Ask Slashdot: Shortcuts To a High Tech House 281
First time accepted submitter phaedrus9779 writes "I'm a recently married man about to take on the next big adventure: home ownership! I came across a great house in a great community but I need a little bit extra: a high tech house. The problem: money, I'm on a budget. I'd love to have home theaters, super high tech weather stations and iPads seamlessly installed in all the walls — but this just isn't possible. So my question to the Slashdot community is: how can I build a high tech house that will be the envy of my friends, provide lots of useful gadgets, and not break the bank? Also, as always, the cooler the better!"
Being the Envy of Your Friends 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
Pay off at least part of the house before you add frivolous crap to it to impress your friends. I have always been more envious of people with a paid-off (or at least non-defaulted) mortgage than I have of those who have 5-year-old technology pointlessly glued to the walls. You get to choose which of those you have in 2017.
Trick question? (Score:5, Insightful)
If, as you say, money is a problem and you're on a budget, you should obviously drop any wild plans. Look for quality instead of tech, because you're going to be stuck with the two money sinks for a long time.
Save the tech wishes for when money isn't a problem anymore.
Re:Nest & Tankless heater (Score:5, Insightful)
What I've read about them says that tankless water heaters wear out faster than the traditional kind with a tank, and that the replacement cost eclipses any energy savings in using one. They are also reportedly less convenient and comfortable (due to a cold water "sandwich" effect as they send water down the line and attempt to sense how much heat to apply to the next water coming through). If those articles and reviews are wrong, I have yet to find any reports of it.
For cool water heaters, look at a point-of-use water heater for sinks to get instant hot water, and locate the main water heater directly underneath or next to your shower plumbing. Those will actually improve your lifestyle and save water.
But at the very least, take Tronster's advice and install technology that serves a purpose in your house. If you're on a tight budget, wasting money on things to impress your friends is probably unwise (read: it's beyond stupid).
Re:Being the Envy of Your Friends 101 (Score:4, Insightful)
Going beyond that, just what value is there to making your friends envious of you? Will they like you better? The truth is that you'll be hosting your envious friends all of the time and they'll never reciprocate, because they'll think you'll look down on them for their general lack of materialist douchebaggery.
Debt is the most prized American possession. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that you understand American culture very well. This isn't about the house or the gadgets or the technology. This is about the American male having a higher debt load than his friends and relatives. That's what really matters in America. The bigger your debt, the more American you are.
When an American says he "owns" a house, the house is secondary. It's the $400,000, 60-year mortgage that's important. His neighbor maybe only has a $350,000, 40-year mortgage on his house, so his neighbor is clearly the inferior being.
Then there are the American's car loans. Many American couples own three or four SUVs or trucks, because that way they can possess more vehicle loans, each for a greater amount. You don't want to be the only American on the block with one or two cars! That'll clearly show that you're scum.
Credit card debt is also a very important indicator of how American somebody is. If you've only got one credit card, you're probably just trash. You're worse than trash if you haven't been paying at least some interest on the balance for a few years. Real Americans will have maxed out at least four or five credit cards, while working hard on maxing out the sixth, seventh and eighth that they possess. Buying the overhyped Apple useless-gadget-of-the-hour is a great way to achieve this goal.
I hope you have a better understanding of American culture now, and the utmost importance of debt. No American household is complete without owing huge amounts of money to some faceless corporation, especially when there's no hope that they could ever repay it during their lifetimes.
Get a life (Score:0, Insightful)
You should grow up. There are much more important things that the stuff you're thinking about.
I know you think that stuff is important, but your wife and kids will appreciate it if you grow as a person.
Plan for a short sale now (Score:1, Insightful)
about to take on the next big adventure: home ownership
Bad time to buy. Run like hell.
1) Multi-generational low interest rates mean they'll inevitably increase. Increasing rates = declining home prices. My parents bought the equivalent of a mcmansion for only $80K (not 8M, not 800K) during the peak of the 70s-80s stagflation when I was a kid, 20% interest rates and all. Needless to say the price exploded as rates dropped to normal. You'll be experiencing the reverse effect as rates increase... home price implodes. If you're planning to live there for the entire mortgage, then you'll merely get a legendarily bad deal, but if you have to move you'll probably be underwater, welcome to foreclosure and bankruptcy.
2) The % of the population employed has been steadily and permanently dropping. The odds of your being able to make a mortgage payment, every month, for 25 years, is about the same as the odds of having the same job at the same company for 25 years. On a "tech board" like this we know all about ageism... after 40 no one is ever going to hire you to do tech, so you either need to contract or greet at walmart or retrain into ... something.
3) For at least 40 years the median inflation adjusted income has been dropping. That means the median person's housing budget has been dropping. That means that aside from govt intervention, etc, the price of median real estate must drop. Essentially you're buying an asset whos value is guaranteed to drop over time.
4) Kids are much cheaper than houses, the payments are generally much more flexible and predictable, and the "contract" theoretically ends at 18 instead of 25 or 30 years. You skipped a step on the plan. Ease into a commitment toward debt slavery. Actually you probably skipped two steps... start with a pet, like a housecat, see if she's all bonkers maternal instinct on the cat, then if its all good squirt out some kids, then do the landed estate thing.
5) Everyone who gets married thinks their relationship is "special" and "forever" but half of them end up divorced anyway. The odds are actually better than you'll be divorced than you'll be married forever. A house just complicates things, a "high tech" house complicates further.
Arguments for:
1) A commissioned salesperson thinks today is a great time to buy. For a good laugh ask your barber how often to get a haircut.
2) People used to make lots of money buying and selling real estate. Well, they made a lot of money selling horse carriages, and working on industrial assembly lines, and being travel agents. Would not advise entering real estate in 2012 anymore than I'd advise becoming a travel agent.
So here's the deal. In the long run the price of the house is going to drop. I don't think a fancy thermostat and/or sound system is going to offset that. At some point when you own the house you'll be unemployed and minimizing your expenses (electrical bill, credit card bill, monthly subscriptions) is the key to survival. In the future, even during good times, you'll have less money, either lower bottom line income, inflation, etc. Needless to say, when I bought my house, I was not paying $5/gallon for gas... The majority outcome in the medium term is you'll be trying to figure out what to do with the house at a divorce proceeding.
Theoretical plan based on the above: Only invest in fixed non-removable stuff that save you money every month. Fancy insulation, triple pane windows, high efficiency appliances. Do not put something "unmovable" into the house, because you'll be removing it a heck of a lot sooner than you think, so forget whole house audio etc. Plug in X10/Insteon stuff, OK. Wired in X10/Insteon, not OK. Ethernet patch cable thru hole in floor OK, permanent house wiring that'll just get ripped out by the next owner, not OK. Never install or purchase anything with a monthly subscription or increased monthly cost because you'll probably not be able to afford it in the f
Re:Nest & Tankless heater (Score:5, Insightful)
I had mine installed last year (4/13/2011) because my traditional water heater was cracking and had started a leak. The plumber recommended it; said while they are relatively new to (residential) US, they have been used for awhile in Europe. I did do-diligence with Google and had it put in. The brand is: Noritz ( http://www.noritz.com/ [noritz.com] )
So 1 year past its running well; if there is a follow up thread 4+ years down the road, I'll let you know how it's handling.
I haven't had a cold water sandwich effect. Only drawback is that it takes about 25 seconds for hot water to start coming out of the faucet (vs 10 seconds with the tank). Advantages:
- Mounted on wall (above washer/dryer) in basement; just gained about 3'x3' space back where my old huge tank was sitting
- I have seen a lower gas/electric bill since installed
- Should I choose; I can take a ridiculously long hot shower (of course always doing this would negate energy savings)
Re:Buy a home theater projector (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not an "audiophile" but I object to any claim you can get five (or six) decent speakers and an amplifier for under $500.
You're not trying hard enough. Hint: it doesn't have to be new. With all your friends upgrading to the latest and greatest bleeding edge stuff, you can find great stuff as hand-me-downs. I now have a Technics amp pumping beautiful stereo sound from my TV/DVD player through a couple of good but inexpensive Paradigm speakers. The only part of any of that I paid for was the speakers, probably a decade ago.
You'd be surprised what you can find used (or discarded) that's still going to work well for a long time if you want it to.
Make it wife-friendly (Score:5, Insightful)
If your wife is typical, when she wants to watch TV she wants to press "ON" on a remote, then select the channel that's running Glee. She doesn't want to boot a Linux box, mount a fileshare and browse a bunch of torrents. Similarly, if the house is cold she wants to bump up the thermostat, not telnet into the furnace from a PC that doesn't have a case that lives in the garage.
Re:Debt is the most prized American possession. (Score:4, Insightful)
my Grandfather actually built his own house... sears and roebuck dropped off a flatbed truck of lumber in a then new suburb and him and his coworkers swung hammers one summer in the 50s
Keep in mind that if your grandparents had kids at the time this is a very romanticized view... Likely your grandmother was expected to wrangle the kids all week and then on weekends as well while pops swung hammers building the house - Very tough. Today, there's an expectation of shared childcare, so on weekends you're at the park or swimming lessons or whatever with the kids, which makes finding time to build a house pretty tricky.
Tech grows old fast - so make it detachable.... (Score:3, Insightful)
and updateable. Nothing looks worse than a tired high-tech house. How soon the latest 1,200 baud modems become scrap, same with flat screens etc. Once I have built it in, how soon before I must rip it out and update because a high tech troll dissed my dated designcraft...
I would think that 2 inch plastic pipe hidden in the walls would allow you to remove and wire up with better fiber etc. It will also allow seamless mousehole-to-mousehole traffic, so get a cat or three - they never go out of date!!!
Re:Flood wire early on. (Score:2, Insightful)
Cabling is nice, plastic conduit is better. You can re-run wires after the fact.
Make runs to all rooms in the house and home-run them to a basement panel system. Put the access plate somewhere useful or hidden behind a door. Later on, if you need to branch off the 16" height (where the elec outlets are run) up to a view height so that you can put in interface panels (tablets, etc) then you would only need to cut a few feet of wall right there.
Re:Debt is the most prized American possession. (Score:3, Insightful)
The expectation now is single motherhood, either never married or divorced, so... "whats a father" is more likely the issue, than "how is dad going to build a house"
Also workplace safety rules were more relaxed back then. The kids were expected to work onsite, sort of a lassie on the ranch lifestyle, in the burbs. So every box of nails or 2x4 was dragged to the "working men" by my grandfather's kids. The kids also did "real work" like painting, not just gofer duties. Supposedly my dad laid down the sod in his own backyard... Even the littlest kids were expected to hand beer and soda bottles to the workers.
My grandmother compared the experience to what it was like for her during the (recent) war... husband's gone and no kids...
Re:Nest & Tankless heater (Score:4, Insightful)
LOL. I know its April 1st, but for those who don't get it, try to find a tank guaranteed by mfgr longer than 6 years or a tankless with a guarantee shorter than 20 years
My dad's a plumber and he can confirm that they "ain't built like they used to be". He visits customers who have newer heaters way more often than customers who have older ones.
Then again, this goes for appliances in general. It's like we lost something, somehow. Remember when a television would last a good 20 years? And that wasn't the exception, that was the norm.
Tips for a New House (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Aren't you supposed to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously?
Women love sex as much as men do. They don't advertise it as much, because while men who boast about sex are considered studs, women who do are considered sluts. So they keep it to themselves and their best friends.
So if a woman doesn't want to have sex with you, chances are that it's not about the sex, it's about you.
.
.
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Now that it's sunk in a bit, I should add that most of the "about you" reasons are no cause for alarm, they're along the lines of "you aren't her current boyfriend and she's faithful". But if you in fact are her current boyfriend, and she doesn't want to have sex, then there is more likely something wrong with you then her.
Pro hint: Go and ask her what it is. As soon as you stop the blame game, conversation is a marvelous tool of solving puzzling questions like that. If she doesn't trust you with an honest answer, then sex is the least of your worries, trust and honesty are the bigger issues in your relationship, in which case I refer back to my original advise.
Re:Debt is the most prized American possession. (Score:2, Insightful)
Precisely. The submitter even admits to as much.
The problem: money, I'm on a budget.
Buy a smaller house in a less affluent neighborhood. Don't spend your budget on fads like iPad installations. Maybe try actually owning something in your life instead of living under an increasingly ridiculous debt. It's not hard, you just have to stop thinking like a yuppie. Ditch the SUV and move out of the suburbs. You're the reason our country is in the shitter. You've made yourself an economic slave and are bringing everyone else down with you.