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Ask Slashdot: If You Were Building a New Home, What Cool New Tech Would You Put In?

Posted by Soulskill on from the delivery-drone-countermeasures dept.

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?

5 of 557 comments (clear)

  1. Future proofing by Iamthecheese · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Future proofing by Goldenhawk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I built my current house in 1998. Having built a house in 1994 and in just a few years been geek-frustrated with it, I did some things right the second time, and they've stood the test of time, mostly.

      One, I set the entire house up as a star-configured system. No daisy-chained networks or wires. There's a central patch panel to which EVERYTHING runs. This makes debugging and tweaking far, far easier. I would absolutely do this again.

      Two, I ran far more of everything than I needed at the time. That hasn't eliminated issues, but it decreased them significantly. Two Cat 5 cables, two three-conductor speaker cables, and two RG-6QS cables to every room, period. I'd do this again, but with the latest (and anticipated coming) technology.

      Three, I built in an attic-to-crawlspace cable pipe. It turned out barely big enough for the four RG-6QS cables for two satellite dishes. Now with DirecTV's new combined LNBs, I'm back down to one cable and have plenty of spare room. Next time I'd put in a couple of 2" pipes instead of one 1" pipe; it would be no significant cost delta but add significant margin.

      Thinking ahead, even though I have been okay for 17 years, I am still somewhat limited on expansion. I have since built on two extra rooms, and it's nearly impossible to add them to the star-configured patch panel. I am not sure I would try to do comprehensive room-to-room cable piping, because it takes a TON of piping and a very large network room to pull it off properly. Space is money when you're building a house.

      What did I do WRONG?

      For one, not enough photos of infrastructure before putting up the insulation and drywall. I took a ton of photos, but nearly every time I've looked at them for answering a question, I found I had somehow missed the precise shot I needed.

      For another, too many places where messy infrastructure limited my options. Like cables and piping exactly where I found I wanted to add recessed lighting. I would be a lot more picky about directing the plumber and electrician where to run their stuff.

      Also, I would pay more attention during design to the HVAC setup. It takes up a lot of volume, and tends to interfere with flexibility later. So I would do a better job of pre-thinking where it would go, and leave more built-in space for it.

      Finally, I didn't give enough thought to house-to-street connectivity. It changes faster than my in-house systems. Every few years I have needed to have my yard dug up by the cable or telephone or electric or plumbing company. I wish there were a fairly large pipe running underneath my 150 foot driveway, through which all the necessary services could be routed and rearranged as necessary. Sort of a personal manhole thing.

      --
      --Brandon / Split Infinity Music

  2. Geothermal Heat Pump by Elder+Entropist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Just GBE everywhere! by aglider · · Score: 5, Insightful

    WiFi is evil. Ethernet is good. GBE is far better.

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    Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
    1. Re:Just GBE everywhere! by decsnake · · Score: 5, Insightful

      abso-fing-lutely. Cat 6 everywhere. Drop at least one in every room, and put one in every wall in the room you plan to use as you main media room.

      The 2.4GHz band is totally congested and 5GHz doesn't go thru any kind of decent wall worth a shit. Leave wireless for mobile devices and wire everything that doesn't move. The idea that an 80" TV should be wireless is ridiculous.