Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Shortcuts To a High Tech House
First time accepted submitter phaedrus9779 writes "I'm a recently married man about to take on the next big adventure: home ownership! I came across a great house in a great community but I need a little bit extra: a high tech house. The problem: money, I'm on a budget. I'd love to have home theaters, super high tech weather stations and iPads seamlessly installed in all the walls — but this just isn't possible. So my question to the Slashdot community is: how can I build a high tech house that will be the envy of my friends, provide lots of useful gadgets, and not break the bank? Also, as always, the cooler the better!"
... grow out of thinking that stuff is important when you get married?
Two items I can recommend that cost a bit upfront but do indeed save money down the road:
- Nest Thermostat ( http://www.nest.com/ )
- Tankless water heater
A good tankless water heater will cost a few K (with installation, etc...) so perhaps just start with the Nest. There is currently a waiting list for them, but I was able to get mine about 3 months after waiting. It looks cool, and if used properly, will continually save you money over the life of the house.
Pay off at least part of the house before you add frivolous crap to it to impress your friends. I have always been more envious of people with a paid-off (or at least non-defaulted) mortgage than I have of those who have 5-year-old technology pointlessly glued to the walls. You get to choose which of those you have in 2017.
If, as you say, money is a problem and you're on a budget, you should obviously drop any wild plans. Look for quality instead of tech, because you're going to be stuck with the two money sinks for a long time.
Save the tech wishes for when money isn't a problem anymore.
If you have to rip apart walls - or even just skim them before you paint or paper - take the time to run in plenty of cabling. You can get audio and video baluns for running over CAT5 these days fairly cheaply, although the hifi purists will throw their hands up in horror.
CAT6 is cheap enough, might as well start ahead of the curve.
I don't think that you understand American culture very well. This isn't about the house or the gadgets or the technology. This is about the American male having a higher debt load than his friends and relatives. That's what really matters in America. The bigger your debt, the more American you are.
When an American says he "owns" a house, the house is secondary. It's the $400,000, 60-year mortgage that's important. His neighbor maybe only has a $350,000, 40-year mortgage on his house, so his neighbor is clearly the inferior being.
Then there are the American's car loans. Many American couples own three or four SUVs or trucks, because that way they can possess more vehicle loans, each for a greater amount. You don't want to be the only American on the block with one or two cars! That'll clearly show that you're scum.
Credit card debt is also a very important indicator of how American somebody is. If you've only got one credit card, you're probably just trash. You're worse than trash if you haven't been paying at least some interest on the balance for a few years. Real Americans will have maxed out at least four or five credit cards, while working hard on maxing out the sixth, seventh and eighth that they possess. Buying the overhyped Apple useless-gadget-of-the-hour is a great way to achieve this goal.
I hope you have a better understanding of American culture now, and the utmost importance of debt. No American household is complete without owing huge amounts of money to some faceless corporation, especially when there's no hope that they could ever repay it during their lifetimes.
. . . then you can just go live there if a catastrophic event destroys your original house. You'll be all set, right down to the stuff in your fridge from the night before. You can even switch living between the two houses, if you like.
The difficult part of this solution, is convincing your wife that the other woman in the other house, is just a copy of her . . . and not another woman in your life.
Every Slashdot technical solution must include rsync. And SSH tunnels.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Buy used equipment. 1 or 2 generation-old stuff is dirt cheap. Craigslist is your friend, there. Yard sales. Look for going-out-of-business sales (see recent stories on Best Buy closing stores). Buy refurbs.
Lots of people will tell you to put in wires in the walls. Wireless APs are so good now that this is just a waste of money in nearly every case. Buy good wireless APs (see "buy refurbs" above). This is one exception to the previous-generation rule of thumb above (I've just put in Netgear WNDR3700, bought from advice given in responses to someone else's Ask Slashdot question, and couldn't be happier ... highly flexible, plenty of signal, fast assocation, dual band, and all of the interference problems from neighbors, etc., have disappeared).
Big wide-screen LCD / plasma TVs are great, but a ceiling-mounted projector does nearly as well, can create a much bigger image, and often can be had for much less. Used stereo components (assuming you want such) are available on eBay by the dozen. Same for gaming consoles, etc. See Craigslist, too. Buying tech on Black Friday or Cyber Monday can save a ton. Since you don't have money, then you'll have to spend something else: namely, time.
In short, you'll need to compromise, either on buying the latest-greatest, or on buying new, or on the exact technology. You won't end up being the envy of your tech friends, but you'll have fun.
Finally, a word of advice: if the tech stuff is going to be appreciated more by you than your spouse, then make sure you're finding ways to improve the home that will be appreciated more by your spouse than by you. Domestic harmony is more important than any gadget.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
I guess it depends on what your friends like, and why you want to impress them. I enjoy tinkering, and have been gradually adding bits and pieces, but nothing designed to impress anyone other than me.
Playing on the Wii — four player Mario Kart, in particular — with the image projected across the lounge, is something which people seem to enjoy, though; pretty cheap (a bog standard, non-HD projector cost me about £220 about five years ago), and great fun. Just find some games which are easy enough to pick up and play, and get everyone involved, and you're off... I wouldn't put that together just to impress others, though, but it is quite good fun all the same.
The bought-broken-on-eBay-but-fixed-with-a-screwdriver Roomba is quite cool, but doesn't get as much use as I'd like, as my girlfriend is not a great fan of it. It doesn't save me much time either, to be honest, as, when I run it, I tend to stand marveling at it...
Personally, the things I find the coolest are music streamed into which ever room I want, controllable via my phone (AirTunes... nothing fancy here), and being able to select any movie and have it streamed through the projector (Apple TV and iTunes on server currently, although previously via a PS3 and a share on the server). Again, neither is fancy, but they both work a treat.
The remotely-controlled lighting was relatively inexpensive, but my setup is not free of bugs yet — I'm using HomeEasy switches, and a small RF dongle (TellStick) plugged in the back of a Linux machine, and, whilst it means I can easily control the lighting from a web browser, and easily automate when I'm away from home, I have not yet managed to get one transmission controlling just one light. Switching off the lounge lighting via the console / interface switches off the light in the kitchen and so on. A real nuisance, and one which I need to spend more time trying to resolve.
(Cameras around the house were the only things that raised objections, although agreeing on placement solved that problem.)
Yup, you'll appreciate having room for growth built into the system. Unobtrusive raceways (many can be worked right into the molding either above or at ground level) allows you to upgrade or update your wiring and cable options. Make sure you're not overloading circuits while you're at it. Even some more recent builds are shockingly undersupplied for power needs. Getting a licensed electrician whenever you mess with your wiring is only smart, too. Your house is a big investment. Do it right!
If your guests bring their own tech, make sure you have robust internet access that's easy for them to use. One room in our house remained a frustrating slow spot so we ran a wired connection to the router for that desktop PC. Otherwise, we can offer good Wifi. I keep cards with guest access info so new visitors can add themselves to the network.
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
If you DIY you can probably accomplish a lot for under $10k and the pros would probably charge you 10x that for similar functionality. The following categories should represent the major considerations:
Infrastructure - How are you going to connect everything?
- WiFi Everywhere
- Server box for storage & to run some home automation software & scripts (small embedded linux or more powerful)
- Main equipment location & as much distributed wiring as you can do cheaply & easily yourself
Entertainment - From where will your source content & how will you present it?
- LCD/Plasma Monitors
- Multiroom audio
- Rokus or other cheap streaming boxes?
- Whole House DVR systems from cable/satellite? (Dish Hopper/Joey, etc...)
- HDHomeRun or other DVR capture cards?
- A/V matrix switches & distribution? (monoprice)
- Programmable remotes (ipads, cheap android tablets, logitech harmony, etc...)
Comfort & Convenience
- Lighting (X10, Z-Wave, Insteon, UPB, etc..)
- HVAC (thermostats)
- In-house communications (intercoms, pbx)
- Misc automation (window shading, garage doors, locks, etc...)
- Weather/Environmental sensors (oregon scientific, lacrosse)
- Programmable remotes (ipads, cheap android tablets, logitech harmony, etc...)
Security
- Alarm system (2gig, honeywell, etc..)
- Cameras & DVR
The wow factor usually comes from complex actions resulting from simple inputs (scripting) so plan ahead for how everything is going to work together & communicate (sticking to fewer protocols will be easier, though maybe not always cheaper). Have a controller/server you can program yourself and don't get locked in to a proprietary system.
IMHO, a bunch of ipads plastered into the walls really aren't that useful or impressive so skip that.
I agree with #3 100%. I was at a party at a "rich guy's" house recently, and the house wasn't ostentatious, but it had the little things. Like for example, your recessed media cabinet. The dude actually bumped out an exterior wall so all the media stuff would be flush with the interior wall.
I'm not an "audiophile" but I object to any claim you can get five (or six) decent speakers and an amplifier for under $500.
You're not trying hard enough. Hint: it doesn't have to be new. With all your friends upgrading to the latest and greatest bleeding edge stuff, you can find great stuff as hand-me-downs. I now have a Technics amp pumping beautiful stereo sound from my TV/DVD player through a couple of good but inexpensive Paradigm speakers. The only part of any of that I paid for was the speakers, probably a decade ago.
You'd be surprised what you can find used (or discarded) that's still going to work well for a long time if you want it to.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Make sure whatever you do, it's wife-friendly (unless your wife is an uber-geek).
If your wife is typical, when she wants to watch TV she wants to press "ON" on a remote, then select the channel that's running Glee. She doesn't want to boot a Linux box, mount a fileshare and browse a bunch of torrents. Similarly, if the house is cold she wants to bump up the thermostat, not telnet into the furnace from a PC that doesn't have a case that lives in the garage.
Given Moore's Law and the "Innovator's Dilemma", commoditization, industry liquidation, and the trend of "half the price and smaller" every 18-24 months (even faster for genomics technology), more technology is reaching the price point you need at a faster pace than ever.
Consider just one option: -iPod/iPhone Light Switches: Though you may not be able to put iPads in every room, I just checked eBay and first, second, and third generation iPods and iPhones are selling for $50-$100. With a little programming, a lot of potential becomes possible. Your light switches could control not only your lights but your sound system as well. Every light switch could show the time, the weather for the day, your favorite stocks, and the latest post from your FaceBook Wall or Tweet. The latest iOS Framework supports face tracking which is trivial to implement. Add that to some of the facial image recognition libraries and a well placed iPhone camera in your foyer could cue your favorite music the moment you arrive home. Add photos of your friends to the system and now whenever a guest looks at a light switch, the system could recognize their face and show their favorite stocks or posts from their FB wall.
A single technology pervasively applied could create a compelling impression yet at a budget price.
Just don't be surprised if you find your guests at parties clustered around your light switches playing Angry Birds.
Check out CocoonTech.com, a site dedicated to home automation, home security, and all the other fun stuff, DIY style (but plenty of professionals hang out there as well). That said, I hope you aren't doing it for your friends, you need to enjoy the home yourself ;)
There is also the Wiring Your New House guide in case you have access to the walls and want to future proof your home.
and updateable. Nothing looks worse than a tired high-tech house. How soon the latest 1,200 baud modems become scrap, same with flat screens etc. Once I have built it in, how soon before I must rip it out and update because a high tech troll dissed my dated designcraft...
I would think that 2 inch plastic pipe hidden in the walls would allow you to remove and wire up with better fiber etc. It will also allow seamless mousehole-to-mousehole traffic, so get a cat or three - they never go out of date!!!
You'll get plenty of suggestions as to what will ostensibly save money down the road. Carefully analyze it FOR YOUR SITUATION. Sometimes, the comparison in the literature is today's whiz-bang gadget against "the average widget" in the entire US. Look at your energy and resource costs and environmental conditions in your area (Im in SoCal is different than coastal Maine or Minnesota) Examples from a house built in 1997-1998
Cases in point:
Tankless hot water. - Right now, natural gas is *cheap* and it is likely to stay that way for at least 10 years. If you have (or are going to have) children, you consume a lot of hot water, all at one time (yes, 2 teenage daughters, etc.). Tankless is great for one person at a time showers, not so hot for laundry+2 showers+ dishwasher, unless you radically scale up. And conventional tanked hot water heaters these days (with insulating blanket and modern ignitors) don't burn that much gas "keeping the tank hot". (and you could always put a timer on the burner to shut down during the middle of the day). Ditto, solar panels. Today, gas is so cheap that the payback period for solar panels is decades And the maintenance for the panel system is bigger. If I had to make hot water with oil or coal or (god forbid) electricity... it would be different.
Electrical power - in my house, in the winter, the two big loads are: refrigerator, lighting. But lighting is only when people are home in the evening. I had all sorts of plans for automatic timers, etc. But a bit of measurement (Kill-A-Watt on the refrigerator, TV, etc.) showed that lighting was less than 20% of the total load, and fancy switching might reduce that to 15%. Summer, the big load is AC. But that's mostly determined by factors beyond my control (e.g. the outside temperature). A higher SEER AC might help, but running the statistics showed, not really, for our area.
Appliances - Front load washing machine is *a lot* better than top load in both water and electrical consumption. But, how long is the payback period on a $1000 purchase? Refrigerator.. same sort of thing. If your refrigerator was bought in the last 10 years, the new ones aren't *that* much more efficient. If you're using an avocado colored beast you got from your parents 30 years ago... yeah, a new refrigerator might not be a bad idea. But again, you're talking $1000
Insulation - i wanted to aircondition my garage to make it comfortable in the summer to work out there. So I immediately assumed I'd need to go on a insulation frenzy. But a big of calculation showed that running the airconditioner the few hours longer to make up for the poor insulation would cost something like $20-50/year (it's just not that big a space 20x20 ft, and the number of days/hours when the outside air temp is above 80 isn't all that many). Am I willing to invest several thousand dollars worth of time to go through the process of insulating.. nope.
Moral of the story.. don't take the "conventional wisdom" as the analysis. Your situation, and your power rates and climate, will be different.
After many years in a house and many more years in the industry, here are a few things I've discovered through experience and many professionals: Do not pay extra on your mortgage. While you will feel better watching your balance drop, your bank will not care. Miss a payment and watch all those extra dollars and equity disappear. Better: place the money in a savings account. When the balances equal, pay off the house. In the meantime, you will have the money in the bank in case of job loss, medical emergency, or home improvement. Being able to pay the mortgage in a crisis is more important than the balance. Do not by nifty gadgets. They will never pay for themselves. Solar roof fans? 35 years to break even. Expected life is 10 years. They are only there for your enjoyment and look at them as such. Appliances: your most efficient appliance is the one you already have. Don't replace it until it breaks. Then by the most efficient one you can. Spend your money on the most efficient things you can afford. Do not get behind on maintenance. You will find yourself quickly paying more to fix your house than it is worth. Buy a programmable thermostat. This will pay for itself in a couple of months. Ensure your house is weather sealed. This and the thermostat can easily cut your heating and cooling in half. Don't over do it though. You'll find yourself spending lots to make the house livable again with air exchangers/circulators etc. Unless you spend top dollar, an instant hot water heater is a disappointing luxury. By things that make you happy. You will be in the house a long time, but don't do it with money savings in mind. You'll get more satisfaction out of a kick-ass stereo/home theatre than some lights you can turn on remotely. Light timers are way cheaper and do the same thing at a fraction of the cost. Oh, and get you a good lawn mower, step ladder, 10-in-1 screwdriver, hammer, and inexpensive cordless drill.
The other thing is that, with time, good quality stuff is getting relatively more expensive. The relative price of hardwoods, real stone and so on is constantly rising. Therefore, buying good furniture as soon as you can afford it costs much less in the long run.
The best things for a high tech house are excellent insulation, properly designed ventilation, solar PV panels where appropriate, low maintenance walls and flooring. And learn to do some of it yourself where labor costs are high.
Incidentally, I paid off my mortgage 18 years ago. Each subsequent move, we have paid the difference in cash. Until you have done it, you cannot imagine how worth while it will seem once you have saved to pay off the mortgage; the simple fact that you are no longer desperate to keep your job in a recession is worth more than all the toys combined.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I can tell you with considerably confidence that insulating our walls and greatly improving the attic insulation reduced heating loss by around 40%. We have also done the other stuff (high efficiency German water heater, pipe insulation, high efficiency oven and heating stove) and installed solar PV. The result is that our net energy consumption excluding vehicles costs around $600 a year, a saving of roughly $2000, for a total investment of around $20000. A ten year payback may not sound that good, but the investment has a lifecycle of roughly 25 years and energy costs are only going up.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Don't listen to him about the electric mowers. Get an old 2 stroke Toro. (Mine has a Yamaha motor).
They last forever and your friends _will_ be a little jealous of your mowers power. Like mowing your lawn with an old Transam. Sure the hippies sneer, that's part of the point.
Before automating any mower listen to 'my dead dog rover' 100 times without a break.
Figure out what trees you want where and do it. For example I put off cutting down a false maple, which was a mistake. Spiky balls made half the back yard not barefoot safe. Also the tree sucked water etc out of the ground. Making any replacements I tried to establish before cutting it down fail.
Plant a vegetable garden. Store bought tomatoes suck. I should be planting right now, but my back aches. Hence goofing off here.
Seriously examine your priorities. The house is not that different from the rental you moved out of. Granting you can now modify all you want. Start with the things like new trees that have built in clocks/delays. Then bigger mods like fixing the acoustics of a media room (assuming you are bringing decent enough, for you, audio with you). This is a project management problem. I believe that most of your 'critical path' items will be 'get tree to grow to produce shade' type. Not 'run cat-6 to medicine grow room automation server closet'.
You don't want to be the dude with the entire house automation built around, and locked into, his palm pilot.
I cannot overemphasize getting on the landscaping etc. It's spring or will be soon where you are. Get a copy of the Garden handbook for your region. Figure out what you (or your wife) really want and start with the slowest growing bits.
Get a chainsaw. Again 2 stroke is the way to go. Electric ones suck. Chainsaws are nerdy in a different kind of way. Don't go crazy or you will get hurt. Your first saw should run 0% nitromethane fuel. Be skeptical of advice from anyone who tells you otherwise.
Install your HAM radio tower and antenna ASAP. It helps put the HOA in it's place (if you have one, sympathies). The FCC has claimed exclusive domain over regulating radio towers, so installing one is a trap for any overzealous HOA assholes.
The first task is assign reasonable priorities. Is 'Geek out the house' really #1?
I think you should throw a 'show your neighbors who is boss' party. Invite your worst reprobate friends from your single days. Have your wife invite her sluttiest friends from her single days. Invite me, I'll bring 'medicine'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I just bought a new house in Phoenix Arizona, and the biggest improvements I've made are:
1. Insulating the metal garage door. I bought some 1 1/2 inch thick styrofoam board from Home Depot, cut it to fit the inside of the door, popped them in place, and sprayed expanding foam into the cracks. Now I'm not losing all the air conditioning to the outside. This means my electric bill is smaller, which means I have more money for other stuff!
2. If you live in an area with poor quality water, install a water softener and Reverse Osmosis (RO) unit to purify the water. Here in Arizona, the water is very hard (lots of calcium), and has a nasty taste. The water softener means that there's not as much soap scum in the showers and less scale buildup on the water fixtures and tubs and showers. This means less time spent scrubbing (yay!). The RO unit takes the nasty tapwater, and filters it. The filtered water is stored in a 3 gallon tank, and is dispensed at the kitchen sink and the front door of the fridge. The refrigerator ice cubes no longer have that awful flavor, and instead are pure and tasteless.
For me, these two improvements have been the biggest bang for the buck, because they directly affect other parts of my life. Your choices may be different, but think about what sorts of changes will make your life more pleasant for a long time to come. An iPad on the wall will look 'quaint' in 8 years, but a fresh glass of icewater will still taste sweet. I did the 120 inch screen and 1080p projector in the Man Cave, but it's not as big an improvement in my life as having clean water.
I'm an individual! Just like everyone else!
The cost per month of a mortgage is typically 33% because that's the most a reasonable underwriting policy will allow.
As far as inflation, it's a given. Right now it's low, but that's typical in this point in an economic cycle. That's why home buying is generally attractive during recessions, and quite often home purchases are the first signs of economic recoveries. The current housing crash has really made a mess of things because banks got burnt, making buying a house hard.
With the national debt and actions the Fed has been taking to artificially suppress interest rates it's pretty clear that there will be increased inflation in the future.
Wages often lag inflation but ultimately they go up too. If the economy really gets booming wages can actually be the primary contributing factor to inflation.
Here is an interesting analysis of the current situation w.r.t. wages and inflation:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/05/19/should-the-fed-be-worried-about-wage-inflation/
Over the past 100 years or so the dollar has lost 98% of it's value due to inflation. When you buy a house one of the benefits is paying it off in future dollars. With the extraordinary low interest rates it will be fewer future dollars. My first house had a mortgage payment of $343 per month. As I progressed in my career inflation plus advancement caused that payment to end up being less than 5% of my monthly salary. Now I have no mortgage, and my property taxes are twice what my original mortgage payment was.
I would sure hate to be renting now.
Renters get screwed because they have to pay on a current cost basis.
Now it may take a decade for things to normalize because the excesses were really large, but already it is already starting to look like there is a lot of pent up demand for houses, and in almost all markets the classical buy or rent calculation is firmly pointing to buy.