Blank canvas in Drenthe
Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2010 5:48 pm
I have recently moved from a large city to a small town in the province Drenthe (Netherlands). Me, my girlfriend and our shepherd dog now own a small house and several outbuildings, located in a beautiful forest. Both the house and the outbuildings need a lot of work and will be stripped down to the bare minimum in a month or so. So I will have a great opportunity to add wiring for domotica in the next few months. However, since this move has come sooner than I expected, I do not have a complete plan at this time. So I would like to ask you - experienced domotica users - to help me. What would you do if you had a blank canvas like me?
Let me paint a picture for you. The house is pretty small, but large enough for me and my girlsfriend. It is approx. 50 m2 ground floor and 45 m2 first floor. We have a large barn with great looking wooden pillars, which we want to convert to an office. This space is 200 m2 ground floor and about 80 m2 first floor. We also have a open barn, which we might want to convert in the future (160 m2 ground floor) and we have a small garage (45 m2 ground floor). The house has all fittings, all outbuildings have power, the office has running water. So the basics are there already, no automation.
I want domotica for three reasons: comfort, security and to save energy. For comfort, I am mainly interested in turning lights and equipment on or off at certain times and I want to light certain utility rooms on movement sensors (such as the toilet and the stairs). If I need to go to the toilet in the middle of the night, I would like to have a very low intensity light, turning on and off automatically. Of course I would like to be have high intensity lights in the evenings. It would be great to have power switches with three settings: on/clock/off. Pretty much like a light in your car: on/doors/off!
For security I would like to have several cameras or webcams around the plot, which is over 4000m2. I would like a server to record the video images whenever there is movement. At night time, I would like a semi-silent alarm in the house, whenever there is movement outside. However, only if the movement is not me or my girlfriend or my dog. I would like our dog to be able to go out on the yard and back in, at any time, without burglars having the same access. To summarize: I do not want to turn our home into a prison, but I do want to automate what I can relatively simple.
To save energy I would like to be able to control not only the lighting but also the temperature in all rooms. However, until now I haven't seen heating systems that offer a different temperature setting per room, that would fit inside our small budget. Because our house is little, you might say I shouldn't care about the energy waste that much, but my reasons to save energy is for the environment. So unless you have suggestions to automatically turn down the heating in the bathroom during the day, that fits in a low budget... I will probably be swithing my bathroom manually...
I am pretty sure that to realise all things on my list, and so ther things like to electrify my wooden gate (opening it like a garage) I must be a millionaire. The reality is our budget is very low. So my aim will be to add wiring during the renovation which will take part in the next 6 to 12 months. If all the wiring is there in 2011, I should be able to automate my home and office in 2012-2020. For instance, I am thinking about adding multiple speaker wires throughout the rooms, to be able to add 'airoplane-radio': one knob to select one of several music streams and a second knob for the volume. Simple things like that, I need to think about that because the house will be stripped soon!
Well, I hope to learn a lot from reading the forum in the next months. But because I am a relative newby and the renovation is starting soon, I would appreciate it if you would take the time to answer these two questions. All feedback - detailed and global - is highly appreciated!
1. What would you like to do yourself, if you had a 'blank canvas' like me?
2. What wiring and other stuff would you suggest I do, during the upcoming renovation?
Thanks!
Marcel
Let me paint a picture for you. The house is pretty small, but large enough for me and my girlsfriend. It is approx. 50 m2 ground floor and 45 m2 first floor. We have a large barn with great looking wooden pillars, which we want to convert to an office. This space is 200 m2 ground floor and about 80 m2 first floor. We also have a open barn, which we might want to convert in the future (160 m2 ground floor) and we have a small garage (45 m2 ground floor). The house has all fittings, all outbuildings have power, the office has running water. So the basics are there already, no automation.
I want domotica for three reasons: comfort, security and to save energy. For comfort, I am mainly interested in turning lights and equipment on or off at certain times and I want to light certain utility rooms on movement sensors (such as the toilet and the stairs). If I need to go to the toilet in the middle of the night, I would like to have a very low intensity light, turning on and off automatically. Of course I would like to be have high intensity lights in the evenings. It would be great to have power switches with three settings: on/clock/off. Pretty much like a light in your car: on/doors/off!
For security I would like to have several cameras or webcams around the plot, which is over 4000m2. I would like a server to record the video images whenever there is movement. At night time, I would like a semi-silent alarm in the house, whenever there is movement outside. However, only if the movement is not me or my girlfriend or my dog. I would like our dog to be able to go out on the yard and back in, at any time, without burglars having the same access. To summarize: I do not want to turn our home into a prison, but I do want to automate what I can relatively simple.
To save energy I would like to be able to control not only the lighting but also the temperature in all rooms. However, until now I haven't seen heating systems that offer a different temperature setting per room, that would fit inside our small budget. Because our house is little, you might say I shouldn't care about the energy waste that much, but my reasons to save energy is for the environment. So unless you have suggestions to automatically turn down the heating in the bathroom during the day, that fits in a low budget... I will probably be swithing my bathroom manually...
I am pretty sure that to realise all things on my list, and so ther things like to electrify my wooden gate (opening it like a garage) I must be a millionaire. The reality is our budget is very low. So my aim will be to add wiring during the renovation which will take part in the next 6 to 12 months. If all the wiring is there in 2011, I should be able to automate my home and office in 2012-2020. For instance, I am thinking about adding multiple speaker wires throughout the rooms, to be able to add 'airoplane-radio': one knob to select one of several music streams and a second knob for the volume. Simple things like that, I need to think about that because the house will be stripped soon!
Well, I hope to learn a lot from reading the forum in the next months. But because I am a relative newby and the renovation is starting soon, I would appreciate it if you would take the time to answer these two questions. All feedback - detailed and global - is highly appreciated!
1. What would you like to do yourself, if you had a 'blank canvas' like me?
2. What wiring and other stuff would you suggest I do, during the upcoming renovation?
Thanks!
Marcel
"