Conveniences in a house build.

motorcy90

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Have a notch under the kitchen cabinets that is hooked up to a vacuum in the garage. Have the switch for the outlet in the kitchen, and sweep the floors to this spot, flip the switch. Tada no more sweeping into pans.
should look into this when we hopefully build. 2 Aussies mean there's a lot of shed fur no matter what.
 
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Clonefan32

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I'm assuming no one puts these in new homes, but in our first home we had a laundry chute and I'll be damned if I don't miss having that.
 

NickTheGreat

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Home run all your Cat 6 and coax to one spot. Make a networking closet with space for a rack.

I also wish our house had a mud room entrance of the garage. A friend has a staircase to his basement from the garage, but that's awfully specific to your plans
 

ImJustKCClone

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I'm assuming no one puts these in new homes, but in our first home we had a laundry chute and I'll be damned if I don't miss having that.
This house had one. We had to lock the cabinet because one of the cats kept getting stuck in the laundry room. :D
When we moved the laundry upstairs we sealed over the hole in the flooring. She was very unhappy with us.
 
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Clonefan32

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This house had one. We had to lock the cabinet because one of the cats kept getting stuck in the laundry room. :D
When we moved the laundry upstairs we sealed over the hole in the flooring. She was very unhappy with us.

I really do miss mine. The benefit of just tossing an item of dirty laundry down the chute as opposed to lugging down a full laundry basket....
 

yez

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We've had sonic ice machines in each of our last two homes - it's great for parties and mixed drinks. They're kind of a pain in the ass to clean though.
 

keepngoal

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Home run all your Cat 6 and coax to one spot. Make a networking closet with space for a rack.

I also wish our house had a mud room entrance of the garage. A friend has a staircase to his basement from the garage, but that's awfully specific to your plans
I hear ya... but is that really needed as everything is WiFi? and if needed, not everywhere, right?
 

motorcy90

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I hear ya... but is that really needed as everything is WiFi? and if needed, not everywhere, right?
stuff like streaming video or gaming will still work best hard wired. wifi has come a long way, but still isn't as great as being hard wired straight in.
https://www.howtogeek.com/217463/wi-fi-vs.-ethernet-how-much-better-is-a-wired-connection/ I have been meaning to hook our main TV and my Xbox up to a direct ethernet port off the router, but have never really ordered the cables needed yet.
 
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keepngoal

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stuff like streaming video or gaming will still work best hard wired. wifi has come a long way, but still isn't as great as being hard wired straight in.
5gz is up to and over 1gb, right? A switch and router at 1ghz (pretty standard) are below that when reception is clean for wifi.

what is the benefit?
 

motorcy90

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5gz is up to and over 1gb, right? A switch and router at 1ghz (pretty standard) are below that when reception is clean for wifi.

what is the benefit?
latency and being a more stable connection. also all of your wifi devices share that same speed availability so each one takes up a little bit of what is available. hard wired you get that speed and signal all the time, where as wifi might get a little interference here or there.
 

keepngoal

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latency and being a more stable connection. also all of your wifi devices share that same speed availability so each one takes up a little bit of what is available. hard wired you get that speed and signal all the time, where as wifi might get a little interference here or there.
if the pipe to the house is 1G the router is managing those internal speeds anyway. Its being split up. and if everything is wired, is there much difference if everything is wireless?

Maybe for a few key electronics, but in my view this isn't 2011, and wireless is a savings.
 

Tri4Cy

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I hear ya... but is that really needed as everything is WiFi? and if needed, not everywhere, right?

Cat 6 is on my list to price out with our electrician. I thought the same "but wifi" and "5G" solves all of our problems, until you realize that the ONE spot you can place your router interference from the microwave can really limit the signal strength at the TV. And cheap LED light bulbs...more interference. I'm all in support of wireless for the sake of convenience, but nothing will outperform a hard line in my mind. I'm not sure I'll run Cat 6 to EVERY room/location but certainly the living room, office, and the basement TV/"theater" room.

I get the comments on wifi progression recently but based on recent negative experiences...I wouldn't be doing my due diligence to at least price it out. I have some pretty bad dead spots in my current house and it drives me nuts.
 

keepngoal

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Cat 6 is on my list to price out with our electrician. I thought the same "but wifi" and "5G" solves all of our problems, until you realize that the ONE spot you can place your router interference from the microwave can really limit the signal strength at the TV. And cheap LED light bulbs...more interference. I'm all in support of wireless for the sake of convenience, but nothing will outperform a hard line in my mind. I'm not sure I'll run Cat 6 to EVERY room/location but certainly the living room, office, and the basement TV/"theater" room.
I think that is negated with a mesh layout.
 

ricochet

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if the pipe to the house is 1G the router is managing those internal speeds anyway. Its being split up. and if everything is wired, is there much difference if everything is wireless?

Maybe for a few key electronics, but in my view this isn't 2011, and wireless is a savings.

I'm with motorcy90 on this. If you go all wireless you will probably end up with a mesh system of some sort and having wired Ethernet for the back haul is a big win right there. The cabling is useful for other things too. When we built our house almost 20 years ago we put in coax runs to the TV locations to distribute component video from a central location. Doing it today I'd use Cat6 wiring and run something like HDBaseT over it to distribute HDMI. Security is another plus for wired but with people bugging their own homes maybe nobody cares anymore.
 

motorcy90

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if the pipe to the house is 1G the router is managing those internal speeds anyway. Its being split up. and if everything is wired, is there much difference if everything is wireless?

Maybe for a few key electronics, but in my view this isn't 2011, and wireless is a savings.
yeah stuff that uses the most bandwidth and deal with latency is were the biggest differences are. most people who do a lot of video gaming always have their systems hardwired. since I only play maybe a few times a week it hasn't been a big need for me to run the cable for it.
 

RLD4ISU

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Our previous home was a split foyer; there was NO way to get into the house without stairs being involved, so bringing in groceries was a *****. We spent a LOT of time looking for this house. We wanted an acreage with a house with minimal stairs due to my advancing arthritis. We knew eventually it would get more difficult. It was a long search, as most of the affordable acreages in a four county area that we looked at had farmhouse-style homes on them - straight up & down boxes with a root cellar, 2 living floors and an attic. Bah!
People who are buying their forever home later in life (we were in our early 50s) and post-kids should really give thought to how many stairs are needed to access the main living areas.

We’ve had a lot of discussion about having a home with no stairs or very few and having everything prepped for potential mobility issues.

Another idea we’ve talked about is having a tornado safe room that’s on the main floor and very easy to quickly access.
 

isucy86

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The OP mentioned this being their last house.

One can never really know their health as they age, but if you plan on living in the house until it becomes impractical, I would plan for it in your build. e.g. Never know when stairs will become issue due to joint replacement. General mobility issues. It didn't happen to my dad until his late 80's, but in a 4 year period he went from being able to walk 9 holes to needing a walker.

Also if you hope this is your "forever home", I would focus on downsizing and keeping things simple.

Depending on your current age, some of the things can be added later:

- Since home will be multiple stories might want to stack 1st & 2nd floor closets for possible shaft for future people lift .
- Walk in shower with bench
- Higher Toilets
- Toilet location to allow for wall rail.
- Wide doors and walk areas to allow for walker/wheel chair.

Lighting is an area I updated in my home.
- Motion light outlet for overhead garage light. Great if hands are full leaving/returning home. Also work well in stairwells.

- Also like night lights. Hate having bright lights making me wide awake when taking a leak in middle of night. They make wall outlets that have LED night lights built in. Also great in stairwells