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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?
Some sort of new device to keep people off my lawn. It couldn't be run IOS, Android, have a unified touch interface, or be in "the cloud" though.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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.
Fiberglass windows, geothermal heat, a good in home battery like the new Tesla product, wind and solar power generation, and wicked good insulation. Ideally something like the blow cellulose or cotton fiber, but even just a thicker layer of fiberglass, so that my heating and cooling needs are few. LED lighting throughout. Tankless water heaters. Natural gas for heating, cooking, water heater and dryer.
Drought tolerant landscaping. Because even though I live in a water rich region, I hate having to pay to water my lawn (city water, no options) just for the priviledge of cutting it later. Nuts to that deal.
Easy Online Role Playing Campaign Management
Here is my quick list:
- 80' holographic TV with 360 channels 4D surround sound
- Two parking spots for the hovercars
- A quantum teleporter (ask for the free subscription to Andromeda Quantum Tours Weekly)
- A six terawatt home battery and thorium / fusion nuclear reactor (don't go for the cheap Tesla stuff, nuclear is what you need)
- A robosquid and a set of batteries
- Six packs of pills for instant beer
- An iPhone9 with the Apple Watch, Apple Pay, Apple ID, Apple Travel, iThink, assortment of overpriced cases, cables and chargers
- At least one DNA decoder / recoder per room
- A 65536-qbit game console for the kid
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
I would try to get my heating and cooling costs as low as possible. Something similar to the Passivhaus standard. I might not be strict to the standard if the cost benefit becomes too extreme. I would probably also use some sort of geothermal system as well.
When the power goes out, it would be nice to have some sort of battery backup and/or renewable source of electricity on hand. I also like the EPA certified wood stoves that are now available, like those made by Quadra-fire. They're much more efficient than old fashioned stoves, and don't require electricity. However, their output is likely too high for a house that meets the Passivhaus standard.
What can I say, I work in the energy field. Saving energy is fun to me.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Wire runs. You can change cabling later or run new cabling if the runs are in place
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
If the house has an open attic or basement I'd do all 3/4" EMT conduit stubs for all services, be they power, data, whatever, so that there's no in-wall problems later. I'd attempt to anticipate the locations of televisions, speakers, computers, wireless access points, and anything else that might use a cable and plumb the necessary number and size of conduit for the necessary power and data requirements.
I'd install a central vacuum system. It could be used for cleaning and for a tech bench to clean up dust when working on things, and with a proper filter might make for a good soldering station to get the fumes away. I would also run 1/2" or 3/4" soft copper in a giant loop above each room, probably "K" or maybe "L" rated, that could be hooked to an air compressor for things like cleaning, airbrush panting, etc.
I'd define an MDF and run several service-entrance conduits from the expected service-hookup locations on the outside of the house, so that whatever subscribed, hard-line services come, there won't be a need to drill more. Probably 1" conduit.
I'd use all 20A circuits for all electrical outlets. Circuits would not cross rooms. Some rooms would get more than one if they have more than ten outlets.
I would completely skip on consumer-grade faucets. Chicago Faucets or T&S Brass everywhere.
Behind the main panel I would define a room that could be a battery/inverter room. It would be climate controlled.
I would plan on running Ethernet everywhere. I would install conduit to later let me place cameras on the outside of the structure if I was at-all concerned that they'd be needed.
I would look into those windows that are effective large single-pixel LCDs, so that one can turn-off the view by applying power to the window.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
I built a custom home a few years ago.
A few tips:
- Cat6 everywhere. At least 4 near every TV/Receiver
- In wall/In ceiling speakers in all rooms These should be tied into setups for receivers in most rooms. For the dining room (if you have one), kitchen, patio, and other areas you wouldn't want a receiver, have them go to the basement. When you buy receivers, make sure they have a cat5 input so that you can control them remotely.
- Wire for central alarm system for fire alarms, burglar.
- Wire the front door for a video camera. You don't need to install it, but having the wiring done is a nice thing to have just in case.
- Run empty pipes to each room from the basement or attic so you can pull wire easier in the future.
- Have your basement ceiling be 1 foot higher than your first floor ceiling. It costs little to do in the planning stage, but makes the basement look humongous when you finish it.
- Just before they drywall everything, take pictures of every wall. This is your x-ray vision for the future.
- 240V/30A line to the garage. Who knows, you may get an electric car in the future.
- Have one closet on each floor which has a power outlet and cat6 cable.
- Central vacuum. Once you have it, you will never go back.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
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.
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