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Ask Slashdot: Ideas For a Geek Remodel?
An anonymous reader writes "What would you do to 'go geek' if you had a major remodel on your hands? My wife and I are re-modeling my in-law's 3000 sq foot single-level house, and we're both very wired, tech-savvy individuals. We will both have offices, as well as TVs in the bedroom and dining room. My question to the community is: What would you do if you had 10-20,000 to spend for this kind of remodel project? What kind of hardware/firmware would you install? I'd love to have a digital 'command center' to run an LCD wall-calendar for the family, and be able to play my PS3 from anywhere in the house (ie, if everyone wants to watch Netflix while I'm in the middle of some Borderlands). What else have geeks done/planned to do? This is a test run for a much, much nicer house down the road, so don't be overly afraid of cost concerns for really great ideas. We will be taking most of the house down to studs, so don't factor demolition into costs. For culinary-minded geeks, I'd love any ideas you have to surprise my wife with cool kitchen gadgets or designs."
Invest in a good voice recognition system and write some regexes that will detect your name in various contexts and alert you if they are leaving their house to come over to yours.
Star Trek living-room.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The #1 thing I've always wanted to do is put the whole entertainment system behind glass and give it muffled fans and intake filters. I'd really like to eliminate every little bit of noise finally, even the TV has a hum to it. And then there's the dust, which could be all but eliminated by using the right materials for building the enclosure, and the use of the aforementioned filters. I'd give it its own system for control of temp and humidity too, since that's relatively easy if you have all the other parts.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Every rooms needs a big red button!
As a general contractor, assuming you are doing things(paint, flooring, maybe light fixtures and blinds) to the entire 3000 sq ft, your budget that remains purely for tech is going to be approximately zero. Its doubtful that budget would even allow for much of a kitchen/bath update depending on what part of the country you are in.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
Faucet over the stove.
Lots and lots of Ethernet ports. Wireless is insufficient for the True Geek.
I don't respond to AC's.
An other Home Automation tech. It will have meaning to them, save them money, and does not cost too much these days.
You should find quite a lot of "ideal gaming room" ideas & pics of actual ones online, with a few tricks on how to put the cables away and still have everything under the hand.
There's an old dude somewhere in USA that built a centralized lock thingy, with his phone he could control all doors & windows of the house. Might takes a lot of wiring though. That story came through HN or /., you should be able to find it for more details (he also got solar panels, water management and such).
Just yesterday I heard about a wireless device + ios/android app to handle the front door, but can't remember the name. It should be out in a month if I recall well.
As soon as we moved into our new house I replaced all the switches with an Insteon system and an ISY-99 controller. I absolutely love it. Being able to turn off all the lights in the house from the bedroom is great. I can put the kids lights on timers, see if any lights are on, have the sprinkler system turn on per water need (connected to weatherbug), setback the thermostat automatically when we leave the house, have a night kitchen run scene, etc....
A DIY friendly system and the programming language on the ISY is easy to use and quite flexible.
I have been very happy and wish I had done it on the old house.
#2 favorite thing (actually probably #1 but it is not really a remodel item) is a whole house Sonos system. The perfect audio sync and ease of listening to anything anywhere in the house is great. I used to be a developer for GiantDisc (which still has the best cataloging system available anywhere) but the Sonos ease of use and perfect audio sync won me over.
Don't do anything crazy. Just wire the place well and be done with it. I'd run coax, ethernet, and phone line everywhere, and maybe AV or HDMI. Maybe double the coax and ethernet. Have it all run to a router closet somewhere that's out of the way but not too inconvenient.
Spend the rest on nice fixtures/carpet/paint/whatever. 10-20K doesn't go all that far for a whole-house remodel.
Since you've asked for a true geek solution it is necessary to get out of that immobile structure with it's permanent address and accompanying tethers to "the man". Get yourselves into a geek-pimped Class A motorhome so that you can live off the grid as much as possible. A strict observance of anti-surveillance protocols will be a must, including burner phones. Keep them guessing which Wal-Mart you'll camp in next, and have fun wardriving. Field-strip your gear regularly and don't leave anything behind anywhere. Destroy this message. Good luck.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
I've always wondered why homes do not have something like 3-4" PVC conduits running through strategic parts of the house and into each room so that if you need a bit more coax or network or telephone or future tech cable you can run it without ripping down plaster and drilling through joists. Maybe something where you could snap on/off baseboards and have a few inches of space around the room to run wires. In a single floor home you can always come up/down from basement/attic but multi-floor homes this seems very useful. Just in my life I can think of times when I wanted to run telephone cables, CAT-5 or even fiber, in ten more years who knows what the next thing will be.
And let your in-laws decide what they want..
More to the point, anything too advanced you install, you will have to support...
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
I know that you said this in the abstract, but I'd really avoid having a TV in the dining room if I were you. Not to sound too much like a 1950's stereotype, dining is a social occasion, and dining together is a good time to talk. Have a TV in your office/den and if you're having a lazy lunch etc, take the food there, but try to have a clear space to have dinner together and you'll find it really encourages conversations.
Spending his own money on a home for his family is a waste? I assume you live in an unheated shack.
Get this thing for a thermostat. It's kinda awesome.
Especially if your house is big enough to require more than one air conditioning system, it's convenient to have them on a network. Not necessarily so you can control them from the Internet, but so you can control them all from one place and turn them off when nobody's at home, to save energy.
Of course, once you have them under digital control, you could add things like schedules and remote monitoring.
Have a nice time.
Ethernet and fibre. I wired my house and wish I had put fibre and speaker wires to each room. I ran 2 cat5 and 1 coax to every room, and wish I had run 3 cat5 1 coax, 1 set of speaker wires and 1 fibre pair. Futureproofing baby.
An adequate supply of CAT5 (or CAT6, really, it's getting cheap enough) and mains sockets in every room.
I'd also look at ecological heat and power measures - wind and solar power, solid-fuel stove and a ground-source heat pump.
It's a matter of personal taste, of course, but I'd keep the TV out of the dining room and spend the money on something else. You need a place to get away from information overload.
We've declared our dining room to be a screen-free zone-- no TV's, laptops, iPads, smartphones, whatever. It's the one room in the house where we sit, eat, and converse as a family.
I find the half hour or so when people aren't checking Facebook, tweeting, playing minecraft, checking their calendar, etc to be pretty refreshing. It's amazing what you can find out when you ask a kid how their day was.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
Spend on a $20,000 solar panel - no more electricity bills for the next 30 years
Layout and work flow are key to a great kitchen. Fridges that have cat5 and lcd screens are essentially toys. Spend your money on quality cookware and utensils that are commercial grade. ...not a cheap toaster oven.
Think about little things like;
how do I cool stuff down efficiently,
what is the best convection equipment that I can afford.
Where do I rinse vegetables?
Is there filtered water and how well can I clean oversized pots. A pot sink is a better alternative to a double shallow!
Get a small commercial salamander oven that can top brown
Don't spend your money on toys!
Above all set it up so that more than one person can work in the kitchen at a time without having to worry too much about stabbing each other! Your wife will love you for that much more that all the geek toys you can stuff into a kitchen now a days.
Sure put a sit down bar away from the prep area where you can have a laptop or whatever and put sound in the kitchen but by and large all this is secondary to a well thought out design and quality equipment!
I am a cook and know what really matters in food preparation.
The research is pretty clear that it's one of the worst things you can do for your sleeping habits.
I'm part there but here's my idea of a perfect house:
- Centralized computer closet. Have all your computers in the same place and run HDMI/USB wires to your office, bedroom, etc.
- Then have a *x* (i.e. 2x4 for 2 computer, 4 output) matrix switch for both HDMI/USB in which you plug all your rooms and all your computers.
- Connect those switch's control port to your main computer which would allow control from a web page hosted on that computer
- Now that you're done, from anywhere in the house, with an iphone, you can switch any TV to any PC you have in your closet.
- In my case, I have 2 computers for general use, 1 HTPC running XBMC and a file server running unraid. I can switch those to TVs I have in the living room, office, bedroom, friend's bedroom and even the bathroom (got a TV in front of the bath)
- Now I'm trying to figure out how to have my XBOX centralized like that... it works for the video but the remotes don't work that far. I'm maybe looking at a repeater of some kind.
- I'd also like to add automation to the whole house: Thermostat, lights, etc. Then add the control for those on the web page mentioned earlier.
Mind you, it helps that I have a suspended ceiling, it lets me switch out cables as they improve the technology. Also, as another guy said, 20k is far from enough but you mentioned you wanted to build a house after so that's what I would do. :)
Power outlets every 3 feet.
Network outlets every wall.
Cable and phone in every room.
10 years from now they'll call you and say "Remember when I said I didn't think I needed a power outlet in the closet? Oh man thanks for insisting!"
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
No, this is house space, not Office Space...
However, back on topic, TV in the bedroom is always a bad idea. We used to have one about 10 years ago. I could never sleep (light sleeper) when my wife was watching it. I had to get rid of it. Much better not having one in there.
Put microphones in all the rooms and then use voice recognition just like in Star Trek, recognizing computer as an attention, also adding speakers and controls to control, lighting, electronics, telephone, video surveillance outside, shower temps, electronic library music movies etc. Heating and cooling, mobile access as well from a smart phone as well.
Bionic Fingers! Awesome!
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
I always wanted to mount old iPods and Androids as an intercom/command controls. It would be grand! and at less than $100 each they could save a lot of money instead of intercom systems.
My wife and I are re-modeling my in-law's 3000 sq foot single-level house
We will be taking most of the house down to studs
Do you mean the modern american "royal we" where it means you're contracting a citizen who subcontracts to another citizen who hires illegals to do all the labor at 50% to 100% profit markup each step and you expect to do nothing more strenuous than sign a contract, or you're literally doing the old school "we" as in we're the only people doing work inside the house? This has a huge impact on planning.
we're both very wired, tech-savvy individuals
So doing the grunt work (if not all the work, depending on nanny state building codes) of the electrical work MIGHT be in your grasp, but bare stud drywall work is frankly pretty easy to half ass yet very hard to make look good / perfect.
Plumbing is hard because you need to use a $150 wrench, once, to install some weird gasket that you can't buy at a big box store. Hire that out along with drywall.
TVs in the bedroom and dining room
Yer doin it wrong, if the most interesting thing to happen in those rooms comes out of a TV speaker. If you "have to" eat in front of the tube, sit in the living room like a good couch potatoe. I used to use a TV in the bedroom WRT mid-sleep storm warning siren evaluations, but the phone seems to have taken over that duty.
What would you do if you had 10-20,000 to spend for this kind of remodel project?
Hmm bare walls and a hair over $3/sq foot. Even the cheapest home depot "basement grade tile" costs over half that, and still leaves you with bare stud walls. There has to be a dropped zero in there somewhere?
If you just meant tech, and you insist on new/top of the line only, you won't be able to do much with only $10K.
I think you're in way over your head.
What else have geeks done/planned to do?
You'll be overwhelmed if you do it all at once. The best system is built by accretion, just like a black hole. Way over a decade I started with a nice linux based fileserver... well, add a RS-232 interface and some more software and I've got some home automation, boils down to the worlds most elaborate NTP time disciplined, astronomically aware (sunrise/sunset) timer system. Then add a PCI video capture card and some more software and I've got mythtv. It turns out that cheapie whole house audio (aka just put a speaker in every room with elaborate parallel/series interconnections) is cheap and easy to install, and I've already got a fileserver full of content so buy some speakers and rolls of wire and... Repeat a zillion times adding all kinds of weird stuff and you eventually get my house. I can't imagine doing it at the same time, even worse all at the same time as ripping the house down to the studs.
"Adding tech" is best managed as a permanent process, not an isolated single huge project.
For culinary-minded geeks, I'd love any ideas you have to surprise my wife with cool kitchen gadgets or designs.
This I don't even understand, and I like to experiment with cooking. More convenient storage than a house your size "should" have. A walk in pantry is not out of line plus a closet for appliances / things. Every AC power outlet is a home run 15 amp ckt, no daisy chaining such that running the slow cooker, the lights, and the microwave at the same time trip a breaker. If you really wanted you could blow your entire remodel budget on one (exotic) industrial-grade appliance like a combi-oven. I've often wished for one of those 10 horsepower restaurant dishwashers with a 7 minute cycle time (as opposed to my 150 or so minute 1/2 hp dishwasher).
Speaking of lights most kitchens are designed by interior decorators who apparently are very good at being trendy but eat exclusively at trendy urban restaurants. Be very careful as its
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Bedroom is for sleeping and fucking.
You want to play playstation and punch on your smartphone. A real geek wouldn't be asking what to do, he would be doing it and recording a step by step tutorial. A TV in every room? Why? WHY? What in the world can you possibly need to see all the time?
If your budget allows, go with an in-wall convection oven and a really good vent hood over a gas cook top with cast iron grates. If you got any money left, use conduit and junction boxes instead of just long wire runs to make future changes cleaner.
I'd put some big conduit and wiring ducts across the house, with drops in every room. This way you can pull whatever cables, fiber, etc. you need.
Why are you remodeling someone elses house?
Not TV, unless you're gonna watch some pr0n while dipping your noodle
in your wife's kugel.
Build a mineral oil-cooled PC, put it in a transparent container, embed it in the wall and put an aquarium in front of it. It'll look as if the fish are swimming in the same liquid as the computer.
AccountKiller
By the time you get your CAT 6 cable pulled, it will be obsolete and you'll need CAT 7. Or 8. Who knows?
Put in wall boxes, pull boxes and some 3/4" conduit runs to a central panel/server location. Then, whatever happens, you can yank the old stuff out and put new stuff in.
For the kitchen, put in a couple of extra 20 Amp circuits (two general purpose circuits are required by code).
For the rest of the house, separate the lighting and outlets on separate circuits. Code (and cheap electricians) allow these to be fed off the same branch circuit. Bu there's nothing more annoying than plugging in something and having the lights go out as well.
Extra lighting in the master bedroom if you like to share videos with other couples. Some of this amateur stuff is pretty poorly lit.
Have gnu, will travel.
Most important things you can do--
- Lots of circuits, lots of outlets... nothing worse then having no power where you need it, or sweating over overloading a circuit
- Conduit... ever wall that I had removed got a 2-gang deep box installed with a 1-1/4" PVC conduit run to it... the idea here is that when you want to change what is in that box later, you can
- Ethernet... wireless is great, but honestly nothing beats a hard-wired connection for speed and reliability. I have a pair of CAT6 jacks behind every TV/Desk and behind every chair/couch/bed in the house... about 20 ports total. Mind you, I only have about 5 of them active because I wasn't willing to spend the cash on a large gigabit switch just for the sake of saying that I had active ports, but if I decide to re-arrange things it's dead simple to swap cables down at the 'patch panel', and in a few years larger gig switches will be cheaper
- Structured wiring at the doors... handy for adding RFID access points to unlock electric strikes, etc... this is probably the single best thing I did in my house. All I carry with me is my wallet and a single car key. The access point also accepts codes entered on a 10-key pad, so you can never lock yourself out, and you never have to lend out a spare key again (and deleting a code is dead simple to prevent future access)
- X10/automated lighting... nothing nicer than pulling up to the house and having lights turn on without your action. The lights in my front hallway are tied to the front door being unlocked... I never walk into a dark house. The bathroom fan is on an occupancy sensor, so there's never a steam filled room when a guest is showering and doesn't turn the fan on. The outdoor lights are all on timers/photocells
- Thermostat... I have a 5/2 day Honeywell programmable thermostat... I know some people here are talking about the NEST, etc... honestly I don't get it. I suppose if you're always coming/going at odd times it could be useful, but for me being able program the thermostat for wake, day, evening, night (and differing weekday/weekend programs) is more than sufficient. The only thing I would consider adding to this would be occupancy sensors... if you're home you want heating/cooling to occur outside the programmed times (or possibly a home/away setting for the various time periods) ... but the idea of putting an occupancy sensor in each room just for this is bit far fetched. Would probably be OK to tie to an alarm system (home vs. away) but I don't have one...
Just keep a single room where you can keep your intimacy in the old fashion...
... then put smurf tube _everywhere_. you don't know what wiring you'll actually want where, but putting in the tube now will be a huge help. When I had all the walls in my house open, I made sure to put smurf tube runs, pull boxes, and low-voltage outlet boxes everywhere I thought I could possible want _something_. Years later, I'm still going back and actually running wire through them, on a strictly as-needed basis. It's nice to be able to run a new cat5e run directly from my basement rack to a 2nd floor bedroom in an hour or two, without cutting anything besides the cat5 cable :)
That said, you won't be able to actually do much for 20k.
It's hard to do a kitchen remodel for 20k unless you do gobs of work by yourself. The first one I did was probably 9k, and I did the tearout, the flooring, electrical, sheetrock, cabinet installs, plumbing, etc, all myself. I got the base model cabinetry from home depot.
I also wouldn't go crazy with TVs. I have 2 fixed displays; 1 in a media room where I can chill out and play video games, or where my wife and I occasionally watch something. there's a big projection screen in there. Then there's a smaller flat panel upstairs in a common area that my kids will use to watch curious George, super-why, etc. We don't have any conventional TV service; I wouldn't bother getting one.
We still have POTS, and POTS handsets and wiring in the house (but its star-wired with cat5e, and rnu back to our patch panel, so we can change to ip if we like)
Honestly wouldn't wire for it at this point; if you're both geeks, I'd put an asterisk box in the wiring closet and then use VOIP handsets in the house. We mostly use DECT handsets where like 3-4 wireless handsets go through one wired base.
My wife watches "her" video content on a laptop. Tablets, laptops, etc are much more convenient for media consumption than fixed devices. My wife watches lots of junk tv via streaming services, while sitting in the bath tub. A tv in our bedroom would be of little use, but might contribute to bad habits...
One thing you might want to do is building a wiring closet and server closet. Make your end-user devices as quiet/fanless/small as possible.
Another thing that will be relevant in a house of your size is having at least one computer or device setup with a "guest "account in a common/public area of the house. Make sure it has access to a good black and white printer. Invariably, your guests will need to login, print their boarding passes, etc, before you kick them out after a few days :)
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
$10-20k is your budget?
Seems pretty small unless you're doing all your own labor or your own your own contracting company...
A kitchen remodel alone is going to run you between 10-20k... Since this is your inlaws house, why not ask them what they want in it? Do they want to play PS3 in any room of the house? Doubt it. Maybe they want a up to date kitchen with high end appliances? Or they want to rip out all the carpet and put in new hardwood floors with new molding and remove all the linoleum in favor of tile in the bathrooms and kitchen... and then paint the whole interior to refresh the walls/ceiling to go along with the new floors. Or install new 2xpane windows....
All sorts of things that add immediate and long lasting value to the house. If your inlaws sell it one day, telling someone "there's an dust free glass enclosed entertainment center" only appeals to a tiny percentage of buyers, however 2xpane windows and a up to date kitchen appeals to almost everyone.
Also, why are you asking /. what your inlaws want instead of them?
This is out of your remodel budget, but it's a possibility for future new construction. Consider room-by-room zoning:
http://www.getemme.com/room-by-room/index.php
This system places a small, discrete wireless thermostat in every room, which provides two advantages:
* Each room can respond separately to room-specific demands, eliminating hot and cold spots in the house.
* Different rooms can have different temperature programs.
We have the older version of this system (MyTemp) and we love it. It's not cheap, but I only paid the difference between the builder's standard 2-zone system and this system. Some highlights from our own use:
* To simplify scheduling, you can group rooms together to form named zones. For example, we group the master bedroom/bathroom/closet into "Master Suite". Most of the downstairs is grouped into "Living Space".
* We set our toddler's room to more moderate temperatures than our room, since we like it very cold at night.
* Guests can set the guest bedroom to whatever they like. When the room is not used, we simply press the button on the wall controller to put it into "Saver" mode. This runs the room on an alternate program you define with wider temperature swings.
* Any room can be put into/out of Saver mode at any time.
* The temperature of any room can be overridden temporary with arrow buttons on the wall controller. Just came in from mowing the lawn and you're hot and sweaty? Crank the temperature down in the family room and kick back! It changes the temperature of that room only, leaving other rooms in the house/zone undisturbed.
* Each room/zone is completely programmable. For example, our bedroom is on a 7-day schedule (it's always relaxed during the day), but the toddler's room is on a 5/2-day schedule (relaxed during weekdays because he's at daycare, conditioned during weekend days because he takes naps).
* I work from home. My home office always ran hot due to the two computers. With this system, it now directs air conditioning to the office as needed, which has been fantastic. No more fiddling with vents!
* You can bring up temperature graphs for each room that allow you to see the temperature history and heat/AC calls from the room. I can actually see the air-conditioning demand follow the sun on a room-by-room basis as the sun swings around from the east to the south to the west. All rooms stay perfectly comfortable, regardless of whether the blinds are opened or closed, etc.
* For special rooms like dedicated home theater rooms or workout rooms, this system is a huge advantage. Anyone with a home theater can tell you how warm they can get after two hours with the projector, A/V equipment, and a bunch of dead bodies. With Emme, the room will demand as much air-conditioning as it needs. If you don't use the room often, put it in Saver mode as you walk out to save a few bucks.
* House-sized HVAC units have minimum airflow requirements. When only one or a few rooms are calling, the system conditions as many additional rooms as needed to meet the minimum airflow requirements of your HVAC unit, using a pressure sensor in the plenum to account for any flow differences from room to room. It's smart enough to choose the rooms that are furthest from their comfort points, which would have been the rooms that would have called next anyway.
* To save energy, the system can circulate air instead of running your heating/cooling. This is possible because it knows the temperature of every room. For example, in the summer, it can circulate air from your cooler rooms on your first floor to warmer rooms on your second floor, without kicking on the AC compressor.
This may all sound complicated, but it's not. The complexity is hidden from you. You simply create your zones and program temperatures over time, and the system does the rest. The best advertising for this system is the user manual:
http://www.getemme.com/pdf/Emme-Room-by-Room-User-Manual-WEB-4.5.pdf
Feel free to ask me any questions; I'd be happy to share our experiences.
Not enough money in the budget for a cup.
One thing I can't stand is in-your-face electronics. Save that for the Epcot Center exploration exhibits.
With 10-20k - even doing it all yourself - you're really just looking at finishes. New floor covering, new paint. If you're handy, bathrooms might be an inexpensive target with new vanities/fixtures/toilet (hint:Toto). The kitchen is pretty much out. Look at your lighting - is it sufficient? Is it economical? Is is pleasing? Look at colors, window treatments, and accessories.
This is where you will live and, possibly, work. TVs are nice, but don't go overboard. Make it efficient - that's the true geek. Examine how your day workflow is, and install all the things you need so you don't waste time on the mundane stuff. Coffee, meal prep, snacks/entertainment gear, phone system (if hardwire, then distribution matters, if you're a cell-only house, check your signal and look into an amplifier to guarantee strong signal that taxes your mobile phones as little as possible).
On the tech side, you can look into hardwiring for data to the offices, but that's it - and it's not even critical to be honest. Go wireless, but be smart about it. 5GHz and a coordinated distribution system is key. A server closet would be nice. Oh - whatever you buy for your main interface and router, get two identical models. $200 sounds expensive until your network goes down due to a hardware failure. A distributed system is going to have setup configurations you don't want to have to re-create from scratch with new hardware.
If you just have 20k to buy "stuff" and the house is already remodeled, you can start thinking about a heavy duty server system with data/video/etc distribution. If you took my advice above and put in a balls-up wireless system, you're way ahead of the curve for a connected house. Fishing new wire sucks. Installing conduit is even harder. Accept the fact that nothing you are using now will work in 5 years, and build your system so it doesn't pigeon hole you into a single system. If you keep your file server and media server distinct, it will give you the option of upgrading gracefully or in parallel.
Of course, this ignores what you really should be doing with your $20k, which is: do the things that will pay dividends first. Look at your energy efficiency (heat pump?, gas?), inexpensive but energy efficient replacement windows, heat pump based hot water heater, efficient but pleasing lighting, proper ventilation, easily upgraded insulation areas, etc..
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Unless your inlaws are rich they will appreciate you creating an energy efficient house. You could think about solar of some kind, but more fundamentally if you are want things like LCD screens as photo frames you need to get the most efficient ones you can.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If you're doing a down-to-studs remodel of a 3,000 square foot house, what kind of house are you planning for your "much, much nicer house down the road"?
I live in a 65 year old house that's less than half the size that went through a similar remodel - including completely rewiring and replumbing the house to get rid of the old knob-and-tube wiring and galvanized steel plumbing, and I can't imagine what else I'd want in a house, so I'm curious what someone sees as a "much, much nicer" house than a completely remodeled house. Wouldn't it be more cost effective to pay a bit more now to do a nicer remodel and get the house you want?
Oh, and we did wire for data: coax + cat6 to the livingroom and master bedroom, cat6 to each bedroom (2 boxes on opposite walls) and to kitchen/dining room... all pulled back to the second bedroom closet where the patch panel, and ethernet switch live. Conduit from each outlet box runs to the crawlspace so I can easily fish in new cables as needed.) A pair of PoE powered Wifi nodes in the attic provide good coverage throughout the house and the back deck.
It turns out that except for the livingroom for the cable, most of the wiring goes unused - too annoying to plug/unplug the laptop from the ethernet jack everytime I want to move to another room, so I almost always use Wifi. The full-sized computer in the den is hardwired, but it's rarely used. My Wifi network speed is faster than my internet connection, so Wifi bandwidth doesn't matter except for when the laptops run backups, which are scheduled to run at night.
(FF to 6:09)
Next time, pause the video, right click on it, and select "Copy video URL at current time".
If you're using a FOSS flash player and it doesn't have that feature then just manually add "#t=XXXs" at the end of the URL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MMkiq8Kxis#t=365s
Your low to high range is double. Why such a wide swing?
Aside from that? I don't need gadgets for my house and such. I carry all the tech I need in my pocket. It sounds like you're just trying to waste some money on tech just for bragging rights.
Every house needs a serious series of tubes.
Think of it - you could send a sandwich from the kitchen to the den. You could send the mail from the office to the front door. Route laundry and garbage to their appropriate destinations.
Why send electrons when you can send atoms?
(Example, there are lots of others:)
http://aerocom-usa.com/profitability/where_to_install_pneumatic_tube_systems.shtml
I feel bad, most of the comments here are geared towards non-tech worries like pricing, space, and extra appliances. He came to Slashdot for tech ideas. He seems like he has a lot of money so let him worry about the finances, not us.
Personally, I would have the entire house wired for Cat 6 and also install the latest WiFi (I lose track of which is which). One idea you might consider is having a central computer act as a terminal server, and then placing WinRT or Windows 8 tablets in the walls throughout the house. This would be handy since you don't need a keyboard/mouse to interact, and they can all use Remote Desktop to run your applications off the terminal server. Dedicating a closet as a server closet might be a good idea too.
You could wire the house for HDMI, using maximum length cables combined with repeaters. Have them all connect to an AV selector in your server closet so you can switch between showing PS3 and computer screen at will. I use MakeMKV to copy all Blu Rays I can get my hands on so that I don't have to find the disc anytime I want to watch a movie.
A collection of WiFi security cameras throughout the house should be a given, archiving their data to your NAS device.
Something I always thought would be cool to do is take a room in the house and put projectors in so that every wall is 100% covered, and then show panoramic scenes on them. Not practical, but definitely cool. Imagine walking into a room where you could get a 360 degree view of Niagra Falls, the Grand Canyon, or downtown New York.
For a 3000SF house, stripped to the studs, I'd recommend about $50/SF minimum for a rebuild if you're going to do it all yourselves. Maybe $80-100 if you have someone else doing the heavy lifting.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Coming from a background in broadband, I'd agree with ka9dgx. Run conduit through an attic or crawl space. Each wall plate would ideally have two coax connections, an ethernet port and usb charging port unless the wall plate is specifically for a device (i.e. wall mounted tv). Having two coax ports allows an easy way to have both satellite and cable (for the internet) without dealing with a specialty splitter. Also, only activate the cable jacks you'll be using and if you are just going to activate a bunch, make sure to have a bi-directional amp (not regular house amp) or else your transmit will end up too high from too many splitters (if you're going with cable). If you do end up going with a cable company for tv or internet, have them send a tech out and let them check the system and show them where you're putting jacks and what the overall plan is so they can help give you on site ideas for streamlining it.
Seriously, have you priced stuff at all? Unless you are going with cheap, Walmart brand televisions, your TVs alone can eat your budget.
DON'T TAKE IT DOWN TO THE STUDS!!! I was in a house for 10 years that needed some repair work. The first thing I did was take off the wood paneling in one of the rooms almost as soon as I moved in. Bad mistake - I bought the sheetrock, but hanging it was another issue. Then you have to texture. Oh, and you will probably have to put in new insullation. Took me forever to get it done, and it looked ugly because I really had no clue what I was doing.
With that kind of budget, you might be able to do the bathroom, and maybe the kitchen. If the bathroom is small (like the majority of American bathrooms), you may want to expand by knocking out a hall closet or something. Just do a bit of planning. Pay someone to do sheetrocking, then put up tile, tile the floors, replace shower and tub with something really nice, replace toilet (actually go to Home Depot and look at different toilets. It may sound something trivial, but might as well make "having to go" more enjoyable, and a nice toilet you can get out for under $100 on), replace sinks and vanity, replace mirrors, maybe wallpaper if the wife is into it.
That right there is probably about $5-10k, depending on how nice you want to go (you could probably get out for under $1000, but the parts you will be replacing with are probably not going to look as nice as what is already there).
Once you are FINISHED, then you can do the second bathroom.
Replace counter tops, cabinets and appliances in the kitchen. Maybe add an island and replace floor.
Your budget is gone. Forget televisions, forget bedrooms, forget the living room, forget wiring the house.
Seriously, watch a few television shows about people who flip houses. Especially try to catch a few episodes about first time flippers. People on those shows can easily sink $50k-$100k on a house half your size - and that doesn't include tech stuff.
Touch screen computer built into the wall with Internet access. Bookmarks to recipe websites, Food network, and a calendar/planning system for keeping track of food inventories. A small printer to print out labels for foods. Also, iTunes or Pandora, and a good 5.1 speaker system set up throughout the kitchen.
More counter space than any one person could ever possibly need - or so you'd think. Two stoves, two ovens (one convection.) A central island with a bar on one side. A large dry pantry. An entire wall cabinet dedicated to storing cooking dishes. Two refrigerators. A deep freezer. A microwave oven that doesn't have an LCD interface left over from 1985. (Good lord that pisses me off. $350 for an over-the-stove microwave, and the display still only handles 8 characters at a time. What the hell, Maytag?!)
Proper track lighting overhead, and recessed lighting under the top cabinets. One counter taken up by a giant chopping block cutting board. Good tile floor, not linoleum. A comfortable rug in front of the main stove. A proper tile backsplash behind the sink. That new no-touch on-off faucet I've been seen commercials for that basically predicts whether you need the water on by your body language.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
My answers are not typical drool list, I will post things that would make sense.
New breaker, Make sure it was ton's of amps available. Figure out how much you need for everything, add about 30% more for expansion.
I agree with conduit everywhere comment above.
Network closets are nice to have, But if you do make sure that it has proper cooling.
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202518521/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&keyword=Pass+%26+Seymour+Combination&storeId=10051#.UI1R74bLV0Q
You will like these. They provide a little bit a light, but not blinding at 4am when you walk in the bathroom
~SimonTek
I would have easily removable wainscotting for access to the walls, and lots of conduit allowing whatever room-to-room connections I might need later. I'd model it on hospital setups, but go cheaper:I'd use luann paneling for the wainscotting, for example.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Wire the shit out of the place.... you can never have too many power outlets, ethernet jacks, speaker ports, or coaxial cable outlets. Run everything you can through conduit so you can future-proof the place and run additional wire when needed. Don't daisy-chain the outlets if you can help it. Run everything to a central utility room that's large and well ventilated enough to hold all of your backend computer shit. Don't just shove it into a closet, give yourself some room to move.
Put in recessed lights and speakers in the ceiling for all the rooms and put in multiple zones for different zoom designs and activity patterns.
Think about where you'll spend most of your time and put the house's thermostat there so you'll be most comfortable. If your furnace/AC can handle zones make sure you think hard about the best placement of the other temperature units.
Buy an LCD and place it behind two-way glass in the bathroom so you can get a pop-up display of the weather or watch local news in the morning while you brush your teeth or pee.
Hide speakers and video cameras in the walls/floors and connect them to a hidden computer that broadcasts out to the world on a concealed SSID. Then, when you move prank the new owners and make them think the place is haunted. Don't do anything overt, let subtlety be your friend. Creaking floorboards, a door closing, quiet footsteps that follow along and move from speaker to speaker, and ultrasonics for the pets. Record everything if you are feeling really illegal about it and then stitch it all together and post your movie on YouTube.
Don't forget about lighting, and some of the REALLY cool things you can do with LED's.
For about $25 (US), you can pick up 16 foot reels of bright LED RGB lights (30-60 LED's/meter). They come with remotes, so you can control color, brightness, effects, etc.
I've done some very cool access lighting in strategic places around the house, and it's pretty awesome.
The low-hanging-fruit, of course would be in the kitchen with under-cabinet lighting. It's even cheaper with one-color (white) LED's... It took about 30 minutes to "install", and the ROI is huge. Especially with the wife.
If you live in a mansion like this, pay someone to put the system in.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Make sure that you read up on all the building codes or talk to an inspector for the below.
1) A 2-3" conduit from top to bottom. Possibly two depending on the number of wires you will be running which depends on the number of rooms on each floor. Don't forget to fire stop and steel plate the floor/ceiling studs.
2) 1" electrical (grey PVC) conduit in each room, including garage. Top floor goes to attic, and bottom floors go to basement. If no basement, all conduits go to attic. Same regs as #1
3) Drop a HDMI over ethernet where ever you are going to put a TV or system. All lead back to the command center so you can do & change what links to what there.
4) Put in a magnetic circuit trip on each window and door. Most homes already come with this (security system) but you can better segment the house (ie: a circuit for sets of living room windows). Of course leading back to command center.
5) Wire in motion sensors in rooms and hallways (cameras are a bit creepy). Again, this may already be done for you. Wireless is fine too.
6) In wall speakers in every room (hey, you said you have 10k plus) (I haven't done these)
7) In wall mics (I haven't done these)
8) Camera for front and back door.
9) UPS (w/ 2x cheap car batteries) at the command center.
10) Tablet on fridge for kitchen inventory & movies
1-3 & 8-10 are obvious. 4 & 5 you want to hook up to an Arduino or Raspberry Pi. It can email you a SMS when your phone (you) isn't in the house and someone trips one. 6 & 7 if you want to do voice commands with playlists or your TV(s).
I think the above pretty much summarize the demands on your command center.
1/3 for this project, 1/3 for a trip, 1/3 to invest.
Let me repeat that, plan you lighting before you start. Again - plan you lighting before you start. If your electrician wings it and makes mistakes it is almost impossible to fix.
For example high end lighting in a dining room might have:
1) chandelier
2) halogen cans over table
3) halogen cans around sides of room
4) art light aimable cans
5) cans over buffet furniture.
6) tray lighting in the ceiling
Do you really want six dimmers in the wall of the dining room? No. What you want to do is remote all of those dimmers and have a single keypad at each opening into the room. Remoting a dimmer means putting it down by the electrical panel or in an attic. The home automation feature of the keypads then controls the remote dimmers. Doing this at wiring install time is almost free.
Repeat this in each room of the house. Think about art lights, fireplace sconces, in-cabinet lights, switched outlets, in-floor outlets in the center of rooms. Plan all of this before you let your electrician start. If you plan all of this correctly you'll never end up with 8-gang rows of dimmers. Well designed lighting is an easy way to make a major improvement to the feel of the house.
Hide the thermostats in closets and use in-wall remote temperature sensors. Disable the temp sensor inside of the hidden thermostat.
I would get a replacement for drywall thats handily removable for future upgrades. I was thinking that stainless steel would make good wall paneling held up with magnets, then when you need to upgrade or move wiring later you could easily pull it off the wall.
Maybe I'm getting old, but having a wife and a dog keeps me busy enough for attention/ affection. My entertainment is basically Hulu and internet, about 3x a week. I try reading books whenever I can or go out to parks/ museums... or save enough time for a weekend getaway.
The last time I held a console game was in college, and the last time I had cable tv, I'd channel surf 900 stations and find nothing.
I'd rather live life and meeting others face to face rather than being constrained by this sphere of commercialism. Ironically, I work in those industries that keeps you glued to the living room. ;)
Induction stoves are great. You can fine tune the stove's heat just like gas as well as turn it down low enough to melt chocolate without burning it. You can boil water faster than a microwave or gas stove. It is a real dream to work with and doesn't have the gas or fire hazards of gas nor do you have to replace the elements every six months like you do with regular electric. Yes, they cost more but they are worth every penny and your wife will love you for it.
The best place to get an induction stove is Sears. They say Kenmore but are made by one of the major manufacturers. Sears prices are usually better as is their customer service.
Could you get any thicker with the tropes? Offices? LR? Calendar on the wall? Kitchen for my wife?
A remodel begins in the mind of the beholder who's vision has matured and needs change which you've disowned outright.
You're stuck, broke and fantasizing about escape to something that you can't even imagine. But you like your self-acclaimed 'geek' cred although secretly doubt you've got it; you want the world to validate it for you.
Troll...
Daily Beast blogger Megan McArdle recommends the Thermomix. If money is no object, it is the ultra-handy kitchen appliance. She recently answered the question, What's the Most Indispensable Kitchen Machine? on her blog. You might consider asking her for her opinion on kitchen appliances. As noted in the second link, she's looking for blogging subjects. This kind of question seems right up her alley.
In regards to microwaves (the kitchen appliance that I personally use frequently), I find them easiest to use if they have good ways of selecting times from one to six minutes and the ability to add time in thirty second increments.
Then I realized what this would do to the value of the house. All the software would be written by me. This would mean that any buyer would either: a) rip it out because they don't understand it and need to replace it (thus lowering the value of the house) or b) need to do a code audit on everything I wrote to avoid any back doors (costing money and thus lowering the value of the house) and possibly c) be calling me for support when something breaks.
Me putting in the time and money to do such a level of home automation would ultimately make the house worth significantly less. And thus I came up with the order of things that are done in the house: Maintain the current value of the house (if there is something that needs to be done that is otherwise causing the value of the house to decrease (leaky basement walls) do that). Don't do anything that will decrease the value of the house (crazy personalized custom stuff that only has value to me is out). Increase the value of the house - a standard zone system with a Nest in each room is cheaper, likely more efficient, and improves the value of the house over a custom system.
So unless you are never thinking of selling this house in your lifetime, avoid doing anything crazy customized to you unless you are going to accept that ultimately another buyer is going to rip it out and replace it - and factor in the ripping it out and replacing it into the resale value. Not everyone out there is a geek.
1) a 1GB port and hdmi at each electrical outlet.
2) wire each room with 5.1 sound cables
3) motion detector each room.
I hope that is the amount you have set aside just for your tech upgrades, because you're going to spend all of that on just repairing/replacing all the sheet rock that you're removing. Easily. Probably more if you figure in the cost of having a professional come in and fix your screw ups.
I wired my house with 30 pin cables and now I have to rip it out and pull 8 pin cables.
I have not read all of the other postings, so forgive me if I step on some other ideas.
I would try to build in a “house closet”. That is, a securable room that would be the command and control center for the house. It would be the wiring center for electrical, communications, entertainment, sensors, data collection, and location of the house control computer (not to be used for other purposes). The control computer would deal with everything having to do with the house, including layouts, electricity, gas, & water usage, interacting with sensors, security, video cameras, audio, TV and entertainment. It should be equipped to handle wiring (and usage of wiring) throughout the house, including wireless (include a powered Wi-Fi antenna), plus all internal and external weather related data (including crawl space, attics areas, and garage.
Further, this room would house all necessary supplies (bulbs, filters, spare components etc), all appliance & installed equipment documentation, service records, a service calendar, and contacts with service suppliers. You keep even house the home file server here, but be sure to keep the house control computer and home server off the Internet (LAN only; you don’t need any 24 hour uptime targets for invasive activity).
Another idea I have toyed with is a gutter system that is wired to deal with weather conditions, such as snow, ice, and freezing melt water on the roof. Built in thawing plus sensors to register such conditions would aid the homeowner. Further, I have pondered having the house gutter system to be equipped as an outdoor lighting system for around the house by having it fitted with illumination panels on the bottom, including active motion sensors, so the panel would follow any moving object around the house at night. This could deter unwelcome intruders and wildlife. Connection to the control computer would allow activation of cameras or sound to reinforce the light patterning (and if equipped with appropriate colors or LED panels, it would also work as the holiday season light display).
If you're handy with programming, you can do a lot with a few Raspberry Pis.
Currently, I've got a Pi setup as a dedicated video player for the big LCD in the den. It's running OpenELEC and networked via a WRT54g running dd-wrt (which doubles as a wireless range extender), so it can play media from any other networked device in the house. Plays full 1080p HD wirelessly and flawlessly.
I have thought about doing something similar to what you mention with the family calendars. I still have some details to work out, but I envision all of our smartphones and a tablet in the kitchen on a quick-release wall mount synchronized using an exchange-like system. I've already got a web server running at home with a dynamic DNS service, so the synchronization could could conceivably be location-agnostic.
The Raspberry Pi's GPIO makes cheap home automation only a small leap of imagination.
As for the PS3, sorry, I'm not a gamer, so I don't know what the options are in that regard.
If your low end is $10, you may have to just buy a box of Hot Pockets.
I did it at my own house. It doesn't cost nothing extra, it is just your imagination on what to do with your bricks.
And one day I hope this is going to be visible from space;)
http://imgur.com/a/rkQpO
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
Since you're going down to the studs anyway, find some place to put in a simple secret passageway. You know, for the kids and grandkids.
Look for dead spaces in the walls. It can be as simple as going from one closet to another. Try to connect to the crawlspace, maybe.
Honestly, don't bother. Technology changes so quickly that anything you install now will look daft in 3 years, let alone a decade. My 5-year old house has hard wired Ethernet running into every room, but it simply isn't used because everything has wifi. Ditto for power drops - the family tends to wander around the house with tablets or notebooks, so we don't need a handful of extra plug ins for printers, massive monitors, and whirring server behemoths. And thank god we didn't install a flat screen monitor or two anywhere, because we'd be digging under-spec'd old plasma screens out of the wall and trying to figure out how to install something a bit larger.
The key thing to have installed in the house is flexible hardware:
This way you can reconfigure and upgrade your house easily, with most work easily accomplished at your control distribution rack without digging into walls after the initial installation.
What would you do to 'go geek' if you had a major remodel on your hands?
Infrastructure. Get as much future-proof wiring in the walls as you can. Cat 6 or Cat 7, hdmi, speaker wire, coax, fiber optic, power, etc. Multiple drops, whole house surge protection, wiring closets, cooling ducts, conduit for future runs. Here's the thing, you don't know what technology you are going to have available down the road and whatever you buy now is going to obsolete in just a few years. But the equipment is is easy to change. The tough bit is to get the wiring in the walls. Worry about infrastructure and the rest will be MUCH easier down the road.
Sex Dungeon. Trust me, you'll appreciate it more than a TV in every room.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
This is your inlaws' house, not yours.
You think getting roped into doing tech support for their computers is bad? Add tech to their house and you're buying into a whole new world of pain.
This is an idea I've been wanting to find a way to implement for years, so this post is as much to see if anyone will give me suggestions on how to do it as to share the idea.
Where I live, even in the hottest part of the summer there is typically a portion of the night where the outside temperature is lower than the indoor temperature, and during spring and fall there are lots of times when achieving a more comfortable indoor temperature is as simple as opening the windows... except that opening the windows requires me to notice when I should open them, when I should close them, and to actually go and do both things. And even when I do, I never do them at the optimal times.
So, I want an automated house climate control system that has control over the heat, A/C and can also operate the windows automatically. Couple that with a control system that knows the required comfort curve (cooler at night, don't care during the day when no one is home, tighter comfort range in the morning and evening) and perhaps even knows not only current interior and exterior temperatures but also the expected outside temperatures over the next 24 hours (Internet weather reports can provide hourly predictions) and the thermal mass of the home and the rate at which it can be heated/cooled by the furnace, A/C and windows, and the result could conceivably be extremely efficient even with a home which isn't really optimized for energy efficiency.
Oh, weather reports would also be useful for figuring out when the system should close the window because of rain or wind.
I have a thermostat with Wifi connectivity and which provides a RESTful API for monitoring state and changing current settings, and I've begun fiddling with trying to build my control system. Now if only I could incorporate the windows...
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Lots and lots of firmware. I'd would spen at least 80% of that budget on firmware.
Uhhhhh....
A house should be comfortable first.
Here are some things I suggest
-Double paned windows, soundproofing the outside walls (or possibly the walls around your offices/bedroom)
-Air filtration, humidity, and temperature control (vastly underrated for overall comfortabiliy of house)
-Heated toilet seats (trust me, you won't ever want to go back)
If all your comfort needs are already met, then here are my "fun" suggestions:
-Swimming pool
-Theatre room with projector, lazyboys, badass sound system of some sort
-Computer Closet with extender cables for monitor / peripherals routed out of it (no noise from fans is nice)
I wouldn't hardwire any cables, but having a conduit system is nice. Once you have it installed between your offices and computer closet, you can just pull the cables you need with a fish tape.
That's what I did, 12 years ago, along with 2 RG6 coax cables. They all go down to a central place in the basement, where I have a patch panel.
12 years ago, there wasn't much point to it, and the contractor building the house was baffled as to why. But I've found use for nearly all of that cable, and it sure has been nice to have it there ready to go.
I also wired up a room for an overhead projector, which turned out nicely.
You'll need a lot more money or an entirely new game plan. You're talking "major" remodel, ripping the house apart "down to the studs," you want to make it tech geeky, and you plan on spending 10k-20k? You'll be lucky to get out of the kitchen spending less than 20k. Unless you can do drywall and trim, flooring, electrical, plumbing, paint and decorating, and everything else yourself, and already have an arsenal of tools at your disposal, you can't even touch every room in a 3000 sq. ft. house for 20k.
For 10k, you can probably redo one bathroom and do some cheap cosmetic stuff. There is no way you can come even close to gutting a house that size, AND add anything electronic, for even twice what you are talking about. I've put 15k into my own [smaller] house in the last 3+ years, done every bit of work myself and been pretty frugal, and it has been nowhere near a major or complete remodel.
Wait, do you have a time machine large enough to transport materials and laborers from 1965?
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
run plastic ( non conducting ) conduits from one or two central wiring hub/closets to all room outlet locations.
because after the walls are done you can be sure things will move and their will be changes in equipment and wiring required.
consider 2 conduits to some/all outlets because some cables can NOT be run together ( damage each other / crosstalk).
The world wants to think wireless, but that is unrealistic in actual practice, and may have health risks. strong magnetic fields most certainly do.
signed,
an old school production computer room geek with experience.
Unix rocks, windows blows........
Bill Gates is another Ken Olsen....
Think of what your in-laws want.
It's not your house. It's their house. Do the remodel based on what their wants and needs are, not what you would do in your own house.
They may not want you spending $5K of their remodeling budget on stuff they neither want nor need.
Just a thought.
Lights, curtains, shades. All programmed/controlled via wifi; frontended with a web interface so I can manually control them via a tablet.
Lights also include outdoor lights.
Sensors to detect the deadbolts/garage doors on the house. (Don't want to actually control those, just tell if I locked up the house).
Multiple thermostats (nests)/zones for hvac. hack together a web interface to control those (some people already have been working on an api).
solar panels and/or windmills.
All of that is pretty nifty from a tech perspective, and will save you a buttload of money in the long run.
Discover sous-vide, either with a SousVide Supreme (http://www.sousvidesupreme.com/) or an immersion circulator (e.g. http://www.waterbaths.com/products/sousvide_products.html). The supreme is fabulous for slow cooks (3 days beef ribs).
Recently I've started to work on the geek kitchen concept. I'm working on the idea of an admin panel that tells the person cooking exactly the temperature of the oven, stovetop adventures, etc. Going beyond this, I want to throw a few point-able IR thermometers/bolometers around the kitchen that are linked into this system. The creme de la creme of a geek temp monitoring system for a kitchen would be a couple of IR cameras (think FLIR-style temperature monitoring). This would also be point-able and could be used to monitor hotspots on grills or a cold marble slab if you are making candy or specialty ice cream. The other awesome geek kitchen idea (for those who really like weird food prep) would be to incorporate a liquid nitrogen cooling slab. This is used for freezing weird liquids into a variety of shapes and is especially useful for desserts. For my ultimate geek kitchen, automated storage is one of my goals. The first is an inventory system that is tied into a recipe db. I want to schedule meals and have a shopping list automatically generated. Not easy to build and probably not simple to maintain. That one is going to take some effort. I'm also looking at automated small appliance storage and alternatives to the standard dishwasher. These are goals and I have no good solutions to offer right now.
I didn't see anyone mention in-wall USB ports. I have torn apart most of the ones on the market to check out the insides, and I will say that the Leviton is the best built and best amperage.
Here is a link to what I'm talking about on Amazon, but I found it 6 dollars cheaper at home depot when I purchased mine.
http://www.amazon.com/Leviton-T5630-W-125-Volt-Tamper-Resistant-Receptacle/dp/B008O11IEY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351449624&sr=8-1&keywords=leviton+usb
Also I don't really care about all the Ethernet ports everyone talks about, I'm fine with wireless. Personally I would rather have a really great wireless network with segregated guest access. I have found the best home wifi is the Ubiquiti unifi line: http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-UniFi-Enterprise-System/dp/B004XXMUCQ/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351449761&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=ubiquiti+unifo
My home is 4400 sq foot, with 2200 on the first floor and 2200 in a basement, and one of these puppies gets me a solid connection anywhere in the house, and I have another one in my back shop that covers the gazebo and back yard.
If you don't have one think about getting a gazebo with a nice firepit in the center, and ceiling fan over it. I know this doesn't sound "geeky", but I spend a TON of time with my laptop outside on it. My geek freinds and I have had enough with cave dwelling, we are all about a nice cool breeze, a bucket of beer, and laptops plugged in to sockets conveniently placed on every 4x4 at the corners :).
Flexibility in mounting, assume all technology that you pick will be a commodore 64 in 10 years; so make it easy to pull something out and replace it. Don't make everything form fitting. Sort of like the garage. You don't build it to fit your car exactly. If you are running cables run them in a big smooth pipe so you can pull them and run new cables; say fiber, or superconducting.
If you go with solar you have three basic options (or switchable wiring). One is to go with solar for heat. This is the most efficient and least cool. Then there is solar for knocking your electrical bill down, and finally there is solar for off the grid. If you are in a location where off the grid isn't sensible the cool thing you can do is to have the solar switchable for powering critical things during a power outage. Keeping a fridge going and charging your gadgets would make you the envy of your neighbourhood.
And as for something kitchen, cool sous vid is the way to go. That is about the nerdiest gadget you can put in your kitchen. You can get one that you put in a pot for a few hundred dollars.
Sorry- I should have clarified something. We are buying this house to remodel and move into, and we have budgeted about $50,000 for the total remodel. After doing all the stuff that we want to do, we'll have $10-20,000 leftover to 'play' with, so to speak. We're fairly wealthy, but not limitlessly so, and we want to use our money efficiently. That said, we are using this as a test run for a much nicer house in a few years when we build our dream home, so we're not opposed to taking a loss on this place in order to do a test run on more complicated designs or concepts, including environmentally sustainable building ideas.
Cables, cables, cables. Make sure you have lots of power outlets, and wired gigabit ethernet everywhere.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
For Christmas lights, it would be nice to be able to switch it on and off inside. I think that many houses are like that now, but it's worth thinking about. For outdoor outlets, maybe put some on the eaves, so that water and snow won't get in very easily.
testing out my trending skills
Light switches at every door makes it easy to turn off the lights when you go in the room through 1 door, and then exit through another door. Without that, you might be tempted to leave the lights on until later.
This is especially useful for in the garage, which might have a sidedoor. We use that door, instead of the front or back.
In some cases, it might be worth having 1 switch per bulb, per door, so that you only have to turn on 1 bulb, when you only need 1 bulb.
testing out my trending skills
Put in a smart conveyor system like they have in the B&H camera store in Manhattan so you can move stuff in and out of storage and all over the house at a keystroke.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
sorry, no can do
It's considered a fire issue. I guess they don't want you running an electric turkey fryer in your closet. You'll have to use propane.
If you're going that far with electrical work, also make sure each room gets its own breaker if it's not that way already. Or better yet, two for each room. (Separate the lighting fixtures from wall outlets in each room.) Nothing is a pain in the ass like having a breaker that covers a large section of the house trip because something like the microwave and vacuum cleaner running at the same time as an AC unit or whatever. Each living space should be isolated, front and backyard exterior outlets should be separate, and perhaps separate circuits for the major appliances.
In my experience, it sucks if you don't have a UPS (or forget to replace the battery), and somebody decides it's time to work on the garage lighting fixtures only to have that circuit shared by your room for no good reason. That's why proper circuit isolation is important!
So yeah, a good proper rewire and make sure to have a good validated circuit diagram labeling what breakers go to what room put on a sticker in the breaker box door.
I suggest having conduits placed that will allow for current devices (such as ethernet) AND allow future modalities to be easily added. If I were redesigning a house as short as 15 years ago, I would have urged multiple telephone lines and jacks for ease of internet connectivity. Now that is outmoded. What we are doing today is likely to be similarly outmoded in the future.
I saw a kitchen on one of those home remodeling shows where the entire wall was a chalkboard that was magnetized--so you can not only write things on the wall (like to do lists or recipes), but you can store metallic objects (like tongs) on the wall.
Remodeling sucks down money. Focus instead on FURNITURE that matches the house. You will get far, far more return.
When throwing money into a project, ask yourself, "What tech will survive the next 10 years unscathed?" If a tech won't change much in that span, then it might be worth installing in the house. Otherwise, you are pissing money away. So that means that you invest in power outlets and upgraded power. Otherwise, invest in insulation and windows. Replace your fridge, especially if it's over 10 years old.
20k is chump change in the renovation game.
perhaps you can get my used tinfoil as im moving to an abandoned coppermine.
Oh yeah, he's tech savvy all right.
In light of the approaching hurricane, and during heavy rain in general, I like to make sure my sump pump is keeping up (I live in an older house). Rather than continually going down to check on it, I installed a WiFi IP Camera in the room pointed at the pump. That way I can check on it periodically from my phone without actually going in there. Of course, infra-red LEDs are a must on such a setup, but they come with most cameras anyway. To generalize, cameras wherever you might want to monitor the state of the house. This would be separate from security cameras.
"I know that every word that man just said is true, because it's EXACTLY what I wanted to hear." -- Space Ghost
Window automation: http://www.secontrols.com/window-automation/
They sell complete systems that do what you want. They should be able to sell you equipment that would fit your needs.
My mother in law would not quit downloading spam and viruses. Got her an iMac and problems went away.
20 amp circuits in the kitchen and dedicated circuits for microwave and refrigerator. Currently dealing with an overloaded 15 amp circuit.
Ethernet cable to each tv location back to a central router location. Everything has Ethernet these days. Wireless router goes without saying.
Super quiet bathroom fans.
Don't put stuff on switched wall sockets. Mother in law kept calling us each morning saying the tv quit working. The father in law had plugged the tv into the switched socket.
Overhead fan circuits. Avoid remote controls for fans. The get lost or your rug rats run off with them.
Led lights. Changing light bulbs can be dangerous for older people. They may forget to tell you about a burned out light.
Wheel chair accessible widths in all doorways (36" is great).
Walk in bath tub. Hip and knee replacements make it difficult to climb in and out of bath tubs. This is pricey but good for older disabled.
300 lbs capacity Grab handles near toilets and showers.
Get rid of any sunken living rooms if possible. Step downs are bad. If not possible, make the flooring a different color to help with low light conditions and bifocals. Older people avoid turning on lights. Even if they are rich, they still try to save money.
Washer and dryer near bedrooms in a separate room with a closing door.
A day of the week clock. Novelty item, but it works great.
Outside lights near all inside and outside doors with a simple on off switch near the door.
If you have trees near the house, trim them back and get gutter guards. Your father in law may want to clean the gutters out and unless he often climbs ladders, it can be dangerous.
I love European dual tilt windows. They can easily be tilted in at the top for ventilation or they can be hinged from the side inward. This makes them easily cleaned and keeps you and your inlaws off of ladders. Also, they are super energy efficient.
Overall, just keep it simple for your In laws. They may be sharp now, but if they live long enough, you will be dealing with dimensia, forgetfulness, and physical disabilities.
I'm remodeling now, and have learned several lessons that I'll never be able to put to use, because I'm never NEVER going to do this again. So in hopes of preventing some suffering by others:
1. The worst part of the remodel is the time between ripping out the old kitchen sink and installing the new one. Minimize it. Washing dishes in the bathtub sucks.
2. If you buy windows, you'll either pay an arm and a leg to have them finished at the factory, or you'll buy them unfinished and plan on finishing them yourself. If you finish your own windows, do it on sawhorses, before they're installed. Once they're in, everything is harder to reach, and you can get wood stain all over walls, floor, and pets.
3. Anything you can ruin with paint, should be installed after you paint. Don't listen to the contractor talk about how they want to be efficient and get the floor done so everybody stays busy. Don't listen to the contractor when he promises to put a plastic dropcloth on the new hardwood floor, or the new tile floor, that will protect it from paint.
4. Everything you've heard about what a pain in the ass it is to be your own general contractor, is true.
i read this as greek remodel and i thought, cool columns and stuff.
Zoomba today. Rosie tomorrow.
Thanks. I've looked at their systems, and unfortunately they don't have anything for sliding windows, which is what I'd prefer. They do appear to be the only solution on the market.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
PEX tubing for your plumbing is pretty damn cool, and pretty cheap. No worries at all about pipe corrosion if you have funky water, and they tend not to burst. Moreover, the right kind of box can set your valves for all fixtures in one central location. The bad news, however, is that you can't just cut the valve if you're on the commode and the commode suddenly springs a leak on the intake.
As for hardline networking, just do it. Have a wifi spot for guests and laptops, but for desktop boxes, well, wifi never really made sense to me - and besides, it's hard to beat the reliability of a copper CAT6E line, or fiber, or....
This sig no verb.
Where is this house? can you get FTTH? if not, Cable? If you are stuck on DSL... well, forget it, it will never be a real geek house.
Once you have started getting used to always coming home to a clean floor you won't want to go back.
Just make certain there is nothing that the Roomba like* machine can get stuck on and that it can move between rooms.
Do the same for your bathroom / washing area and get a Scooba if these areas warrant it.
* It doesn't actually have to be a roomba you use for the term to apply.
The other robot cleaners are usually similar enough so if one works they all do
Arduinos and XBees everywhere
Start planning now. Someday, a house without fast charging will be nearly unsellable.
$20K won't even buy a decent pair of speakers. Forget about it.
Ok, Ethernet's fine too, but what you really want is some 1-2" conduit to a central location, so you can easily rewire the house with whatever kind of wiring you need decades down the road, if anything's still using wire. Maybe it's for audio, or fiber for something, whatever, but you won't really know. Expect that somebody in the future is going to want to put the TV/stereo/whatever on the other side of the room from where you want it, and run conduit there too. And make sure there are enough electrical sockets in enough places (though current electric codes mostly do that already.)
Also, you want wider doors, because you or whoever you sell the house to in the future may be old enough to need a wheelchair, and an extra six inches of width makes moving furniture a lot easier also. And you want good insulation, and wiring from your HVAC vents to your server closet (because at some point you might want to automate those) and maybe an occasional niche high up in a wall to put whatever electrical stuff there makes sense (e.g. a clock or fan or TV.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Make a high-performance gaming rig, get a decent processor and get dual graphics cards. Dedicate a single room to be your main entertainment area. Get 3 40" flat panel TV's. Personally I use Samsung LED-LCD because they're cheap(er) and I already had one. Hook them up and have some fun with that. I'd also suggest getting a surround sound system if you feel like adding that on. Dont forget to build a table (or find tables of the same height for your comfortable viewing), and line them all up correctly. This should provide the proper "Command Center" feel without sacrificing utility. The gear combination will be able to compensate for any consoles you may have and extra things you may want to do. The irony is that this whole set up I speak of is still cheaper than a lot of Apple desktops.......
Oh wait, you said 'geek'. Nevermind...
I'm doing the same thing, only on a smaller budget, with different needs. Here's what I have so far:
Ubuntu 12.04 server running Plex media server and (soon) an XP VM running iTunes. An Apple TV (for living room iTunes) and a Roku box on my TVs for every other steaming service you can think of, including Plex. I have an AirPort Express in the master bedroom for iTunes audio streaming. Oh and my server runs Netatalk for TimeMachine backups, and a backups share under a specific user to accept Windows backup via Acronis TrueImage.
That's it. Most of my needs are taken care of. Don't forget to set up your own DNS and DHCP servers -- why remember silly IP addresses? For the kitchen, I'd mount a tablet to a cabinet or the fridge door. Maybe a custom under counter space to mount and charge the tablet. Then you have your recipes, audio and video at your finger tips. Both the iOS and Android platforms have audio search integration so doing conversions shouldn't be an issue. Set up some wireless bluetooth speakers for sound and your kitchen is complete.
PS3 anywhere -- that's a tough one. You can route the video easily enough, but the bluetooth controllers are gonna be a challenge. Hopefully the slashdot braintrust has an idea.
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
First I would start with a little sun, then maybe some strength training and perhaps an aerobic activity or two . . .
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
I'd say this:
1) It would be money foolishly spent as it would probably negatively impact the value of the property more than improve it
2) $10k to $20k is chump change for any significant remodel.
How about a backup Venturi effect sump pump? They work without power as long as you still have water pressure.
I once punched a woman right in the face because she was talking shit and shoved me. You want equality? Then you need to be equal in everything, not just the areas that are advantageous.
Have you thought about installing a backup Venturi effect sump pump? They work without power as long as you still have water pressure.
The single hardest thing I've had to do in my house is run wires horizontally. Pulling wires vertically is relatively easy, but fishing them horizontally is a nightmare. Run horizontal conduit across every room, and terminate it at low-voltage frames that face opposite sides of the wall between alternating studs (to avoid having blank wallplates every 2 feet in any one room. If the room backs up against a closet, put frames in the room where you want them, and put the rest of them on the 'closet' side of the wall. That way, if you need to pull wires horizontally in the future, you can just remove the faceplates and pull the cat5/6/fiber/whatever across the room. On each wall, have a junction leading to another conduit that runs to a central wiring area. It's OK and appropriate to have two or more such areas... say, one near the room where your home theater system is located (so you can put most of your gear there, so you can have direct physical access to it from the location where most of your real-world interactive viewing will occur, and feed other rooms semi-directly from there), and at least one on each floor.
I can't emphasize the "have multiple wiring paths and crossover points" enough. I've seem some people go to patently absurd lengths so they could get ideological about having "home runs" for everything... then complain that their system is too brittle, or they had to buy a thousand-dollar HDMI extender instead of a $60 one, because they insisted on sending the signal on a 700-foot detour to some central location instead of just pulling a wire through the wall and feeding the jack on the other side. There's a time and place for both. For networks, go ahead and homerun. For high-bandwidth stuff that has serious, expensive-to-fix problems as the distance increases beyond a hundred feet or so, run point to point. Build your conduit so you can do both. Just because you CAN solve certain problems by throwing expensive hardware at them doesn't mean it's necessarily the best idea if you aren't faced with insurmountable physical constraints. Wires are cheap. Managed VLAN-capable gigabit switches with IGMP 3 snooping aren't.
Ask yourself: if, 7 years from now, you somehow had to get a wire from (some random point in a room) to (some random point in another room on the other side of the house), how would you do it? Could you do it without major surgery as, at worst, a weekend project that might involve cutting a new hole or two for the faceplate frame and some vertical fishing? Because if you can achieve that with conduit, you'll be set for anything you can think of for the next 40 years. Don't even TRY to anticipate the kinds of cables you'll need to run. You'll be wrong, and end up pulling a shit-ton of cable that will end up being sub-optimal for whatever you had in mind, anyway. Run horizontal conduit, interconnect walls with junction points around the house, and sleep well knowing you're ready for anything. I know firsthand -- I spent a fortune, and weeks, pulling shielded cat5e cable after work so I'd be able to run component video over cat5e without interference. I ended up buying $50 HDMI-over-1-cat5e extenders, and all the shielding (god, it was a pain to terminate) ended up being moot.
Remember, high- and low-voltage can't share conduit or boxes (unless divided). I personally recommend running 4 conduits across each wall... 2 for LV, 2 for HV (possibily substituting Romex for one of the HV conduits for the initial build). Use one conduit in each pair for your "phase 1" wiring connecting your "phase 1" boxes, and use the second conduit in each pair to run future wires from "phase 1" boxes to other locations where you can't bring yourself to put blank wallplates right now. By using the second conduit for "the last 2/4/6 feet", you'll minimize the number of wires that have to be pulled out and re-pulled if/when future cuts to condudit #2 are necessary.
For high-voltage wiring where you're putting new boxes, put the deepest boxes you can, with box extenders if possible. If you're putting
Invest in solar panels, such that you can get free/cheap power for all the gadgets.
Wind power is craap, and create so much noise pollution, that nobody wants to live near it
A fuel cell is another alternative, have not found a price for the Panasic fuel cell yet though. I think it is above your budget.
Just hire Goldman Sachs to do it for you.
No, but asking the world about what technology you need seems weird to me. Good technology should not be expensive, and should fit into your lifestyle as is. Besides, his budget seemed totally unrealistic. Cheap cabinets will cost about 6,000 easily. Tearing out drywall and running cable and av crap seems way out of that budget.
Why would you want to have a television in the bedroom? The bedroom is for sleeping (and other related activities), not watching the idiot box.
Spend good money on high quality software and controls. Ones that are industry wide, and well supported. This is one way to make it easier on yourself and everyone. My Father, before he retired, was an Electrical and Ventilation engineer. The software for the control points, switching from room to room, or what have you, should be high quality, preferably supported in a way that you can call someone for solutions and won't have to search around on weeknights and weekends for blogged half solutions, unless you enjoy that challenge. The controls should be the highest quality you can afford from a well trusted resource. This is going in for a house, and needs to be reliable, like a light switch.
I just got some of those new Hue lights from Philips and have to say they're pretty awesome. It would be rad to fill up an entire house with them.
or else!