I’ve never had one of those. Would it work with a living room/dining room open plan that’s 30ish feet across?
I agree those are cool looking, but I want a car wash type of shower, so I need an enclosure.
Ours came with a 30’ hose. Unfortunately you always have to uncoil the whole 30’ every time you use it. We have a port on each floor plus one in the garage. Each port is about the size of a standard electrical outlet. The length and siting were designed to reach every corner and drape in the house. Yours intelligently sited may not need the full 30’. Also they have the dustpan slot so you just sweep the floor into an access along the baseboard.
Something we missed on when we built was a separate underfloor heat source in the bathroom for the morning rituals. Ours is tied into the boiler which isn’t on during most spring and fall days. It’d be nice to have a warm floor on those chilly 40deg mornings. Wished I’d have thought of electric subfloor heating at the time.
Upthread was mentioned Cat6 cabling. I’d go with the closet idea but also run all the wiring in conduit or tubing. That way when Cat 7 or the next substantial communication wiring standard comes along, it is easy to pull out the old and upgrade without tearing out walls.
I’d echo the generator sub panel idea, even if you don’t go with an automatic switchover. Maybe plan for a solar energy future at the same time. Also, our propane range has electronic ignitors. No fire without a spark. Ours luckily can ignite with a lighter. Our propane water heater has a power venter so it needs electricity to not only ignite but also to vent. That plus a 220V well pump required a larger generator than I wanted at first. Do you have the capability of a cistern? Use normally for watering garden and in a pinch, a scrub pail can be used to keep the toilets full during power outages. We lost power for two days after a tornado hit and I ran off a small inverter to run the landline phones, TV, and internet for 6 hours before I even fired up the generator using the water from the pool to flush the toilets.
I put instant on high lumen halogen (now LED) lights under the eaves and up near the peak (slight vandal deterrent) to flood the yard with light. All controlled from switches near windows or doors that look out that way. Makes it nicer when trying to grab crap off the lawn when an unexpected storm is incoming after dark. No carrying flashlights. Scares vermin away for a short while also.
ETA:
Without knowing the layouts of the bedrooms, I ran outlets every 4’. Kids can set there rooms up any way they choose and still have easy access to outlets. Also more circuits than code requires. Not counting microwave, our kitchen counters have 4. Alternate the receptacles on counters to different circuits. Don’t do left of sink, one circuit and right of sink the other.
electric golf carts are usable around here, in season. If you live in town. Not usable for highways or rural roads.
Label each outlet and light with a small sticker that tells which panel and breaker it runs to. Also have a database that shows what device is controlled by which switch and breaker. 4 years after finishing is a long time to remember the TV outlet is in panel 3 on breaker 4 and the light and ceiling fan for the media room is in panel 3 on breaker 8. We put the labels on the inside of the covering plate. ex P3.04 and P3.08
For all your standard 120 VAC receptacles, don’t run 14 gauge wire. Run 12 gauge wire, even if it’s a 15 A circuit.
I second the CAT 6 to every room, as well as at least two connections. I wish I would have done it during construction rather than after the fact.
Talking about your future generator and such, if you can afford it, buy and install the switch over box that will be needed for the generator to automatically take over during a power outage. Installed during construction will be a whole lot easier. Related to that, figure out where you want to put your generator outside and make sure your breaker panel and all of that are on the same side of the house. I didn’t give it enough thought and my breaker panel is on the opposite side of the house. The heavy duty wire to connect everything is $5 a foot or at least it was 15 years ago, no telling what it is now.
My father has owned a custom home company my entire life, and I worked with him once I was old enough to not be in the way through college. I’ve seen hundreds of different types of builds and the things I took for when I built a house were these (most were already stated) :
Have Cat6 wired to every room, and in the Living Rooms and Master Bedroom have drops in multiple areas. You never know when the wife will want to change a furniture set-up and the usual bottleneck is the wiring. Yes WiFi is getting better and more capable, but once everyones phones, tablets, watches, cable boxes, etc. are connected its starts to be an issue. Its nice to have the hardwired capability.
Have a WiFi router/extender wired up into the attic ready for hook-up.
Install a breaker interlock (transfer switch) for your circuit box and an exterior inlet box hook-up (not near an air intake) for a emergency generator. This will allow your entire home to be run off a generator (depending on its size).
Use solar screens on your windows. Will help with keeping heating/cooling cost down.
If you have a basement and plan on finishing it one day… Man-cave. Do a couple of things: have the stud walls put in now (at least the exterior wall). The lumber is not that expensive and since the Framers are already on-site it will be cheaper. Also have the wiring ran now, and hook it up later when ready. Place the shower (if you will have a full bath, which I recommend as its perfect for having visitors stay with you) and toilet now as its easier to move around.
We here in the midwest have sump-pits/pumps to help with home foundation drainage. If that is a thing for your area have an emergency back-up battery installed.
There is no such thing as an extra outlet. There is such a thing as inconvenient outlets, and such a thing as not enough outlets, but there is no such thing as too many outlets.
For the super big shower, I liked what a hotel I stayed in in France did. In their “accessible” rooms’ baths, there is no shower dish. The whole floor is slightly slanted towards the drain and made of non-slick material, the whole walls are tiled, there are handles and a folding seat bolted to the wall. So, it can be used by people in a wheelchair without leaving it, it can be used by someone with crutches, by someone who’s washing another person, or by a whole family.
I have it the other way 'round, but my house is small. Every breaker in the box is labeled.
When the time comes, also consider the roof and the walls.
You mentioned having grab bars and the like installed for your later years when your mobility may be more limited. Don’t forget to make the hallways and doorways extra wide to accommodate wheelchairs or scooters, and make sure you have no sharp angle turns or turns placed too close to each other. I base this last on seeing a tractor trailer get wedged when trying to make a 90-degree right turn within about 15 feet of having made a 90-degree left turn.
Yes, you can do things to make the house accessible for someone in a wheelchair or someone with a disability, like making the halls wide enough or installing grab bars in the bathroom, because even if you’re fully abled now, you might get temporarily or permanently injured, or lose mobility as you age. I’ve heard this called “design for accessibility” or "aging in place.
But some of these things may not be what you want now. For example, it’s easier to wheel around a one-story rather than a two-story house, but you really want to build a traditional Colonial with a dramatic staircase. Perhaps instead, you accept that you’re going to have to move to a more accessible home later. Or you might plan to make changes in the house later. On This Old House recently, they showed a house in Seattle in which the homeowner planned closets in the first and second floors that are right above each other, with the plan being that they can be converted to an elevator shaft later.
And others have made upgrade suggestions like putting in 12 gauge wiring rather than the 14 gauge wiring that’s standard. These incremental upgrades are nice of course, but each costs money, and you can blow up the budget when you agree to too many of them.
Things I missed in my last project.
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speaker wires via smurf tubes. Wish I had wired multiple locations and patio too.
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when picking outlets, imagine furniture locations - missed a couple of small tables where I now wish I could have a small lamp or charger for phone. (I did remember a high wall outlet in bath which now serves a makeup mirror and radio on a shelf.)
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think about a central AV / internet closet for equipment. I did one with access from front & rear and it has worked out well. Lots of outlets there. Mine is behind seating area for TV viewing but I forgot to use larger smurf tube for HDMI cable.
I second the CAT6 and coax to each room but would stick with separates.
Consider the location of the laundry room. Many homes (including the one I now have) put the washer and dryer near the kitchen or garage. Now, where is all of your laundry generated at? The bedrooms and bathrooms. You spend time schlepping laundry across the house, only to schlepp it back later.
If I ever build my own house, the laundry room is going to be near the bedrooms/bathrooms, and be large enough to be a large hamper/folding/ironing/hanging/closet area. And it’s also going to be the location of the water heater, so there is less waiting for hot water for showering. And if that means getting separate small 5 or 10 gal water heater for the kitchen, then that’s ok.
Lots of great ideas so far.
I retro fitted wall sconce lights on each side of our bed. Each light has its own wall switch below it. So each person can control the light on their side of the bed.
This came after years and years of fumbling with lamps on the bedside tables. Many times we’d almost knock them over in the dark fumbling for the switch or pull chain.
I got so fed up that I carefully cut out a big section of sheetrock. Installed the wiring, electrical boxes, and then patched & painted. I was able to reuse the sheetrock that I cut out.
I’d strongly recommend putting these in a new build home. It’s great having the bedside table used for other things then a lamp.
There’s many styles of wall sconces.
I used one similar to this.
https://goo.gl/images/djRPJz
Depending on the time frame of building, keep your eyes on what Solar City/Tesla are doing with their solar roof. Not panels, but roofs that look like slate, glass shingles, or the half barrel terracotta style. The last statement was that these roofs would be equal to or cheaper than “comparable” new roofs, and would last 2 to 3 times as long. Pair it with a Tesla PowerWall2 home battery system.
http://www.solarcity.com/residential/solar-roof
I’ll be looking into going this way if I need to replace my roof before I sell it, hoping that the value added will offset some of the cost.
I suggest that you make sure that your HVAC contractor perform the Air Conditioning Contractors of America Manual J HVAC load calculation for your house.
The folks that did my HVAC back in 2005 did the old “so many tons for so much square feet” calcs, which resulted in a heat pump that was too large. They also sized ALL of the supply and return ducts incorrectly, resulting in working but highly inefficient heating and cooling. Over the years, this cost me a LOT in power.
I’m getting my old system and ducts replaced within the next week or two. It’ll be worth having your contractor perform the correct calculations to save a lot of money in the future. Done correctly, you’ll have a more comfortable house, too.
I researched this extensively some time ago and found a solution that cost less than half of the cost of even a modestly sized fixed standby generator:
I used a large portable generator converted to burn propane, and I installed a manual transfer switch. Yes, you do have to start the generator and flip the switches, and no it won’t supply an entire house - especially HVAC, stove, dryer, etc. - but all of my important stuff like my entertainment system, communications, lights, fans, well pump and whole-house tankless water heater (among others) are covered.
Aye, there’s the rub. Every suggestion given has been a good one, although some will not be applicable to my house, since it will definitely be one story with no basement. But implementing all of them would bust my budget, so I’m frantically reading articles about stuff I hadn’t considered before, like central vacuums or solar tubes, and trying to separate ad hype from reality about how helpful they would be, and how much I would save by installing them now rather than later.
It’s a great help that some sites make the installation manual, or even videos, available for download. I just watched one that showed how “easy” it would be to install a central vacuum system in a completed house, but it looked to me like it would be a nightmare if you only had a crawl space, instead of the full basement they had in the video (since I’m having a zero-step entry, my crawl space will mean crawling on your belly, rather than your hands and knees). On the other hand, some of the solar tubes really do seem easy to install in a completed house.
I do plan to take lots and lots of pictures, and maybe video, of where all the plumbing and wiring is before the sheetrock goes up. That should help a lot for any later installations.