This Friday we’ll receive the keys for our new-build home. I’ve been living up to this moment for two years now and can’t wait to get started with all things home-automation. First, some wall paper, paint and flooring will need to be done. I won’t bother you with that, what I will bother you with is retrofitting home-automation in a newly-built house. It is a (almost) energy neutral home and contains everything a new-build home in the Netherlands does:
- Heat-pump with a thermostat in every room (gasless heating and cooking);
- Central ventilation unit with co2 sensors in living room and master bedroom;
- Heat pump provides hot water using a in-built boiler;
- Solar panels to be installed soon after moving in.
All things are ‘dumb’ as they are. We could have chosen not to, but our budget didn’t allow for that and I’m convinced I’ll be able to make a lot of these smart as we go along. This blog and more specifically this category is there to take you along the journey.
My goal is to have a smart home that uses energy efficiently, provides information about the situation everything is in, adds comfort where needed and add some security. Things I’d like to achieve:
- Heat-pump boiler goes into ‘comfort’ mode when the solar panels generate more energy than the house consumes. This way we save some of the excess energy in the form of hot water to be used in the evening.;
- Central ventilation goes into a higher mode when someone starts cooking. This way we don’t have to wait for co2 to rise.;
- Automated temperature setpoint in every room (off at night, change setpoint following the seasons etc.);
- Furthermore I’d like to see temperature, co2 levels, electricity meters, water meters, setpoints etc in Home Assistant.
- Apart frome everything in the home, our washing machine will be moving upstairs so I’m adding leak detection to that, to prevent the top floors from flooding when something happens.
I might some lights that can be monitored and turned on and off when we’re not at home for the dog and security purposes and I will automate the sunscreen as I did in our current home to open when the temperature rises and it is sunny and close when there is rain or wind.
A bonus would be to add the fire alarms, but I doubt they are smart enough and I don’t fancy this enough to replace them with smarter models.
In a next post I’ll be describing the systems available, what I plan on using to get them integrated and automated and probably will add some posts about specific systems, integrations, automations etc. If you’ve recently moved into a newly built home, especially in the project we’re going to live in (Buitenoord, Wageningen) ánd are interested. Stay tuned.
Wat would you like to automate? Let me know in the comments.
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