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Ask Slashdot: If You Were Building a New Home, What Cool New Tech Would You Put In?
An anonymous reader writes: I am starting the process of building a new home, and I would like to make the house as wired (or wireless) as possible. At this stage I can incorporate new tech in the design. What features do you have in your house that you just couldn't live without? What features are nice to have? What features do you want? In-home Fiber? Solar? Audio/Visual? Heating/Cooling?
We just don't know what the future holds. You may want to run fiber or a new wireless standard may make that moot. You may want to swap out your heating unit without much expense, or install a battery. I wouldn't focus on individual new technologies, but give the house an electrical and mechanical infrastructure that makes it easy and cheap to make changes. I would also install extra, easily accessed conduits for new cables or pipes of whatever kind.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
They aren't very cost effective for existing homes, but for new construction they can save you tons on money on heating and cooling, giving you up to a 5x multiplier for the energy you put in. All new construction should have them.
WiFi is evil. Ethernet is good. GBE is far better.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
So you can run other stuff later.
I'd like the outlets in my home to be retractable, similar to the way some vacuum cords work. Click a button to unlock it, and then pull it out of the wall for ~30 feet. Press another button to retract the cord back into the wall.
Some thoughts:
Wired Networking: Wireless can never touch the bandwidth, latency, or collision handling of wired networking. Provide wired access for all stationary devices, and use wireless only for those devices that are mobile or wireless-only by design (laptops, tablets, phones, WiFi lightbulbs, etc.). As much as possible, avoid wireless for things like smart TVs, set-top boxes, game consoles, etc. The more devices you have on wireless, they less bandwidth is going to be available to any one device. Unless you're going to invest in some pretty expensive networking gear, I'd stick with Cat 5e or Cat 6 cabling for now (Cat 7 is budget isn't an issue), however, ensure you use some form of wiring duct behind the walls: should the day come when you can reasonably wire everything with fibre, it will be a whole lot easier to pull it through wiring duct than it is to remove all your walls.
Geothermal Heating/Cooling: Again, if you're not constrained by budget, invest in a Geothermal system for your heating and cooling. This often needs to be done rather early in the house design/build phase (due to the need to dig deep holes into the ground), but once in place you'll have nearly free heat in the winter and cooling in the summer (usually you just need to pay for enough electricity to run a heat pump and a fan, which is negligible). I'm fortunate enough to live in a home with community geothermal, and the system has been flawless for us (albeit not as cheap as a DIY system, as the community treats the turmoil energy as a utility. Still cheaper than the alternatives, however).
Solar: Even if you don't plan on installing a solar system (ha!) right away, I suppose you could at least get the basic wiring done, such that when it is time to install such a system you already have a suitable location for the banks of batteries (if you're building from scratch, this could be part of a custom utility room designed for this purpose), plus the necessary wiring between that location and your rooftop panels. That way you're future-proofed, and the rest would pretty much be plug-and-play.
Yaz
Cat 6, Cat 3 and Coax to every room. Cat 6 + power to a few closets for WiFi APs.
Structured wiring to a central ethernet/phone/TV distribution hub with media server, UPS, etc...
- The above can cost thousands of dollars if done professionally. My brother-in-law did it himself (before his house was drywalled) for a few hundred dollars.
Solotubes in the bathrooms (basically mini-skylights that collect enough light at night to act as a nightlight)
Hookup for solar - the tech isn't *quite* there yet.
Hookup for garage EV charger - see above.
Multiple passthroughs for wires going outside - for future expansion (ham radio antennas, sprinkler systems, whatever)
If you're really into gardening, a hookup for an outdoor sink (with warm water) is *really* nice.
A properly wired OTA TV/FM antenna - for cord cutting.
Depending on the size of the house - multiple thermostats.
IP thermostat with integrated humidistat to control the humidifier. I like the Nest.
An attic fan with a nice controller - won't live without one of these now - we can go for most of spring without A/C by just using the fan.
Metal roof - recommended by a roofer friend who has them on his house - if properly installed they will last practically forever.
If you don't want a security system, at least run some LV 2-wire to each window and door so you can add one later if you change your mind later.
Also run wiring for connected, powered fire alarms. At the very least - one in each bedroom, one in the kitchen, one in every stairwell and one in the furnace room.
Ideas from a local builder:
2x6 framing - allows for more insulation and is more durable.
16" poured reinforced concrete foundation - recommended by structural engineers as ideal for residential construction.
Remember this - building to code is like getting a C on a report card - you're doing the bare minimum to make sure the house won't fall apart, flood or catch fire.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Terminate half the wires to one jack and half to the other.
You shouldn't even need to do that. I set up a simple patch panel of female ethernet connectors in my wiring closet, each connected to the female ethernet connectors all over the house. My POTS line comes into that wiring closet (well, my DSL line does, and my box has an RJ11 POTS connector). Plug the phone's RJ11 into the RJ45 where you want the telephone (yes, male RJ11 plugs into female RJ45 by design), find a male-male RJ11 to connect the corresponding patch panel RJ45 to the RJ11 POTS line, and bingo you can have your POTS telephone wherever you thought to place an ethernet outlet.
You probably want to avoid messing up connections between ethernet and POTS though. I've done it without ill effects, but no one phoned me during the time it was misplugged.
Now that I've wasted the mod point I awarded here before posting, some other tips, not all cool new tech:
- some place with ethernet that you can have a noisy server. Servers aren't that noisy any more, but I've had to junk one supposedly silent server because the power unit emitted a very annoying high-pitched whine, and cheap hard disks still make noise. This could be the wiring closet, but not necessarily.
- there's a (maybe European) quality of cable called "grade 3" that is better than cat6 (cat6e?) in that you can wire a satellite (coax) signal directly to it.
- if you use contractors, watch them. Every day. Get them used to the idea that they can ask you things. I put double RJ45 outlets in a lot of places, but the only place I really wanted two was where I was putting the television. Guess where the cabling guy decided on his own to only put a single because the patch panel had one hole less than needed?
- if you use contractors, watch them even more than that. I have a friend who used to change out of business work clothes into worker's coveralls in order to walk around his future house every evening. One evening he sees something bad (ISTR isolation) and calls it to the attention of the guy working nearby. The reply was "Oh yeah I know I messed up but it's too much work to correct, it'll be covered by drywall, the owner will never know".
- why not run cable to the fridge? To somewhere you might want a (PoE) surveillance camera? Wifi repeater?
- battery-powered doorbells suck.
- easily accessible storage space for things like vacuum cleaner, mop, dry food, clothes
- BTW, central vacuum cleaning, but storage is good anyway.
- I put washing and drying machines on the bedroom floor instead of basement or kitchen. No more carrying dirty clothing up and down stairs, but YMMV if your sleep patterns might clash with the noise. BTW, drying machines are better and cheaper if they have a hole to the outside.
- depending on your local weather, DFV (double-flow ventilation) with heat exchange so you don't lose heat, and cheaper electricity and heating mentioned by others
- Kitchen: granite desktop. Draw-out trash can just underneath so you can just sweep peelings from the working area directly into the trash can. Dishwasher a foot or two above the usual level so you don't have to bend (you put your hand in the dishwasher a lot more often than in the oven, and kids can fall on the upwards-pointing knives in a dishwasher just like they can burn their hands on an oven). Power plugs for kitchen appliances of course, maybe ethernet?
- going to have animals? Where are you putting their food, will you shut up the dog during the night and if so where, do you need a cat door, etc.
Lots more of course, I have often heard that that the house you get perfect is the third one you build!