Because it shouldn’t cost that much more to do two rather than one, when you’re doing the initial install. And it can cost a fortune later. (4 is even better than 2 ) If I were building a place for myself, with no real budget limitations, I’d be getting raised flooring to make redoing power and cabling easier.
Also, cat 6 is good for more than just ethernet. As people ar saying, you can use converters to take hdmi to cat 6. (It can be done with a single cable, for 1080p. I’m using a set of £30 converters to do it at work, for 10 screens, over around 40 meters.But they’re not running anything but monitoring screens, so I’m unsure what kind of frame rate they’re doing.)
I’m going to run conduit (smurf tube) from the control room to all attic cavities. I think I may also try to run it to the primary TV viewing areas.
I figure the future of TV will be streaming. Cat6 should handle anything that comes out in the next 15-20 years, I would think. I may also set up a few “satellite control rooms”. Like have a closet within 10 feet of the living room TV where I’ll run smurf tube from the TV and have a place I could house a Blu-Ray player and streaming boxes to avoid clutter behind the TV.
When my place was built 15 years ago, I did a pretty good job of making my house smarthome ready. As others have said, you can never run enough cat6. Beyond that, you want power outlets everywhere.
are you going to have smart blinds? You want power outlets nearby
do you want to control your door locks? Having power to control the bolts can’t hurt.
what about your doorbell? You absolutely want wiring and at least low voltage power terminating at the doorbell. Check with your electrician about what’s feasible and up to code. At a minimum you will want at least 3 twisted pairs available.
don’t forget your garage door. Put a doorbell there too.
where are your runs terminating? You should have a professional (I found a guy on Craigslist) connect the ports on both ends. This is not a job you want to DIY if you’ve new to crimping. Do you know what type of patch panels you’re going to use? What about switches? Do you have enough ports? You don’t want to underestimate them, but at the same time you don’t want to waste money, do you have enough power outlets nearby? Do you have room for shelves?
What about overhead lighting? You will want high quality cans that are sealed to prevent heating/cooling loss. I’m not sure what it’s called, but there is some rule about overhead spotlights in terms of the number to use and how they are arranged. I strongly recommend you talk with the architect and ask if he knows anything about this. It should be 101 stuff for him.
Personally I wouldn’t fret about WiFi coverage until after move in. If he has wired cat 6 everywhere he can burn that bridge anytime he wants too, I’d think twice about mounting access points on the ceiling, if only because they aren’t tested that way by the mfg.
I do plan to have smart door locks, although they probably won’t be used much. Most of the foot traffic will go through the garage. I want the smart door locks so I can see the state of the lock and have a “lock all” script. Since the locks are on the movable door, I’m not sure how you could wire power. I thought about installing some kind of electrical contact point on the door frame with another contact point on the door so they connect when the door is closed (like this). But I feel like that may be too much of a hassle, especially running a wire through an insulated metal exterior door from the door lock to the contact point. I’ll just swap batteries once a year. Maybe I’ll run some low voltage wire to the door frame in case I want to take on that project in the future if changing the batteries becomes a pain.
I plan to have a Blue Iris security cam system and am looking at the Amcrest doorbell cam. I plan to run one 22/4 low voltage wire and one cat6 to the doorbell.
Since the garage door will be the main entrance to the house, I’m thinking about taking a smart deadbolt, taking it apart, and just mounting the keypad to the outside of the garage. I’m hoping that I can assign codes to different users (one for me, one for the wife, one for the house cleaner, etc) then when a code is entered on that keypad HA will perform different actions, like open the garage and disarm the house. Then I can set a condition that would only allow some codes (like the house cleaner) to work on certain days. I haven’t been able to find a weather-proof stand alone key pad that I like, which is why I was looking at gutting a smart lock to use the keypad. Since it will be mounted on a stationary wall, I’ll run low voltage wire to it so it has hardwired power.
I’ll have a centrally located control room, probably in the furnace room. I’ll have a rack in there with all my connections, servers, switches, and home theater equipment. The electrical panel will also be in this room so I can run more outlets to the control area, if needed. But I plan to start with three dedicated 20amp lines. I’ll put patch panels on the rack (I’ve done a fair amount of Cat6 terminating). I’m still looking at switches, I’ll need at least one PoE switch for the IP cams. I’m thinking I’ll get one 48 port PoE switch and one 48 port non-PoE. Both unmanaged. I’m still trying to figure out how to mount all the odds and ends, like convertors, Wemos D1 Minis (for the door sensors, etc). My working idea now is a big 4x8 sheet of plywood on the wall where I can mount all the various items. I’d put 2x4s behind the sheet so I can run wires behind the sheet and just pop them out where needed.
I plan to let the electrician guide me on this. I’ll just put smart switches in to control the lights. I do plan on requesting as much separation as possible. For example, if a bathroom has two ceiling can lights, two lights by the mirror, and maybe a light in the shower, I want three light switches. If I want the mirror lights to turn on with the ceiling can lights I’ll let HA handle that. I also plan to have large overhead spot lights for my driveway and the backyard. I’ll rig those up to turn on if the alarm goes off or of there is significant motion on the cameras.
For the overhead it’s something like an odd number of cans, an a triangle configuration, IIRC.
FWIW Simple lock manager will let you setup different codes for each user and allow you to configure each user to a schedule. That should handle you, your wife and your maid. It works with a Schlage zwave lock, however I don’t know if it will work with the deadbolt removed. It might be expecting some amount of pressure in order to function properly. But assuming it does work, you can use that project and when an “unlock” event occurs, you can open your MyQ garage door opener.
I’m not saying it does, but it might. My lock died and the company sent me a replacement, and I was trying to set it up before installing it. I thought the lock was defective because the deadbolt wasn’t turning enough. I called support and they said I needed to use the code. After I did that the lock did a setup routine which enabled the full motion range. It wasn’t intuitive, which is why I’m throwing out that caveat.
My Model S is heading on 4 years and over 300,000 km, just uses the regular home power.
The electrician connected the Destination Charger in the garage to the electric meter box, but no special 3 phase.
About 6 hours from empty to full (one night’s sleep on average, every 2 -4 weeks for 400 kms).
I have since installed 3 phase at home (back breaking digging after ground was professionally safety checked) and takes about 4 hours to charge, minimal difference.
Just charge at the shopping centres who are on 3 phase (4 hours shopping) or super chargers are about 30 minutes (45-60 minutes for larger battery packs), soon to be 15 minutes.
I dunno about Tesla’s but for other electrics we’re limited to 12A charging which ends up taking 12-16 hours to fully charge (depending on battery size) from 0 or near 0.
@bphillips921 Hi I’m building my house later this year and wondering how yours came out as I have basically the same plans as you. What did you use to control your security system, windows/doors and motion sensors? What did you do for your blinds/shades and whole home audio system?
Is there anything you wish you did different or would change?
Thanks
I’m still in the framing stages, the house won’t be done until August. I started my planning pretty early.
I’m planning to use HA to control the security system, along with ESP32 boards and ESPhome to handle the door/motion/glass break/etc sensors, all will be hardwired to the mechanical room where the ESP32 boards will be.
I’m still unsure of how I’m going to handle blinds and shades. I’m leaning towards somfy roller blinds. I plan to run a 16/2 wire to every window, I figure that will give me enough wires to power the somfy blinds or the 2 wires needed if I use a DIY solution like Dr. Zzzzs.
I’m still planning on using Google Nest speakers as well as some built in speakers tied to Chromecast devices (with HDMI > Audio extractors) to handle the whole home audio.
This is already an old post, but very interesting. No one talked about an UPS or battery and what it should be connected to. If using HA for alarm shouldn’t HA have a secondary energy source?
I have my HA server a vast majority of the ESP devices used as sensors as well as my Blue Iris server and my Unifi network equipment hooked to a UPS. That’s the benefit of home-running and hardwiring all the sensors.
My house is done and I’m moved in. I’m still getting all the HA stuff setup (It will be neverending) but I’ll try to do an overview of what I did soon.
It will be great to read about it. Sooner than later . I’ll start now the technical part of the project drawing for a new house. Looking forward for your details. Thanks
Smart home technology is very interesting and convenient. I congratulate you on the construction of a new house and your successful design of a smart home. Are you satisfied with the features you have made, or are you missing something? And is it possible to make a “smart house” in a building after construction? My husband and I recently bought a house in Portland and also thought about how we want to make some things a "smart home ."Now we even rent furniture from furniture rental portland so that, if necessary, we have the opportunity to remodel the house. But we have 't decided yet whether we should do it.
I’m very happy with what I did in my home. It was a lot of work to hardwire everything, but I think it is worth it in the long run. I have yet to find something that I’m missing, but I overdid everything to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
Yes, but you will need to rely on a lot of wireless devices (likely zigbee or zwave based. and you will need a lot more devices than I do. I have two esp32 devices monitoring 32 doors and motion sensors. If I didn’t hard wire all those I would have 32 separate devices with 32 separate batteries to deal with.
) If I were building a place for myself, with no real budget limitations, I’d be getting raised flooring to make redoing power and cabling easier.
. I’ll start now the technical part of the project drawing for a new house. Looking forward for your details. Thanks