Please excuse the length of this post, but preliminary drawings are complete, and they're out for pricing. Home automation is one of those pricing items; so it is time to get a reality check, look for missing items, and get real dollar amounts. I cannot find anyone locally to consult or contract on this. I've highlighted the key questions.
The house will be a modest 1800 square feet, with a 1400 square foot walkout basement. Master bedroom and office on main floor; two children's rooms and spare room in basement. Large mechanical (270 sqft) area (for geothermal, water tank and pressure system, electrical panel), and a separate 7.5 sqft (centrally located) wiring closet in basement to contain the HA hardware, lighting, ethernet/wifi networking, and termination for 3 doorbells, 2 telephone lines, and audio/video distribution.
Cabling: The plans call for home-run 2+2 to
HVAC: two thermostats, one controlling basement in-floor heat (Climatemaster Genesis) and other controlling geothermal air handler for main floor (Climatemaster Tranquility 27). What thermostats are supported for these units? Climatemaster and my local installer responded to this question with (essentially) "we will put in our thermostats, so don't worry." My questions, "what other ones can we use? what warranty issues might arise if we use the HAI ones?" were ignored. Who else has installed these geothermal units and driven them from HA systems? I know some people in this forum have installed these units, and connected them to Johnson controls HA, is that high-end system the only way? The units come with CXM controllers, are DXM required to attach to anything other than Climatemaster's thermostats? In particular, HAI has some very nice thermostats.
Lighting: this is the most uncertain. I like hardwire solutions (Centralite Litejet -- 48 zones is overkill, 24 zones isn't quite enough -- I suppose I could put some less-used lights directly onto the HA controller (eg. mechanical room, closets, storage room, etc.) But, if the central relay panel fails no lights work; UPB failures still have regular switching capability. The wireless (Centralite/ELK Jetstream, or HAI UPB-based systems) seem to be cheaper, more resilient to total failure, but less reliable for daily operation. If you were doing it again, would you go with LV wiring, powerline control, or wireless? In many ways, this decision fixes the HA system also.
HA:
I'm hoping that your war-stories, and insight into various products might inform my decision. For example, how reliable is UPB -- some say 99% they work great, others say 75% of the time a second press is required before the right scene/light turns on. I recall some rumour that LiteJet was being deprecated ... does anyone have more information? How well does JetStream work -- anybody actually got it?
Last, I need to figure out costs -- I estimate I have $10-15K to spend on extra wiring (over and above the usual switches, wires, breakers, etc) and components (not including TVs, DVD players, satellite receivers). Since companies don't give out prices (either they say nothing, or they give incomplete ones like suggested retail not including installation and programming) I have no idea what my system might cost. Rules of thumb are $3-5 / sqft, so I think I'm in the ballpark, but who knows ... well, (collectively) this community does.
Chris Dutchyn
The house will be a modest 1800 square feet, with a 1400 square foot walkout basement. Master bedroom and office on main floor; two children's rooms and spare room in basement. Large mechanical (270 sqft) area (for geothermal, water tank and pressure system, electrical panel), and a separate 7.5 sqft (centrally located) wiring closet in basement to contain the HA hardware, lighting, ethernet/wifi networking, and termination for 3 doorbells, 2 telephone lines, and audio/video distribution.
Cabling: The plans call for home-run 2+2 to
- main floor (10 locations)
- master bedroom (1 locations)
- office (2 locations)
- master bedroom walk-in-closet
- great room (2 side-by-side locations for audio/video)
- kitchen (1 location)
- garage (1 location)
- garage entrance (1 location for security keypad)
- main entrance (1 location for security keypad)
- basement (6 locations)
- bedrooms (3 in total)
- rec room (2 side-by-side locations for audio/video)
- mud room entrance (1 location for security keypad)
- doorbells (3)
- line-of-sight radio internet
- (at most) ten glass-break or individual window monitors,
- three door monitors,
- between three and five smoke detectors.
- One keypad by each of three entrances.
- three (or four) zones of in-ceiling speakers on the main floor
- kitchen/dining,
- great room (5.1 audio with wall-mount TV, CD, DVD, ipod jack),
- covered deck,
- (optionally) master bedroom,
- two zones in the basement:
- rec room (5.1 audio with wall-mount TV, CD, DVD, ipod jack)
- under deck
- Wiring for one dual LUN satellite dish (is it 4 quad-shielded RG-60?) terminated at the wiring panel.
- Any other wiring for speakers and AV connectivity?
HVAC: two thermostats, one controlling basement in-floor heat (Climatemaster Genesis) and other controlling geothermal air handler for main floor (Climatemaster Tranquility 27). What thermostats are supported for these units? Climatemaster and my local installer responded to this question with (essentially) "we will put in our thermostats, so don't worry." My questions, "what other ones can we use? what warranty issues might arise if we use the HAI ones?" were ignored. Who else has installed these geothermal units and driven them from HA systems? I know some people in this forum have installed these units, and connected them to Johnson controls HA, is that high-end system the only way? The units come with CXM controllers, are DXM required to attach to anything other than Climatemaster's thermostats? In particular, HAI has some very nice thermostats.
Lighting: this is the most uncertain. I like hardwire solutions (Centralite Litejet -- 48 zones is overkill, 24 zones isn't quite enough -- I suppose I could put some less-used lights directly onto the HA controller (eg. mechanical room, closets, storage room, etc.) But, if the central relay panel fails no lights work; UPB failures still have regular switching capability. The wireless (Centralite/ELK Jetstream, or HAI UPB-based systems) seem to be cheaper, more resilient to total failure, but less reliable for daily operation. If you were doing it again, would you go with LV wiring, powerline control, or wireless? In many ways, this decision fixes the HA system also.
HA:
- master water shutoff,
- garage door opening/closing (3-bays),
- automatic audio/video mute on telephone ring
- key fob access for garage door and lighting would be nice but not critical.
I'm hoping that your war-stories, and insight into various products might inform my decision. For example, how reliable is UPB -- some say 99% they work great, others say 75% of the time a second press is required before the right scene/light turns on. I recall some rumour that LiteJet was being deprecated ... does anyone have more information? How well does JetStream work -- anybody actually got it?
Last, I need to figure out costs -- I estimate I have $10-15K to spend on extra wiring (over and above the usual switches, wires, breakers, etc) and components (not including TVs, DVD players, satellite receivers). Since companies don't give out prices (either they say nothing, or they give incomplete ones like suggested retail not including installation and programming) I have no idea what my system might cost. Rules of thumb are $3-5 / sqft, so I think I'm in the ballpark, but who knows ... well, (collectively) this community does.
Chris Dutchyn