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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.
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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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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!"
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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?
Me too... Most culinary minded geeks I know are decidely *not* fans of unique gadgets/designs. They're creatures of pattern and habit when it comes to hardware.
The culinary geek world is unlike the rest of the geek world - we don't generally seek the latest and creations because the foundations of the world's cuisines are generally old, tried, and true. Gadgets and new shinies mark the dilettante and the fashion victim, not the culinary geek.
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.
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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.
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.
Do not: I repeat: Do not hire out your plumbing. The vast majority of plumbers are doing one of three things:
(1) Installing old school copper: This is extremely expensive and time consuming. Plumbers will charge 4 to 5 times what the installation should cost, in materials costs alone. In addition, copper takes about 10 times as long to install as modern PEX, even for a professional.
(2) Installing everything with Sharkbite (tm), or similar connections using home depot quality PEX. This will work just fine, but the contractor will charge you for the connectors +50% markup, and those connectors are unreasonably expensive as it is.
(3) Install everything with crimp style (as seen at home depot) connections. The trouble with these connections is that they eventually fail. It may take 20 years, but what does the plumber care, in 20 years he wont be around to have to fix it.
The best way to get the job done these days is to use "expansion style" PEX connectors. These connectors will last longer than the building, and are very inexpensive compared to the Sharkbite (tm) variety. The biggest issue with expansion style connectors is the tool needed to make the connections. The cheapest route will cost about $150, and requires a fair amount of upper body strength. For a single install, this is probably your best bet. Even including the cost of the tool, it will still be much cheaper than a plumber, and will only cost you about 16 hours to finish the rough plumb-in of two bathrooms and a kitchen. (I can do it in 8 to 10 hours, but I do this all the time.) For the more hard-core, you can get an electric version of the expansion tool for about $450. This will cut your install time by 40%, and save your arms. If you plan on doing this to more than one house, the tool may be worth the money. Using the motorized tool, you can do the install in about 10 hours (I can do it in 6). Lastly, just having the tool is not the end of it. Do your homework. There is a right way and a wrong way to use the tools. If you do it right, you will have connections that will outlive you by a wide margin. Doing it the wrong way, and your connections will leak from day one. Ask your local plumbing supply warehouse for more information.
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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.
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