Am i making smart choices during house renovation?

Hardware
1

Hi HA community — long-time reader, first-time poster. Renovating my Irish home and would love advice.

~1 year HA experience. Happy with ZigBee, curious about Z-Wave, less keen on Matter. Unifi + TrueNAS homelab; running plenty of Cat 6a during the full rewiring.

Goals: local-only, WAF-friendly, budget-conscious (build costs are painful already!).

Planned so far:

  • Viessmann heat pump + UFH — cloud polling :disappointed_face: any workaround?
  • Ideal Clima fan coils - local HACs integration with ESP32
  • Sigenergy solar — local modbus HACs integration.
  • Vent-Axia MVHR — HACs integration looks promising
  • Zooz switches + dumb dimmable LEDs — gotchas?
  • LED counter strips in kitchen/bathroom - Ikea?
  • Presence sensors (battery, not PoE?) for lighting automation
  • Smart lock (leaning Unifi)
  • SmartWings blinds — best value/local option?
  • Motorised Velux
  • Unifi doorbell/cameras (or Reolink to save money?)
  • Alarmo vs traditional alarm? (Might have to tell insurance we don’t have one)

Open questions:

  1. Worth a Shelly Pro EM at the fuse box, or is solar inverter/smart meter data enough?
  2. Smart plugs / outlets — one for washer notifications, maybe more for vampire loads. Worth it?

Thanks for reading!

2
  1. if you do have real time smart meter data (and solar) already available, Shelly EM likely doesn’t offer you any additional benefits.
  2. be aware of smart plug current ratings, especially for non resistive loads.
3

Get decent dumb LED strips & pair them with a zigbee LED controller (I like BTF Lighting). Don’t bother with RGB - the novelty will wear off after a month (ask me how I know). Get the CT version which allows you to transition from Warm to Cool White - that’s much handier in a kitchen.

Not many battery MMwave sensors to choose from. It’s either the Aqara FP300 or the Zemismart ZPS-Z1. I have the FP300 and while it’s battery is still reporting 100% after 9 months, the latest firmware updates have nerfed it so that it no longer reports presence reliably on mmwave while at the same time firing false triggers on the PIR.

For PoE, the only one I’m aware of is the Everything Presence Pro, but don’t have direct experience with it.

Traditional alarm with a konnected.io board? That way you get the smarts without sacrificing insurance coverage.

Worth it for washer/dishwasher notifications (obviously get power monitoring plugs). Not so much for vampire loads. A smart plug is a vampire load in and of itself, so depending on what device you’re monitoring, you might be wasting more energy than you’re saving.

4

I’d recommend having a look at openenergymonitor.org. these guys really know what they’re doing. You can have a energy monitor that monitors 6, 12 or 18 circuits. What I really like about it is that it is very accurate. Also look into their heat pump monitors.

5

True, but smart plugs are also useful for extending ZigBee range so you may be able to combine with appliances you want to monitor.

@homeopathyAssistant

I’m very interested in this topic as you are a little ahead of me so thanks for posting.

For power monitoring if you are able to use the Hildebrand Glow CAD, it can be setup to work locally.

6

Opening topic like this without saying where is your house located might lead to confusion.
Also, decide if you want to go with all certified devices or not. This is international forum…
And post if you are re-doing the whole electric wiring from zero.

7

Pretty sure that’s covered in the opening paragraph.

8

I agree, my mistake.

9

try to see if your model has a modbus port or if the wifi GW has port 502 TCP exposed.

10

Good point. I hear modbus is pretty hot right now :wink: Man, i love home assistant. May Nabu Casa forever be protected from Big Tech aquisition.

11

Mention of my Ireland location was easily missed. To your other query I also said

so luckily in a good position for lots of PoE, although i still need to get the appropriate Unifi switch.

12

Thank you both, had not heard of these. As Karosm pointed out I might be able to get the energy monitoring and control needed with the solar/battery, the Sigenergy Gateway looks to provide this but I haven’t fully researched.

Good shout, will investigate. Thank you also for sharing your mmWave experiences.

Very much appreciate everyone’s comments and suggestions thus far, this is super helpful.

13

Jibril here, I run EnergyMe. We’re a startup building open source energy monitoring hardware, now shipping EnergyMe Home to over 20 countries with close to 100 units already installed.

You can see photos, 3D renders and more on energyme.net, and the full open source design on GitHub. Since you’re rewiring anyway, it’s a good moment to plan a slot for circuit level monitoring rather than retrofitting later.

It covers up to 16 circuits from one board, works fully locally, and has a Home Assistant integration.

We’re also launching a portal for those who want remote monitoring, cost analysis, CO2 emissions, appliance recognition and solar/battery sizing advice, entirely optional.

Happy to help with wiring or clamp placement questions!