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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?

3 of 557 comments (clear)

  1. KISS by Moof123 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Beware of making your house too gadgety. In 10-15 years most of it will be outmoded and junk and you will spend a lot of time and hassle keeping it going (and if that is your schtick, why are you asking for ideas?!). Don't become a slave to your house if you can avoid it.

    Nice to haves:
    1) Extra outlets and breakers. Having fewer rooms per breaker is nice to avoid finding out that a hairdryer plus your gaming PC will pop the breaker even though one is upstairs and the other is downstairs.

    2) Speakers and speaker wire in your living room is really nice, and hard to add later.

    3) Pull Ethernet cable where you can do so. Most stuff will be on wireless, but it is nice to be able to put a wireless router where needed once you find out the hard way where the dead zones are.

    4) Good insulation. A cheap house to heat/cool is golden. Consider a heat exchanger to keep fresh air in your house, which is a bigger issue once you make a well sealed up house.

    5) Storage, storage, storage. No modern house seems to have enough good storage in it.

    6) Good sound deadening in the interior walls, few houses have this, and it sucks to try and add after the fact. Solid core interior doors help too.

    7) Glue and screw your base flooring in you minimize how many squeeks show up over time, which can slowly drive you insane.

    8) Low maintenance yard. Mowing every week sucks. Paying for yard guys sucks. Allergies suck. Unless you want to be a gardener, put in slow growing low maintenance plants that don't trigger your allergies.

  2. Toilets NOT in the bathroom by gurps_npc · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Toilets belong in an entirely separate room, protected by a door. Two doors would be better - one going to the hallway, another to the shower/bath/sink.

    Because whatever idiot came up with the idea of having your toothbrush, comb, shaving gear exposed to the same air as your toilet had never heard of germs or fluid dynamics.

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion