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What Would Be Your Ideal Futuristic Home?
Posted by
Cliff
on Fri Mar 10, 2006 01:30 PM
from the make-george-green-with-envy dept.
from the make-george-green-with-envy dept.
deman1985 asks: "As the owner of a small commercial and home integration company, I'm exposed to a wide variety of customers with differing tastes and needs. I'll get requests for anything from the ordinary audio distribution systems and full home theater systems, to downright bizarre requests like having bubble baths run automatically, when they walk in the door. However, the vast majority of customers I encounter are not technologically inclined and are more interested in simplicity rather than impressiveness. What would your ideal integrated home look like? What's the most unique feature you would like to see? If you had access to an unlimited budget, what would you spend money on to make your home stand out? Whole-house audio? Hidden video screens? Automatic locks? Do most people view home integration strictly as a toy for entertainment, or is the technology ready for prime time?"
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Sustainability (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sustainability (Score:3, Interesting)
Get yerself an RTGs [wikipedia.org] for your back up power needs.
Earthship (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, this my new dream home. As it is completely self-sufficient, low cost, and there have been many projects to show that you don't have to sacrifice luxery (including running many computers and HDTVs and the like) when living in this sort of home. About the only trouble seems to be getting building permits (did I meantion they are certified earthquake safe in california?) Many of them are very gorgeous as well. I would recommend checking out earthship.org for examples.
Parent
Re:Sustainability (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh really? [nature.com]. Now, if you want a bad [uncyclopedia.org] source [uncyclopedia.org] of [uncyclopedia.org] information [uncyclopedia.org]...
Parent
Re:Sustainability (Score:5, Insightful)
the problem with wikipedia is that it works in practice, but not in theory.
Yes, 'hot' topics get modified, but over all it is really solid.
Parent
Wrong way for me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Product name... (Score:3, Informative)
Oooo, I think I'm on to something here!
There was this builder on NPR a year ago. He builds house in Athens, GA. He figured out that if he left as many trees as he could on a property, he could sell the house for a premium. I just thought - "Uh, Duh!" Most GA builders just clear cut everything and plant weeds (i.e.a lawn).
Re:Product name... (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't a matter of being a Luddite. Most people can't control who their neighbors are, which is one reason why living in the subburbs is so darn stressful. The only defense against neighbors in high population density areas is to have tons of money, to pay the association people to enforce restrictions, and to put up big fences.
Outside cities, the other defense is a lot of land, and lots of shrubbery in the woods to block sound and line of sight to roadways.
Another defense is a lot of insulation in the walls and ceiling to block sound, which is an added bonus on top of energy efficiency. Unfortunately, a lot of the cookie-cutter 1000-unit neighborhoods were built quickly and cheaply, meaning often inadequate insulation (one house I lived in wasn't even up to code, before I fixed that).
Parent
Re:Wrong way for me. (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't mind a bit of green tech, either - houses designed with big south facing windows and large eaves to let in lots of sunlight in the winter but little in the summer, perhaps solar water heating, perhaps a heat pump, perhaps a wind turbine if in a windy area, etc. For really esoteric, on a big house you could go with a solar thermal evaporative cooler/heater: noiseless, takes no power, and has no moving parts except for the fan; heating and cooling are done by the same device.
As a gardener, an automated greenhouse would be neat (maintains temperature with opening and closing of flaps, and an internal heater if needed).
Parent
Two words: (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't really care about details of how it's accomplished. Nano-treated surfaces and micro-robots? Sweet, whatever. Just so long as I never have to clean the tub or mop the kitchen by hand again.
Parent
Re:Wrong way for me. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Advice from an experienced home owner (Score:4, Insightful)
2) home values go up, mostly.
so, buy the biggest house you can afford, a little ways from the edge of surberbia. You will grow into it, and you will make more money over the long run.
Parent
Re:Advice from an experienced home owner (Score:4, Insightful)
The overwhelming likelihood, though, is that your wife will refuse to move.
Parent
Re:Wrong way for me. (Score:4, Informative)
About two years ago we moved into a larger house (1300) and we thought we'd never use all the space in the house. It's funny, you find a way to use it. I'd equate the experience to a Hard drive. When you get one with more space, you just find more ways of filling it up.
Parent
DUH! (Score:5, Funny)
Simplicity (Score:4, Insightful)
Simplicity. Japanese style furniture, and few and selected furniture, and the stereos, hifi, etc would be simplistic as well. No TV - possibly a projector. Ideally Bose but any small and good sounding speakers, integrated with iPod. Integration with Airport Express should be easy - so can control the musics of all the rooms of the house by the computers (a few in different rooms or where needed).
Actually, for TV needs now the computers do fine - mostly viewing movies anyway, and some cartoons with eyeTV.
Lots of small lights in ceiling and on walls to get enough light on winter, and enough analog candles for the mood.
And simple materials to keep it all timeless - such as white walls, dark wood, some stone, some metal, and selected details in bright colors.
And the simplicity factor will make it more simple than now - there are 16 iPods in our house now
Re:Simplicity (Score:4, Interesting)
Lots of shelves/cabinets and lots of storage, I've got gobs of projects and parts for projects, and I want to keep them organized and close to my life, but I don't want to have to have separate spaces for entertaining and for living, 'cause that's just spending money on half-used space. I haven't actually lived in or used a house with these amenities, but since a lot of projects seem to happen on the floor anyway, I think I'd like hatches or similar floor storage.
However, no unnecessary nooks or hallways or connectors, I want my rooms rectangular, easy to clean, with simple openings between spaces. If the climate demands it (and most do), I like to compartmentalize the house for heating and cooling (and maybe here's your application for technology, a centralized place that I can say "heat the living room, let the dining room and bedroom sit at 50 degrees"), but I don't buy into this crap that some architects push about hallways to provide transition areas in between parts of the house. Make it a door or an opening with a curtain and be done with it.
I don't need a large kitchen, but I want prep room on both sides of the stove, and a veggie sink as well as a clean-up sink. Whatever the entrance to the house, I want a little space, maybe just a few feet of hall, with shelves for shoes by the front door.
Technology-wise, the only really geeky thing I want is a smarter cat door (Yes, I know about Flo Control [quantumpicture.com], but I'd settle for "after dark, opens from the inside only"). I want room to run cables under the floor and through walls, as I'm sick of slap-dash phone/cable installations run under the siding around the outside of the house, and I want lots of power outlets, but I'm less concerned with built-in lights or any fancy technology to switch them; I'm fine with having desk lamps and similar per-application lamps. Don't build crap into the house, as it'll only be made obsolete (and this especially applies to lighting technologies right now). If you do have built in lights, they should be able to make that room like daylight; my alarm clock is currently a big bank of daylight balanced flourescents, and when that lights up the room I'm happy, even in the doldrums of the rainy season.
I want good fitting doors, double-paned glass, good insulation (for conventional construction types, I'm interested in the folks doing 2x6 studs at 19.whatever centers, more room for insulation, cheaper materials costs). Yes, I know that a house needs to breathe, but let's make that a specific function of the design, not a byproduct of skimping on materials.
And, if I go specific to my particular needs, parking for a bunch of bicycles out of the elements, including long ones (tandem/recumbent).
Parent
Infrastructure would please me... (Score:5, Interesting)
My new house would have a wiring closet/server room that would be the electronic equivalent of the furnace/AC/water heater room. There would be racks and/or cabinets for various computers and A/V equipment. The room would be properly ventilated. The house would be wired to hell and back before walls went up.
Then leave me to my devices. I'll handle the rest!
Re:Infrastructure would please me... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Infrastructure would please me... (Score:4, Funny)
Very probably correct!
Your a gentoo user arn't you?
Absolutely correct! My answer isn't the one the OP wanted, but it my answer to the question he asked. I'm a tinkerer, and that's the way I like it!
Parent
Re:Infrastructure would please me... (Score:4, Interesting)
Frankly what most geeks want, I think, is a home that's built more like a commercial or industrial structure. Raised-flooring or double-hung cielings, for instance, aren't exactly aesthetically pleasing but make network installation a lot easier than it is in the typical home. My rationale would be this: sure, raised flooring and exposed metal conduit aren't seemly, but they're a lot better than having an exposed tangle of wires, and that's the alternative if you build homes the typical way (with the wires laid in holes bored in the wall studs).
Actually I've always thought the ultimate geek dwelling would just be a single floor of some old industrial buidling; someplace where you could hang cable trays directly from exposed cieling beams. (Not to mention 3-ph 480V power, for when you pick up that surplus Cray on eBay.)
I guess if you go down that route, you'd pretty much have to give up on ever getting laid there, though.
Parent
Keep it simple... (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't take the sky from me... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You can't take the sky from me... (Score:5, Funny)
Would that be complete with shuttle occupants, sir?
Parent
Re:You can't take the sky from me... (Score:5, Funny)
definitely.
Parent
SImple (Score:3, Insightful)
That way should I not like my neighborhood, I can move to a new one.
That and live like the turtles, taking my house with me as I visit places across the sea.
Re:SImple (Score:3, Funny)
I lived like that for a few years, long ago. I went from place to place by sea, taking my home with me. But I wasn't on a catamaran, I was on a warship.
A "simplicity" room (Score:3, Interesting)
-Jim
http://jimstips.com/ [jimstips.com]
http://gmailtips.com/ [gmailtips.com]
Re:A "simplicity" room (Score:4, Interesting)
My plan when I went looking for the place I eventually bought was to make sure the bedroom was empty. Have a rectangular room a big wooden four-pster bed in it and nothing else.
Real life interfered a lot, so I have to have clothes, books, and even a computer desk in there at the moment - but one day I will own a house which has a room which is literally just a bed-room.
Perfect for reading/cuddling/relaxing in. With nothing to distract or tidy.
Parent
My requests (Score:5, Interesting)
Here are the things I would love to have but am too lazy to have actually gotten around to:
The ability to wirelessly stream TV from any of my DVRs to any of my laptops.
Ringing the doorbell should automatically pause any television, movies, or music playing and bring up the front (or side) door-cam
Similarly, video and audio should pause when the phone rings.
Be able to use any device in my house as the source for my whole-house audio-video system (currently only the devices in my living room system can function as sources).
I want a security system that allows me to check the status of my house (hopefully including seeing pictures) from an internet connection. I travel a lot, and it would make me feel better to be able to see that everything is okay.
And some general comments:
After playing around with a bunch of universal remotes, I can categorically state that the Home Theater Master MX-850 (Aeros) is my favorite. I have played with a bunch of high-end touchscreens like Crestrons, and actually have a HTM MX-3000 for my theater, but I find that the "wow!" factor is offset by the day-to-day reality that hard-buttoned remotes are easier to live with.
I don't give a rats' ass about having video screens hidden. I paid a lot of money for my plasma screens, and I'm perfectly okay with having people able to see them. However, while I don't want to hide them, I am perfectly okay with disguising them. I would love to have my main plasma framed so that it looked like a painting on the wall, and I think the ones that look like mirrors when they are off are awesome as well.
I do like to have video in unusual places. I have a high-def TV mounted over the master bathtub which can receive audio and video from the whole-house network. We don't use it very often, but it's great for escaping from reality for a little while. Similarly, I would like to eventually have a weatherproof TV mounted next to my hot tub.
I guess basically the bottom line is that I want to be able to get my video and audio from any device to any device easily. I am unfortunately very busy, and really don't have a lot of time to watch TV or movies -- so being able to fire up a recorded copy "The Simpsons" on my laptop (without the bother of downloading a torrent or ripping a DVD) would make it easier for me to enjoy those few minutes I do have.
Now, that said, I have no intention of actually work with a company like yours. I mean no offense, but in my experience, installation companies like to choose absolutely ridiculously expensive equipment and spend far too much time trying to maximize their profits. The simple fact is that in many cases white paint (cost: $20) provides a projection surface superior to even the much-vaunted Stewart Firehawk (cost: $thousands), and yet I don't think there is a theater company in the world that would actually admit that.
My screen (160" with an Infocus 7205) is white paint. Sherwin Williams Ultrapaint, to be precise. It looks like a real screen, because I have the projection surface framed off with duvetyne tape and the rest of the wall painted dark blue, and I have had very knowledgeable people comment that it's the best image they have ever seen. And it's just white paint. Similarly, my DVD player cost me $50. The output is completely and utterly indistinguishable from a $1500 Denon (and yes, we have run blind tests -- nobody could tell the difference). So I'm very jaded about the home theater industry in general.
Re:My requests (Score:5, Informative)
While I can't deny being guilty of trying to push the higher end equipment myself, I've made sure to set my company up to offer people a wide range of options and I don't set any minimum cut off. If someone already has all the equipment they want and just want their wiring redone, I'm more than happy to take on the project. That doesn't mean I don't prefer and bend over backwards more for customers who want the whole package, though. And, in some applications, there just aren't that many low-cost options for off-the-shelf automation equipment that works reliably; that's why I hope to extend my company into manufacturing eventually.
Parent
Re:My requests (Score:4, Informative)
But because I did it myself and carefully selected components with overall value in mind, I have a theater which (as far as I'm concerned) blows away a lot of $250,000 theaters. Not all of them, certainly, but a lot of them. I used a cheap-ass DVD player because that's all you need, a pretty good but not stellar projector because I expected to throw it away in a few years when better models come out, and absolutely amazing speakers because they are a mature technology which can already reproduce sounds better than my hearing can distinguish them and I mean to hang on to them for life. And no screen at all, because with a nice flat wall, a completely light-controlled room, and a bright projector, a screen provides literally no advantage (it's plenty bright with a gain of 1.0, so increasing gain would merely serve to produce hotspotting).
Again, truly no offense meant by my earlier comment.
Parent
Re:My requests (Score:3, Informative)
The GP post made mention of speakers being a mature technology worth investing in. It's awfully easy to spend USD$70k on speakers. When it comes to mature technologies that can actually make a difference in the quality of the entertainment experience, audio gear can get really expensive, really quick.
I'm in my 40s and my ears aren't so good anymore, so even if I were incredibly rich I would have no reason to buy the best speakers out there. Still, based on eas
futuristic home (Score:5, Funny)
Alton Brown designed kitchen (Score:3, Interesting)
Camouflagellation (Score:3, Interesting)
Everything in my power to make it NOT stand out. I want the benefits of high-tech with the clean living of low-tech. One of my favorites are the speakers that you install in your walls, and then pain over the fronting when you paint your walls. Totally invisible, and great for playing pranks on unsuspecting houseguests.
The only constraint on everything being hidden would be that everything needs to be easily accessible for tinkering/servicing.
My biggest pet peeve, however, is the control systems for a lot of home electronics setups. I don't want to have to access my PC to change the thermostat setting, nor do I want to have a ridiculous remote or set of remotes. I would like to be able to control everything via my cell phone or PDA, locally or remotely.
Finally, I want an army of fembots at my disposal, along with a place to store them.
Obvious answer... (Score:3, Funny)
(28 years and 3 months from now, I'm gonna tell the bank to KMA!)
Hot Chicks Room (Score:5, Funny)
Wife: Excuse me? What was that room again?
Realtor: Oh, this is the Hot Chicks Room. It's filled with assorted hot chicks, who party in here 24 hours a day. But you'd be more interested in the kitchen.
Wife: You know what? We're not going to need a sexy chicks room.
Realtor: Well, actually it's a Hot Chicks Room.
Wife: Well, whatever it is, we don't need it.
Husband: You said the same thing about the microwave, and we use that darned thing all the time.
[to realtor]
Husband: So, a Hot Chicks Room, huh?
Realtor: Yeah. The previous owner installed the room in the 80's, and I'll be honest with you, some of the chicks aren't all that hot anymore. However, they are replacable.
A few things (Score:3)
Spare cables to every room.
Triple coax from the roof to the living room, for satellite dish and local antenna. (I had to arrange extra coax myself, and it was a pain.)
Hookups in the bathrooms for Toto washlets.
Passive motion / IR sensors in every room to switch lights off after a while if there's nobody in the room, and turn down the heating or AC.
Bath with thermostatic control and fill sensor. Set temperature, it fills itself and then chimes when it's ready.
Panel in house that indicates outdoor temperature, weather forecast for the day, whether there's something in the mailbox and whether the mailbox flag is up. Option to have the mailbox chime.
Server closet with good ventilation.
Digital Shower (Score:3, Interesting)
How that could work (Score:3, Insightful)
So in order to have hot water truly on demand, the old water has to go somewhere - why not back to the water heater? You could design all your heated plumbing to be able to be looped back to the hot water heater and a pump to circulate it, so you could have a constant warm flow to tap into.
That would require more insulation and even then be less efficien
Keep the tech unobtrusive. (Score:3, Insightful)
As such I am already in the process of buying my next home.
the most advanced features, multiple zones for my heating and cooling. Sure I will have the atypical security system and such and a bunch of florescent (sp?) lighting in place of incandescents. The point being, I go home to escape the technology of my day to day life. It is my refuge from reality.
As such, my TV is confined to a room I rarely go to. Same for my PC. The biggest reason I use my PC now is to play DVDs while I exercise.
Honestly, too many people are wasting their lives on tech outside of work. My favorite tech is having a nice easy to maintain house and landscape. It is seeing what will grow outside to provide year round color. I get all the tech I need at work. It can stay there too.
Interoperability (Score:3, Insightful)
If my fridge has the ability to tell me its internal temperature, I'd like to have a way to query it. And ideally, I'd like something similar to query my home's thermostat, water heater, etc.
The problem with these "smart homes" is that they often seem to rely on a single vendor having a "home automation solution" rather than a system I can plug into.
What I want is something akin to Wi-Fi or bluetooth + XML-RPC
Larry Ellison's house - lots of big rocks (Score:4, Interesting)
All this rock moving required years of heavy equipment operations. The construction site looked like a mall was going in. All this rock had to be not only placed, but anchored; the house is near the San Andreas fault.
The house is on Mountain Home Road in Woodside, recognizable by the gatehouse that looks like a Japanese teahouse. In the end, it looks rather modest; it just has a landscape that belongs to a rockier area.
So that's a real dream house, built for someone with a mania for big rocks.
The System I Have In Mind... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm just a geek, not a home-automation expert, but the house I've been designing (for when I'm rich and/or famous) will have quite a bit of (in my opinion) useful automation (In no particular order):
one more post about energy efficiency (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm talking about things like opening the windows on a warm day to let in a lot of heat (for free) then the furnace doesn't have to work as hard to maintain temp at night. Similar for cooling: open the house up at night so that the a/c doesn't have to work all day. Also take into account the side the sun is hitting from and set up fans to draw in or exhaust as appropriate to the thermal direction you're trying to take the house.
Not every climate has large enough temp swings to take advantage of throughout the year, but a lot can do this in the late spring and early fall.
All I want is. . . (Score:3, Interesting)
The more things change... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Insulate, insulate, insulate. You can never insulate too well. Even if you think you've insulated well enough for thermal control, extra insulation is also sound deadening, which is nice. While you're at it, seal up the house really well. BUT if you do that, make sure you install a heat-exchanger venting system to replace the house air. This isn't so much a health issue as much as it is an aesthetic one. When you drop a deuce in the master bath, a well sealed house will help make the, uh, memories linger unless you are changing out the air. And leaving the bathroom window open on a cold, rainy night is never a great plan.
2. Put the laundry "room" (alcove, closet, whatever) near the master bedroom. It takes some extra work and some extra space, but you'll thank me. Especially if you have a two story house. You didn't install the dishwasher in the garage, did you?
3. Nice big conduits to every room for low voltage / communications wiring. Yes, for today I want 2 cat 5 and 2 RG6, but what about tomorrow?
4. Oversize the utility inputs as much as you can. We swapped out our stove/oven for a gas model. This required bringing a second gas line in through the garage - a fairly ugly hack. It would have been much better to future-proof this up front.
5. Tankless water heater. More reliable and longer lasting, more energy efficient, more graceful failure mode. Who can argue with that?
6. A basement. Obviously in some places this is actually required to insure the foundation is below the frost line, but even in Silicon Valley I'd like to have one for storage and to make repairs and improvements easier. We have a crawl space. It's not so nice. If you have a basement and a single story, then you probably can strike out #3 above.
7. Attic stairs / finished attic. The trend nowadays in making your house bigger is to replace the attic with a 2nd story. The 2nd story winds up with rooms with angled ceilings and the like, and you don't get to have an attic at all. We don't have a big family, so we don't really need that. But we are storage-poor, so it would be really helpful to be able to conveniently use the giant, cavernous triangle above the ceiling to store stuff.
8. If you go with 2 stories, try and arrange to have a pair of closets vertically lined up. If your health declines as you get older (a house is a long term investment, mind you), you can convert them into an elevator.
9. Every (non Amish) modern house in America has a home theater. The only difference is how nice it is. A 23" TV in the den is the home theater if that's where you watch TV. I'm not saying you should plan your house around home theater, but if you know some of the rules of good theater design, you can decide how many of them you can try and incorporate in the place where the TV goes:
A. Sunlight is the enemy of your TV. The room doesn't have to be windowless, but try and avoid large picture windows facing West or South.
B. The distance between the screen and your eyes ideally should be about 2-3 times the height of the screen (at least, if we're talking about high definition TV. Sit further away, and you'll lose all of the extra detail you paid for when you bought an HD set).
10. Let nature help your HVAC situation. Plant deciduous trees to the south. In the summer, they'll shade the house. In the winter, they'll drop their leaves and let the sun through to warm you. Plant evergreens between your house and the prevailing winter wind (usually from the North).
Re:Two words (Score:3, Funny)
The right two words are "Death Star."
Because I like having a lot of room, deep chasms without guardrails, planet-destroying lasers, but I don't like the countryside. Too many trees, and not enough lasers.
Re:I can't afford it anyway, so why bother? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't disagree that the pricing on much of the currently available home integration technologies is out of reach of most consumers. My ultimate goal with my company is to eventually move into the design side of integration equipment and make the technology more widely accessible, but that is some time off. My personal belief as to why it is so "overpriced" in comparison with PC's and more common consumer electro