Any Advice for Building a New Home?
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I'll second the central vacuum system. Even if the house is finished and the basement is unfinished it is still easy to install one. I bought one on-line and installed it myself in about one day. Total cost was about $1000. Been using it for 12 years now with no problems. If you install one, buy an extra hose and install an outlet (inlet?) in the garage for it -- perfect for easily vacuuming out vehicles.
-NP Never underestimate the creativity of the end-user.
Still much easier to put in the pipes before hand. If you have a single story with a basement, then not too bad, otherwise a lot more difficult. I did have one that failed, but that was after over a decade. I originally bought the bagless, and the the nutone was worthless because it pulled air from the bottom. Would have thought that would have pulled from the top. Bad design
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So, my wife and I have completely outgrown our current house and have decided to build a new home. A few things I'm planning on doing thus far:
- Adding LAN drops to our media room and office (we'll have fiber internet access).
- Adding a return register for the media room
Does anyone have any advice of other customizations I should push for in the new home that are easy to do now?
Don't use agile methods for the project.
MVVM# - See how I did MVVM my way ___________________________________________ Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011 .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
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Still much easier to put in the pipes before hand. If you have a single story with a basement, then not too bad, otherwise a lot more difficult. I did have one that failed, but that was after over a decade. I originally bought the bagless, and the the nutone was worthless because it pulled air from the bottom. Would have thought that would have pulled from the top. Bad design
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Good point. My house is a single story. And my vacuum is a bagged system, but I have to empty the bag only once or twice a year.
-NP Never underestimate the creativity of the end-user.
Unless there is a better design for the bagless, you are better off with the bag design, at least for nutone. http://www.vacdepot.com/article/126[^]
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Double the time estimate, and have 50% of the cost extra ready to spend. Add the lan drops to every room. You don't know what you will be doing with them in the future, and it's a lot cheaper to have spare capacity than to find the time to redecorate after adding them later. Add four times as many power points as any sensible person would need. That way, you might not run out (hah!). Plan a central location for your "equipment room" - put the wireless adapter, and space for a server / NAS in there (with power) and disguise the door. That way if you are burgled and they get your PC's, lappies, and so forth, your backups shouldn't be affected. The central location should help ensure even signal coverage. And a wine cellar. You never know... Unless your family name is Fritzel, don't bother with the "hidden flat".
The universe is composed of electrons, neutrons, protons and......morons. (ThePhantomUpvoter)
OriginalGriff wrote:
Plan a central location for your "equipment room" - put the wireless adapter, and space for a server / NAS in there (with power) and disguise the door. That way if you are burgled and they get your PC's, lappies, and so forth, your backups shouldn't be affected. The central location should help ensure even signal coverage.
I like this idea. How much? +5 or so.
-- Harvey
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I would not do that. I have watched so many scary movies were the basement is the source of evil or has a portal to hell :~ Naturally I am just kidding about that, but the majority of basements I have been in have some sort of problem with damp areas. Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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Central vacuum is nice. Hard to install in existing house. Depending on the size, do not need many connections, just in the halls. This makes things much quieter, and all the dust definately does not end up in the house. I personally like to exhaust to the outside.
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So, my wife and I have completely outgrown our current house and have decided to build a new home. A few things I'm planning on doing thus far:
- Adding LAN drops to our media room and office (we'll have fiber internet access).
- Adding a return register for the media room
Does anyone have any advice of other customizations I should push for in the new home that are easy to do now?
Start from the bottom, and work up. If you're a top-down programmer, consider a ready-built solution.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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In our remodel we created a bathroom where the toilet, sink, and bathtub are all in partitioned off from one another. It makes for a large bathroom but with a wife and three daughters we can have someone using each of those three items without privacy problems. I cannot recommend that enough. Additionally, we put the washer and dryer on the 2nd floor within the bathroom that has the shower (actually in the shower room). Laundry doesn't have to be carried between the floors as the bedrooms are on the 2nd floor as well - plus, you can drop your dirty clothes right there when you shower - not more than 3ft. from the washer. ^ That isn't a designer bathroom but we didn't build it to photograph it, we built it to use it. Put on a large wrap around porch facing east - they are glorious on cool summer mornings and they are in the shadow during the heat of the day. We can sit out there at night on the hottest day and be comfortable. Double hung windows. Always. We put receptacles on the exterior of the front porch that are wired to a switch in our living room. We use those receptacles for Christmas lights - easy on, easy off. We also included two receptacles under our bay window so that the window can be used as a buffet with heated food.
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Interesting about the 'porch facing east' ... here in England we always try to build everything facing south or southwest so you can pick up the extra heat of the sun!
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I would not do that. I have watched so many scary movies were the basement is the source of evil or has a portal to hell :~ Naturally I am just kidding about that, but the majority of basements I have been in have some sort of problem with damp areas. Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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Then again, when you're 16 and seh's willing and/or not too picky, the basement is relatively soundproof. Unless your little...um...workshop...is right near the ductwork.
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Do you consider that an argument for or against building a basement in your house? :-O Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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I didn't even know they made that. It sounds like a great idea. Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
I know my wife loved it.
