Lift-off computer room floor in the living room.
Underfloor fishtanks.
You can use cheap PVC stuff instead of the expensive rigid metal variety, so that you can afford to use larger-sized conduit (although the latter provides some nice shielding if it's properly grounded); and use gentle, sweeping curves instead of tight corners, but make sure that if the signal conduits are parallel to any power, they're several feet apart, to avoid inducing a current in your Ethernet. Since standard AC wiring puts outlets near the floor, and light switches are 3-4 feet from the floor, that means running the signal cables more like 6 feet from the floor, and dropping down to the outlets you wish to install.
Since the cost of pulling cable is generally a lot more than the cable itself, do yourself a favor and put in the Cat6, even though you don't think you need it yet. A centrally-located wiring/server closet isn't a bad idea, provided that you give it good ventilation. Use the upper part of the closet for the electronic gear and patch panel, middle for your AC distribution breakers (if any) and UPS to power the server and network switch, router, etc., and the lower part for storage of things that won't die if they get wet.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
I did the phone/data thing at my parent's house (I couldn't do it in my apartment because I knew I'd be moving out eventually... screw the next tenant) and it's pretty sweet.
I have 12 runs and arranged the terminations in a cabinet in the basement like this: 3 rows of 12. The top panel is for terminating the run to whichever room. The middle panel splits out the middle two wires (pins 4 & 5) and connects them to a 66 block (which is in turn connected to my vonage router) and forwards the remaining wires (pins 1-3, 6-8) to the bottom panel. I also have a 24-port 100Mswitch and a 5-port 1000M switch. The 24-port switch supports vlan and is connected to a linksys WRT54GL which has priority queuing for specific vlans.
This allows me to select the following configurations simply by swapping patch cables:
1. Full ethernet (compatible with 100M or 1000M ethernet): patch from the top panel to one of the switches.
2. Ethernet + phone (compatible with 100M ethernet & 1-line phone CONCURRENTLY ON THE SAME RUN): patch from the top panel to the middle panel, then patch from the matching bottom panel jack to one of the switches. Whether phone or ethernet is used then depends on the device plugged into the jack on the other end of the run.
3. Phone only: Patch from the top panel to the middle panel. No patch connected to the matching bottom panel jack.
One thing about this: You have to be careful when using the mixed ethernet and phone configuration. Some ethernet cards terminate pins 4 and 5 to ground (or somesuch) which is "picked up" in telco wiring. This makes the phone unusable.
An improvement on this system would obviously be to have some sort of asterix box in the wiring cabinet such that each phone or phone+ethernet could be its own extension. This would eliminate the problem mentioned above.
Then you're ready to start thinking about control gear for all this, so that if a big storm comes when you're not there, shutters close, pumps start if needed, power is cut in wet areas to prevent shorts, gas valves close, water lines are isolated to prevent contamination...
I have an apartment with (maybe) 600 square feet and most of that is the bedroom. I still manage to host a party for 30 and everybody has a good time. I took the biggest blank wall and, opposite, put a shelf right near the ceiling on which sits a $800 projector from costco. I also bought a $60 dvd player and a $850 5.1 stereo/receiver from Best buy. (found one that had been previously opened, discount=good). atop the receiver sits my Wii. The only trick is running the cable from the receiver on one side of the room to the projector on the other, and the cables for this I was able to get at the dollar store. Anyone else would sell me the same 25' for >$100. I'll take the signal degredation, thank you. If I suddenly come into some money then I'll get apple TV and hack it so i can run VLC and connect that to my receiver, because right now the only problem is that I have no way to get 5.1 out from my Mac (that I know of).
This set up has a number of advantages. It's almost invisible. I don't have to worry about a guest thowing the controllers at the wall. The projector makes a 93" picture, which would cost about $10,000 if it was a flat panel TV. I can't watch during the day which forcibly curtails my video addiction.
The kitchen is only remarkable in that my breakfast table is one of those flat arcade machines you can sit down and put your drink on. This way People can Wii Box, smoke on the balcony, hang out in the kitchen, or Galaga to their heart's content.
I have a single 802.1g Wifi connection which doesn't see much use, a decent number of fish and easy to take care of plants (like bamboo), and a few pieces of art. I used the Rastorbator to blow up my favorite photo from spain and it covers one wall. My place still provides me with all the high tech I need, requires no maintenance, is girl-friendly, and all I need to do for a party is roll up the carpet to prevent spill damage.
So I hope that gives you some ideas for your place.
(double)(float) house;
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
But adding electronics options to your house doesn't cost much if you've already got the walls torn off. You're designing a system that'll fit behind sheetrock walls, not one that needs to be retrofitted behind plaster with unknown wood pieces and bumpy stuff behind it. The obvious technology to use for wiring hasn't changed in a couple of decades - you're going to run conduit, fat enough to put whatever you really need inside it, and you can probably run straight connections up to an attic or down to a crawlspace if you're luck, and leave some strings in it to pull whatever wiring you need in the future. Plus you're going to run Romex for the electricity and twisted pair for phones, and again it doesn't cost you much extra to homerun it back to somewhere central and accessible. There may some places that are obvious locations for TVs, desks, or washing machines - so make sure the wire's fat enough for whatever you need, and it doesn't cost much to make sure you've got an extra conductor or two in case you want to split things out into two sockets or isolate circuits or whatever.
Make sure you've done diagrams of everything you run - that's really cheap to do up front, and a real pain to do later
Save the high-cash spending for things like kitchens, bathrooms, and other plumbing and HVAC. You'll also want to make that stuff as modular and accessible as possible.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
For concrete to cure properly, you want water. True, you do not want too much water like a down pour, but you are puring concrete on the gravel, you want the gravel wet. Then when the concrete hardens enough that you can stand on it (about 6 hours in normal conditions), keep it wet. Especially on a sunny day. Lots of water. You don't want it to dry out for up to a week. The longer it takes, the stronger it becomes. You should have seen the horror in the contractors eyes when I started pouring water on the gravel before they even started pouring and then I told them to use 1.5 times the water they normally used! But now when I dropped a 5kg (10lb) hammer from 3m (10ft), it landed on the tip and it barely left any mark. It just bounced like a ball.
Also, 99% of contractors are trying to save money by not putting enough steel reinforcement in concrete pads and walls. Then you end up saving $500 on a garage pad that then cracks next year after a frost. A properly built pad will *never* crack. In my garage, there is about 1ton of steel in the pad. In winter when the ground freezes, the ground (clay) can shift so much that one side of the garage is an inch or two out of the ground! The pad bends (door frame changes shape a bit), but doesn't crack. Yet for some reason everyone still believes in North America that concrete pads always crack! Huh?
Of course, the consumer is screwed in the end when the concrete pads crack and foundations fall apart or you gen high humidity in the basements. (ie. concrete not water proofed - no you can't do it from inside the house!)
Anyway, pour concrete in cloudy weather. If there are showers a bit on and off, it is ok. It it sunny - not good. If it is puring down buckets, well, wait! The concrete needs to settle for 6h+ before you can and should pour buckets of water on it!
I'd say the best add-on is a 12 volt wiring system running through the house, with wall outlets at strategic points. Not replacing the 120 volt service, but adding the option as a parallel system.
Why? 12 volts is the standard for solar powered photovoltaic lighting systems. With LEDs coming down in price and cranking up the lumens, a solar cell system with a 12 volt battery system can light your home at least enough to see by -- and it would be free, free, free as long as the sun shines. Hell, you can use Sears DieHards as your battery bank. Considering the efficiency of LED's maybe just one, if all you're doing is keylighting. Consider it a bulletproof backup to the grid.
Of course, PCs run on 12 volt power supplies. I don't know how that would work out, but just mentioning it. There are 12 volt laptop adapters out there. And I'd think it would be child's play to adapt the outlets to USB power plugs, stepping them down to 5 volts. The painful part is that there are so damned many 12 volt plugs to choose from. The simplest is the cigarette lighter plug (actually sized for a cigar, if you ever noticed).
There are a lot of car accessories that run on 12 volts systems, and a lot of camping gear as well.
Best part is that it's difficult to be electrocuted with a 12 volts and low amps.
Step one would be to look up a dictionary and find out what the word "pimp" (n or v) means.
Here's a typical one:
One who finds customers for a prostitute; a procurer. intr.v. , pimped , pimping , pimps
Now if the OP really wants to do that with his new home, I guess that's up to him, but I wonder how many of us are qualified to advise him...
I'd love to hear your reasons for stating why wireless is better... Other than that you made very good points. But I have made great pains in order to retrofit an older house to accept CAT5. IMO there are no benifets in going wireless. Less speed, less security, higher cost... Honestly what people see in wireless when it comes to home networks I will never understand. Perhaps it is the american way to go the easiest route regardless of the price to their wallets or privacy.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
The article poster was mentioning about "rebuilding" a house in NOLA, so I thought I might offer a couple of things.
Depending on how much gutting you intend on doing, many housebuilders have started installing waterblocks in a main access point in the house, such that you can cut off any faucet just like it was a breaker. One is Manabloc. Here's a good site for some more info. http://www.mvsupply.biz/manabloc.htm
Another thing to think about installing is an in-wall pest killer/repellant distribution system, that can be filled/primed/whatever from outside the home. Since this is where insects build their homes, this can be a great idea.
Another good idea is that anywhere you have wiring or plumbing going through walls, close the holes off so that there is not a flame path if a fire should start. Kind of goes along with the concept of Plenum.
Now, for my thoughts, not things I have seen. I say install at least three seperate sets of patch panels in the house. You want cat5e/cat6 for RJ45/RJ11 etc style wiring. You can always custom crimp cables to fit from the wall to the phone, and many '45 jacks nowadays fit '11 connectors and hold them in place for short periods of time.
The second patch panel should be a set of coaxial patches going to each room, preferably two to each room as a minimum, since DVR sat connections require two. I would recommend picking up multicolored coax connector blocks to help differentiate in-room, for instance, telling your wife/husband/technophobe to check and make sure the two blue blocks have wires connected, because how many spouses know how to read a wiring schematic correctly the first time?
The third patch panel should be for speaker wiring, provided the distances aren't going to be too great, or attempting to drive too large of a signal. I would personally hide these third panels all over the house, one in each room where you have speakers. You can make the counter or shelf connections for these patch panels hidden on the wall, and with builtins you can put them to the side instead of the rear, for instance where the TV may connect.
The only problem you get into here is the multitude of cables on the rear of a good AV setup.
Another patch panel you may want to install is if you plan on putting in many security cameras around the house, you can install the coax or rca cables ahead of time for the cabling so that you only need to hook the cameras up after the fact. For instance, run a cable to each eave corner on your house, and install cameras later at your leisure. Just think it out ahead of time where you may want to put more than one camera for this to work. Also, install horizontally mounted-door protected GFCI outoor outlets next to each coax plug.
You also want to make sure that there are seperate AC returns from each room, instead of one huge sucking hole in the middle of your house.
Don't be afraid to run network drops all over the house, network cable is relatively cheap nowadays. Use cat6 when you know you'll want to put a computer their, and cat5 everywhere else, possibly even putting singlegangs for the cabling on the other side of or the next over stud from where you install any electrical outlet.
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