Consider more passive designs to conserve energy to reduce demands on electricity...
Geothermal water circulation keeps water cool in the summer and warm in the winter reducing the demand on heaters and chillers.
Wall thickness and roof overhang to address sun angle heating and cooling can be another move...
Lots more out there to research.
Water heated floor using glycol is awesome too. The concrete layed on top of the piping act as a thermal mass. If you have some large windows getting sun in the winter that can heat the floor at the same time it reduce the amount of energy your water heater has to put in. Plus in the summer it keeps the house cooler (as long as you have proper shades/overhang preventing the sun to heat it or extract the heat to somewhere else).
I had one installed in my previous house when I had it built. The plumber was telling me I could expect a lifetime of approx 80 years for the system. You can't obviously do it on the cheap. All the piping need to be extremely good. Keep in mind that the plastic pipes they run in the concrete is a single run for each zone, so there's no joint to fail. The plastic pipe has to fail. It has some flexibility into it, so even if there's some settling happening and ultimately concrete fracturing, the pipes themselves should survive. Otherwise, if something was to happen, you'll need to remove the flooring, and break the inch and half lightweight concrete to expose the pipe. It would be a messy process, but not any less than if you'd had to open the up the walls or ceiling to fix duct work.
I really loved it. It is so comfortable and ridiculously efficient. The house was built to modern standard and high efficiency code, but my total power bill to heat 2 stories and base of 930sq ft each was 800$ CAD a year. I could even have installed a solar water heater to reduce it further.
Yes but if you live in a cold climate where you could lack power for an extended amount of time, you'll need to drain the system to prevent freezing in the pipes. It's an added safety.
Virginia is very hot and humid, so air conditioning is at least as important as heating. For that reason an all-air system would be much more cost effective.
Are the aerogel insulating strips still available? They went on the room-facing edge of the studs and, while a bit expensive at first, supposedly paid off in a couple of years.
I've never heard of these before. I can definitely see where all my studs are on a thermal camera. I can't find an actual product for this after a bit of searching though.
You pull the drywall off, run horizontal steel studs with some kind of thermal break between the steel and wood stud contact points, then you add 1.5" insulation in the new cavities.
I live in the northern Midwest and keeping the water an even temp would be amazing for us. We use dramatically more hot water in the winter because our water tower gets cold as hell. The cold water coming out of the tap is literally painful in January.
Unless you’re right by the tower, it’s more the temperature in the main and lateral piping that does this. 8-10 feet below grade is still chilly in the winter, although warmer than ambient temperatures.
Getting back to basics, nice! Overkill with circuits sounds good to me. Would love to shut off power to only one bedroom when I have to do electrical work in there!
Better yet - separate circuit for outlets and lights per room. That way if you are working on an outlet - you still have lights. And if you are working on lights - you have outlets so you can power a portable light out of it.
I wired our house when we built six years ago and did this. Each room has a dedicated lighting and a dedicated outlet circuit. It works well (and the cost in the grand scheme is small if you're doing it yourself).
YES YES HOLY SHIT YES
Also, for pure aesthetics: all my European friends shit on American electrical systems for our lights flickering when you turn a hair dryer on. It does make you feel like you live in a crappy house.
Do you have a generator backup? That's my only concern with "one room per breaker" is that if I end up with a subpanel of critical loads for generator/battery backup, I'd want one outlet in each room coming from that I think
sure, that works too, i actually thought of that while writing the post but skipped it. each "critical plug" would have the same cover but the plug itself might be black instead of white or something
Correct. The orange outlets are on the emergency generator. And it wouldn't be super difficult to do this for a house. Mostly just remembering to spec it and check that it's done.
Why not size the generator for whole house power. That way you don’t have to have “critical outlets” and instead know that when the power goes out you can turn on whatever you want in the house just like you still had power from the power company?
Where I live, about half of power outages happen during winter storms. HVAC is probably the *most* important load for the generator. If the house freezes, the pipes freeze, and that's a disaster.
You can adjust the order they go off....we have hotwater first then different zones of HVAC. You need to know your draw and then decide what to prioritize. If you have electric aux heat you need to see what that draw is if you are really worried about house freezing. In my case I monitor full draw on my panel and have never seen anything close to what our generator can handle. But we don't have cold winters.
I’ve had a few neighbors who have the whole house generators. They can be pricy but the few times I’ve lost power for multiple days they all seemed to really appreciate having full power in their house without having to run extension cords to different devices in the house from a stand alone generator, or only have specific outlets that worked.
Also with a standby generator with automatic failover you don’t have to be home to throw the transfer switch yourself!
My current house has a heat pump. The 4ton outside unit is on a 40amp breaker, which I assume means it can draw 32 amps. Have not checked actual draw though. That's like 7.5kW, plus the air handling fans/etc inside. So if I want to cover that, well pump, water heater, stove, and some outlets....I'd probably need something 15-20kW at least
Traditional compressors have a huge draw, far in excess of the circuit rating, on startup, for a very brief period. This can be an issue for electronic inverters, as they need to be able to handle that momentary load. You would be better off with a variable speed compressor, as they are typically DC and run from an inverter, and start slowly. Unfortunately, I didn't think they have this option for well pumps, but pool pumps do have that capability.
Also, newer air conditioners typically have a lower power need than the ones they replaced. My 3 ton AC units are fed by 30A breakers, but there is a 20A breaker in the disconnect, as that's all the new ones need. One sizes the circuit from the compressor ratings plate. The highest usage I've ever seen from my house is 15kW. An electric dryer, and electric stove contribute to those peaks. A heat pump dryer would reduce one of the things that add to the peaks, but they are slower.
On a new build, better attention to air sealing and insulation can dramatically reduce air conditioner size, but ironically increase the need for dehumidification and an ERV for fresh air. Direct vent to the outside for over a cooktop, and makeup air fans to replace the air removed by the vent motor are also needed in a tight house.
I have a generator but I haven't done the done the interconnect yet. Had a baby so I had to hold off on the sub panel in favor of getting in the house. Hoping soon to get it done though, and that's my plan is to add at least a few backup outlets throughout the house.
That would be nice. My panel was clearly wired for electrician convenience and you never know what a given breaker is going shut off. Two bedroom outlets and two hallway outlets, and a hallway light, for example. It's not helpful. I spend so much time looking for the right breaker it's usually easier to just shut down the whole panel.
Spend an hour figuring it out and then never have to again. One of the first things I did when I moved in, and how I discovered someone had spliced two circuits together (meaning tripping one breaker wouldn't cut the power, and the wires could melt etc.).
And leave some space in your panel. My current house is not old and was built with the panel almost at capacity. No open spaces and most of the double breaker spaces already filled with doubles.
Total waste of copper.
Better idea would be subpanels on each floor for quick access.
Even better would be a mechanical room on each floor with dedicated water heater, panel, etc.
Subpanels are awesome, there's only one downside: if you want to put in a generator and a transfer switch, you can't really pick and choose critical circuits to power with a generator, and it basically becomes an "all or nothing" deal.
The easiest way to put in a generator is directly into the main panel and then you turn on the circuits you want to have power. The only pain with sub panels is you would have to first run all over the house to turn off all the circuits before connecting the generator. The generator panel feed has a sliding plate that requires the street mains to be shut off before you can turn on the generator feeds.
Is there any reason that's frowned on, code, etc? Dear god I would love to just rip out all the wiring in my semi-finished basement, run a sub panel and do it all from scratch.
One dedicated 20 amp outlet for each bedroom/room as well. Never know when you might want a space heater or window AC for supplemental heating/cooling... OR you buy a laser printer that dims the lights and causes the battery backup for your computer to chirp any time it starts up...
As a tesla customer.....don't use tesla brands. THey've been going to shit lately. My neighbor has been waiting for 3 years for his tesla roof to get finished too.
Not surprised about the Tesla roof. It was a different company (SolarCity) that Elon and his brother sat on the board of (as well as Tesla the same time, certainly no conflict of interest), and Musk lied his ass off to shareholders so he could buy the company using Tesla stock, and it was such a scam that Tesla shareholders sued him.
Eventually Musk won because it's really, really, really, really, really hard to win a shareholder derivative suit. Musk just needed to make a not-transparently-bullshit justification to win. And that's obviously easy to do when you are working on an EV/solar panel/battery deal.
He's not liable *legally*, but it doesn't change the actual facts.
You didn’t mention your budget - this is the first thing you should be deciding.
Everything you mentioned is possible, except maybe the EV backfeed, as I’m not sure how many backfeed-capable vehicles there are out there right now.
Keep in mind that a battery backup system capable of powering your entire home is going cost many 10’s of thousands of dollars, only to sit there unused for 99.99999% of the time. Even if you have solar. Because currently the rates for backfeeding electricity into the grid are 1:1, meaning there’s no benefit to storing electricity to sell it during off-hours (in most states).
The bottom line is that fossil fuel-powered generators are still by far the least expensive way to have whole home backup power. And emissions aren’t really a concern, as they have almost 0 carbon footprint. Because they just sit there unused for basically their entire service life, unless you live somewhere with an extremely unstable power grid.
From the sounds of it, you’re trying to design a fully resilient off-grid system. Which is only useful if you have extended long-term power issues. But, if you’re dead-set on a full battery system, a solar or renewable power company can help you figure out the specifics of the system, and can help you come up with some actual numbers.
>Keep in mind that a battery backup system capable of powering your entire home is going cost many 10’s of thousands of dollars, only to sit there unused for 99.99999%
Yes, but... where I live off-peak rates electricity rates are 20% of peak rates and \~40% of the standard rate. Being able to run off batteries during peak times and charge during off-peak would pay for itself over time. I don't use enough power to get the ROI needed for this. But when home battery prices come down, this will be a viable option. Best-case I have a 5 year ROI. Likely closer to 10. I don't expect to live here that long.
I don't know how soon home battery prices will come down significantly. Likely not until we have next-gen battery technology. Maybe super-capacitors with batteries will be the answer? I'm not an EE so not sure what the viability is.
*backfeed capable* is also not really the standard. Some are V2L and some are V2H and there are different ways to connect them to your house. That said, the US/CAN market has only a few. The markets outside of them have a lot more.
It sounds good on paper but EV batteries are expensive and degrade with number of cycles. If you are using the battery to shift solar power daily, probably cheaper and more convenient with a home battery.
Pedantically, 1kW/h indicates an *increasing* draw as time goes on, i.e. you use one kilowatt more for every hour that passes. I think you mean 1kWh/h or...1 kW.
This. Do what I did. 2 EV charging stations at 22kW each and a V2L line hooked up to the inverter to transfer energy from car batteries to house batteries.
Except no cars can take 22kW in North America, except I think the F150L? And I don't think they will be coming in the future either. I thought 22kW was an EU thing because they have 3phase. I have 11.5kW to my car and I feel that is way overkill, I could easily get by with 6kW comfortably
I read that the F150L has the battery capacity of 8-10 Tesla Powerwalls , and the cost of either was about the same. So get the F150L for the same price as the Powerwalls and get a free truck too!
If you’re going big, look into geothermal HVAC. very efficient - especially for heat pump mode, and makes hot water as a byproduct. Expensive, and not really an ROI when considering cost to energy savings, but excellent for electric HVAC source.
If it were me, I’d do a geothermal HVAC and a gas water heater. Run the water heater on propane and only turn it on when power is out. My hot water heater hasn’t turned on in the 4 years I’ve owned my home because of the byproduct from the geo.
> Smart panel
I am a software engineer working in cybersecurity, you could not pay me enough money to put a smart panel anywhere near my house.
It will be a BIG (think thousands of dollars minimum) problem, it is just a matter of time.
There is a common joke / saying, the S in IoT stands for security and the P for privacy. It's only a joke because if we didn't laugh we'd be crying too much.
> Ground mounted solar, assuming we have the land. Avoids interference with roof
You are building a new home, just put them on the roof. Unless you have a lot of spare land to use.
> Some sort of battery backup
Depending on your time frame and where you are building, it might be more economical (in terms of tax breaks & credits) to put this in down the road.
It also depends where you live and power restoration times, if it might take more than a day to restore power I would look at a generator first. Less than a day battery system.
> Ability for EV's to back-feed the house
I don't know that this is so useful, generally you want your vehicle ready to go rather then drained to save a few dollars on power. Especially if you have decent solar you shouldn't be needing to back-feed from your EV. I would get more than one EV charging outlet, you can use them to run other things.
> heat pump
HELL YEA! heat pumps are 100% the way to go. Basically if there is a heat pump option you should probably take it, obviously do the research but they are some of the best option on the market.
---
OK all that out of the way, my priority would be to get to as little energy usage from the grid as positive, negative usage (e.g. you are feeding more in that you are taking would be ideal).
Once that is done, then I would start looking at storage solutions, and backups.
As I mentioned a lot of this depends on where you live and the utilities options around there.
What my smart panel built by a company that knows nothing about privacy is susceptible to being compromised?? No. My ring doorbell that stores all footage on the cloud would alert me if any malicious actors!
/s
Exactly!
And not only that, companies like to slap "smart" crap onto things without having a software engineering team and then you get shit like [AirBnb's Locks getting remotely bricked by an update](https://boingboing.net/2017/08/14/airbnbs-preferred-smart-lock.html).
That is the last thing I want, a bad update shutting off power to my house till who knows when.
Why not just make it local, restrict it to a LAN? I cannot imagine they NEED an outside connection just to work.
If anything, connect it to the cloud periodically for updates, otherwise I’d keep it off.
> I cannot imagine they NEED an outside connection just to work
You would be surprised. It is upsettingly common you have to do some research to make sure the stuff you are buying doesn't need cloud connectivity.
The majority of home automation / IoT stuff sold today requires connection to the public Internet. Everyone wants to be able to use a mobile app / Alexa / Siri to control their widget and the easiest way to do this is via the Internet. Plus companies like it because data.
I do a lot of research and avoid buying things that will require a proprietary app and Internet connection to use, and it can be really hard to find something sometimes.
>I am a software engineer working in cybersecurity, you could not pay me enough money to put a smart panel anywhere near my house.
s/w engineer here as well. I worked in cyber for a while, now doing other stuff. The amount of enabled IoT in my house is exactly 0 . All of it is hackable and it looks like a big gaping hole in your network to a hacker.
If you must use IoT, get a router that allows you to enable a guest network. Not 100% hacker-proof, but makes it challenging enough that you will probably be left alone.
I'm building a house right now and my entire security system and "smart" house items will be hosted from my own internal servers with my own IP address, etc. my brother works in IT security and I work in healthcare cybersecurity. With our powers combined we are both paranoid AND tactical!
Also, unrelated to anything else, I'm wiring a raspberry pi to an antique organ I bought and when you play a certain cord my bookshelf will slide over to reveal my arcade room
My house's builders went all-in on IoT bullshit.
Or, rather, all-in on the cheapest possible implementation. No smart appliances thankfully, but literally dozens of other devices. Bulbs, switches, thermostat, locks, garage door opener, an Alexa device in every room...
Ripped everything except the thermostat out ASAP, and that's on its own VLAN. I know I SHOULD get rid of it, but it's nice to be able to check when I'm out of town in the winter to make sure that the heat is still working and I'm not gonna come home to an icebox with burst pipes.
There is no goddamn reason for my kitchen light bulbs to have IP addresses, and I sure as hell don't want the ability to open and close my garage door to be available through some offsite server. Standard rolling-code openers are already vulnerable enough, thank you very much.
counterpoint: you are insigificant and no one gives a fuck about hacking the gibson to steal your underwear
that's the flip side to security that security pros often ignore
it's the same with trauma surgeons who will never get on a bicycle bc they've operated on people who've been hit by cars while cycling
You can be hacked for more than just theft or data. Your system can be abused remotely to commit other crimes. Also: anyone in security is already more of a desirable target.
Just because you're insignificant doesn't mean you're not a target. Not every hacker out there is exclusively looking to hit big targets in hopes of a massive payday. Most of them are just looking to add as many devices as they can to botnets, get keyloggers into networks to steal credentials, and/or get ransomware into networks to squeeze a couple hundred to a few thousand dollars out of people.
They may not "give a fuck about hacking the Gibson to steal your underwear," but there's plenty of malicious shit that can be done if your network has an easy entry point, and IoT devices are ***notoriously*** insecure. I'm not interested in giving bad actors several dozen such easy entry points in exchange for the ability to turn my bedroom light on and off from my phone.
And as pointed out elsewhere, IoT devices have had bad failure modes from stuff like poorly-tested updates from the manufacturer; incompetence can be just as bad as malice.
What I've never really grasped is why a hacker is targeting my network and looking for a big gaping hole? Like what harm does that actually cause me?
I understand some of the nasty things they *can* do. But why would they waste the effort? I'm not overly concerned about my privacy; I mean I'd rather have privacy than not, but if someone hacks in and steals all my data, what does that actually do to me? I have to change some passwords or maybe file a fraud report with the bank?
There may be some dire consequence I haven't fully understood, and please let me know if there is. People feel very strongly about this, and I'm sure their reasons are valid. But with how I see things, the rewards of convenience of smart stuff on my network vastly outweighs the risks of potential vulnerability.
> you could not pay me enough money to put a smart panel anywhere near my house.
what is the attack vector for a smart panel that is inaccessible outside the LAN
if someone gets into my house and patches into my home network, i could care less if he flips a few breakers
Also software engineer here... Agree on the IoT lack of security/privacy because of the inaccessible firmware and internet connections.
If money was not a constraint, and assuming I could get around building codes, I would not have a single wall switch in the house.
How can this be done with security/privacy and get reliability?
* Wire all lights and outlets to hub(s), linen closet size, located in central locatoin.
* Use relays in the hubs to control lights.
* Motion sensors, temp sensors and microphones in the ceiling of every room.
* Use traditional compute resources to control security
* None of this connected to the internet.
I had a working version of this in a desktop prototype using a Raspberry Pi... but it is not practical to implement in an old house with existing wiring and money making life got in the way.
Wow. I can imagine now being out of town, on the phone telling my wife to reboot the lights because the controller froze haha
What if I want to sit in a chair and read a book? Do the lights go off?
I dislike having to go to my phone to operate switches that I use often. And it would drive my wife nuts, not to mention hose guests. If you want this functionality, try smart switches. Kasa brand has done me well over the past 5 years. And if tech changes, just swap them out.
I already have all smart switches... OPs question was about ideal new build. My ideal is no switches at all... everything voice/motion/schedule controlled. With obvious names like family room, living room, kitchen front, kitchen back, house guests do not have any issues... I would say it is even easier than them figuring out which of the 4 wall switches does what they want.
As someone who has a systemlike this (except I kept physical switches), I *promise* you the rules to govern this behavior are so insanely complicated you'll spend years being super pissed off until you get it right. And then you'll have a new kid, or a guest will crash at your place, or someone will die, and all those behaviors change in ways that break all your rules
better to have switches
What happens when you can't turn on or off the lights because there is a pending update? Similar enough things [have happened](https://twitter.com/HardPass4/status/1463886150171566084).
The AirBnb Lock getting bricked? Lights that stopped working because the company forgot to renew a domain? Lights that opened up an open wifi network anyone could connect too? Thermostats that override your temps when the utility provider wishes?
Switches work, adding tech to it makes it more complicated. If you understand the tech it's one thing if you are an end consumer buying a black box you are in for a rough time.
I think it is important to note, I am not hating on IoT out of fear, ignorance, or some old man yelling at the clouds... I am hating on it because I have to deal with it. I've seen how those systems are made, I've seen the issues, I've been called in to clean up the mess.
After approx. 10 years of going voice control, I can't imagine living in a house without it. It would feel like going back to a push button cable box to change channels on a TV.
I currently say "Turn chair to 40%" to sit and read a book. It is not that hard.
My cat gets fed and water bowl filled when we are out of town. Lights go off when we leave the room. My thermostats adjust. The inside lights come on when I pull in the drive. My outside lights turn on when someone passes the light pole in my drive and I am not home. We can say "goodnight" and all lights go out... or "lights on" and all interior and exterior lights come on.
I am a leaking sieve of privacy, but all this is on a separate network from our compute resources.
My ideal, build from scratch view above would add significant reliability to the system instead of having the controllers at the "leaf nodes" of the system. It would also eliminate the firmware at each switch which is the biggest security risk.
I think it's worth pointing out that physical switches and voice control are not orthogonal. I have both. Plus remotes I can carry in my pocket. I often do that late at night. I can't "Jeeves, turn on my reading light" bc my 4yo would wake up down the hall.
That sounds pretty cool!
I do something similar, I run a local instance of [home assistant](https://www.home-assistant.io/), nothing is exposed to the internet. It's connected to a network of PoE sensors running on ESP32 boards to measure temp, humidity and VoCs in different parts of the house.
For me it is great, been slowly building it out, has the wife approval factor.
If one has the desire learn or technical skill it's very possible to have good "smart" infrastructure in your house.
I'm a software engineer and a security/privacy "hobbyist". Home Assistant has my 100% seal of approval. I got a cheap touchscreen monitor off amazon, plopped it on the wall, ran a cable to a small, quiet NUC-like pc running pop_os!. All the wires out of sight and the screen just shows my HA dashboard 24/7. My other half likes it and uses it regularly. I've got a NAS that runs all my other crap. Custom redundant DNS servers, a few (LAN only) security cams w/ frigate, some esp32 devices, etc.
The whole setup is pretty sweet and 99% offline. We got google thermostats before we knew better, so those phone home unfortunately. I've also got a self-hosted "wireguard with a gui" setup using [netbird](https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird), which is very nice and allows me to tunnel in from anywhere if I _need_ to.
> I would not have a single wall switch in the house.
Until your controller fails and your previously-off lights all spontaneously turn on in the middle of the night, waking everyone up, which is the default behavior for Hue lights after a power outage
and then you can't turn the lights off for a minute or two as your Hue bridge reboots and re-connects to the network that is also rebooting because it lost power.
Ask me how I know about the setting to change Hue lights' default behavior on power-resume
I would just be wary of installing systems that the technology will be much better in the next 5-10 years. And keep a backup solution in case the solar goes down for whatever reason.
Look into passive solar house design, get with an architect/engineer who specializes in this. There are so many ways to orient your house and make design choices that reduce loads, utilize natural wind and shading, and can help offset peaks.
With everything you're putting in to be innovative and efficient, I think it's time to think beyond electrical systems.
If you are building a new house - then you can orient it E-to-W, with the roof strategically positioned to maximize sunlight. And then you put in roof solar. That will be cheaper and waaaaay better than anything ground-mounted that are hoping to get, especially if you are thinking tracker systems.
“Smart panel” - no, just no. I am a former industrial automation Engineer and was there at the onset of industrial cyber-security awakening when those Iranian centrifuges were blown up, remember? (Pepperidge farm remembers). IoT is not there and I am not sure there is a strong enough push for it to get there any time soon. Either wire all your critical loads to a sub panel and only power that panel from backup, or don’t worry about it at all.
90% of the time you don’t even need backup power - grid is reliable enough in most urban places.
Whatever panel size you think you need - make it even bigger. Cheaper to add circuits to a panel with spare capacity than to add another panel.
Yeah good point on the smart panels. My cybersecurity friends would say the same thing. What is your opinion on IoT thermostats?
My current house is all-electric, we have two 200amp panels since the HVAC has resistance heating as a backup to the heat pump which occupies a 120A breaker within one of the panels.
I'd like to think I can manage on a single 200amp panel, especially with modern LED lighting and heat pump water heater and EV load sharing, but you are right it may be better to go with a single 400A panel, with a 100 or 200A subpanel for critical loads
Replying to you here so you'll see it:
Consider setting up a proper network switch with Power Over Ethernet. It's great having a couple hardwire internet ports in every room of the house, and few outdoors as well for security cameras and the like.
IoT Thermostats are OK, I do like Nest that I have in both our houses. Still sucks for Cybersecurity, but the only thing people can mess with if they were to get in is my ambient temperature setting, so, not the end of the world.
No camera or mic in it as far as Google is telling us, so, no concern there.
PS: go 400A if you can, with multiple EVs you wanna go big or go home. But it will also depend on what the local Utility will be able to provide you with, some will only go up to 200A on service feeds.
Connected thermostats are useful, but I'm not sold on *smart* thermostats particularly if you're building a new house with energy efficiency designed in and heat pump HVAC. The smart features really require a heating system that is designed for fast recovery (eg the typical American gas furnace) to work effectively, and are ultimately making up for the fact that a typical older home loses heat pretty rapidly and wastes a lot of energy keeping itself warm while unoccupied.
I have a fairly efficient but still relatively old home with a 2-zone heat pump system and I've used programmable thermostats for the past 15 years. I've played around with the programs quite a bit and basically never really got a payoff from emulating "smart" thermostat behavior, mainly because of the inherent long recovery time of heat pumps and the fact that I don't have newer style deep cold heat pumps so they tend to be more efficient and stay out of aux heat mode if the house is kept at a steady temperature.
Being able to access a manual program remotely is still useful for times when you know the house is going to be unoccupied for a while. Even the most basic beige Honeywell thermostat can be set up for things like low temperature alerts. You're just going to get a lot less benefit from things like geofencing or coordinating with the weather the more efficient your house is.
The coolest electrical system of all is building a house that does't need to use much electricity because it's very well-insulated, has windows placed in ways that won't funnel solar heat into your house, and can use natural drafts to keep the house cool many seasons out of the year.
Don't approach your cool solar-powered house as "just slap a few more solar panels on the ground and paint some lightning stripes bc it's cool." Approach it as a game of how you can build your house so that you don't need many. It would be cool if your AC/heat (the largest consumer of electricity) kicked in very rarely at all.
Ground based heat pump
Easy electrical distribution in crawl space or attic for running future circuits
Conduit for future proofing communications cables
Battery backup ~30kwh if want to overkill and run mostly off grid.
No need to do smart panel, it’ll be easier to maintain by going overkill on the battery backup and smart switch rather than switching off power via the panel.
I wouldn't use the EV battery for storage, I don't think. It sounds cool on paper, but I tend to prefer to avoid extra complexity in an already necessarily-complex system. My opinion might change if it became a well-established and reliable standard practice.
Oh for sure. EV backfeed would only be for emergency power outage situations, not normal daily solar-leveling. The new NACS standard includes provisions for V2H/V2G so it would be cool to future proof it, I think more cars in the next 4-5 years will start to support it. With a 75+ kWh battery you could power a house for DAYS easily.
Induction Stove and Electric water heater hookups- this and a heat pump get you free of natural gas, so you don't have run that pipe to or in the house, and don't have to pay 30$/month in fees for minimal actual usage (varies by area, but probably a long term trend everywhere).
I'd love Data and power conduits to attic/basement. You might cut budget on your build (ie no solar), but having conduits is future proofing to ease installation later.
Overkill, imo, but Christmas light outlets at roofline is a silly thing some people love. Bonus points for including a switch for them in the main house.
Oh yeah, our current house is all electric and our next one will be also, if we build it. Induction is great. Water heater will be heat pump type.
Conduits are good, I wish I had those in this house....
Honestly, I’d save money on some of that stuff (the smart panel for sure) and make sure you’re getting the most energy efficient insulation and windows possible.
Second the heat pump. Also, I live out in a rural area where we get a lot of outages. What we do here is have backup generators, generally run off propane. While you may want a "greener" setup, the basic wiring changes to run part of your house during an outage remains the same. This entails deciding which circuits need to be on a separate panel and installing the switchover ability. Pay attention to what you really need if the power is off for say, a week. You need water (flush toilets, drinking, cooking), so you need to power the well and pressure tank, but not necessarily the hot water heater. Do you want to power a freezer, your fridge? Stoves suck a LOT of energy, so we just support enough in our kitchen to run the coffee Maker, microwave, and a hot plate. We have two fireplaces, one gas and one wood, so we don't run the furnace off the generator. So think about what you would need to be reasonably functional with no power during a winter ice storm outage that lasts a week.
We did 20kw in panels with three Powerwalls with 3 zones of heat pump and an EV. I still have fossil for back up and hot water. Infinite hot water and we always know the backup system is working. In the NE we are likely to need the batteries when there's the least solar to charge them. So a backup for your backup is a good plan.
With HVAC don't forget the V. Look into ASHRI standards for air quality. Contractors usually concentrate on heating and cooling.
Looked into SPAN panel. But I wasn't convinced of the long term support. Went with a big load center and sub panel.
When I design my house I'm seriously considering putting all the fixture lighting onto 12v circuits separate from the plug circuits.
USB and ethernet plates in every room which run to a dedicated data closet.
Roof mount solar, obviously. Not sure about battery backup; I'm not convinced by the RoI in my area (I can count the number of longer-than-a-second power outages I've had at my current place in the last decade on one hand). I'd be okay just feeding back to the grid.
Not exactly electrical, but if my house has a pool I'm tying the house, the pool, and the water heater into the same heat pump loop with a secondary ground source. Seems stupid to pay to heat a pool and then simply eject the unwanted heat in my house into the ground. Same vein, also going with hydronic heating and cooling with zones for every room.
It's a standard voltage for outdoor lighting. The plan is/was to step it down with a driver for every room. A lot of the specifics are going to be based on what's actually commercially available for lighting fixtures, but the idea is that it's wasteful on parts and heat to run 110 and have an in-bulb driver that steps it down for every socket.
Before you buy in VA. Make note.. your property tax will add everything you own.
Cars, boats, even a 9' dingy, any and all buildings, even a portable shed.. all taxed.
Although I love the area near-ish to Abingdon, where we purchased property a few years ago, I wish I knew about the taxes on everything you own.
Install a whole house surge protector. It will keep your expensive appliances and heat pump from failing early due to surges in your power line. My power goes out several times a year and I imagine every time the power comes back there's a surge.
Consider that if you need heat in the winter you might not want it to be electric because that's when your solar resource is low. Less hours of daylight, plus sun is lower in sky.
EE here who does infrastructure and multi-family home design:
PV with battery, and also a generator interconnect, something like this:
https://catalog.eslpwr.com/product/70-200a-up-to-600vac-temptap-generator-docking-station-with-breaker/
a "smart panel" like you described probably isn't useful. turning off circuits really provides no benefit unless your panel is overloaded. Just get the largest service size you can get without getting a CT (probably 200A service). Conduits to everything! Every switch, receptacle, light and fan should be in conduit.
Networking in conduit, in the walls, to a central location. 3/4" conduit minimum, 1" preferred. 3-cat6 to each room or TV location minimum.
To answer your question regarding the solar/house/ev question yes, it's possible to have them all feeding the house at once, I'd suggest just using different panels for each set of "power sources" you want. Essentially you'll have your main panel and then off of that, you'll have sub panels: Main grid, PV, EV, Generator, etc. Whatever loads you want on each source in an emergency will be on each of those panels. You'll need a complex ATS system to do all the switching and phasing of start up during grid power loss but it can be doable, just depends on how much $$$$$$$$$ you wanna spend.
So long as it's not underground conduit, it's fine. In fact the NEC requires NM cables (which is the type of cable "Romex" is) to be in conduit when being protected from physical damage. (NEC 334.15(B))
Still not needed IMO. What's OP going to load shed? some appliance that isn't turned on and pulls negligible power? A TV that takes up 1Wh while turned off? The benefits are too small for the added hassle of a complex system that could break and accidently turn off his fridge when they're away or something.
Off the top of my head I can't think of any loads they'd be able to shed that would make an impact worthy of the cost or risk of such a system.
Dumb answer but... Conduit - you will inevitably have to add/change/upgrade down the road - not having to rip the walls open to do so will make you much happier.
- Solar with whole house battery, V2G and grid tie
- Smart panel integrated into solar management
- smart switches (use a real system like Lutron Caseta or RA3, not shitty WiFi on individual components)
- adaptive lighting (color temp matches time of day)
- radiant floor heat in at least the bathrooms (either electric or hydronic with…
- geothermal heat pump for both HVAC and domestic hot water
- low voltage data lines to every room, outside corners of the house, and the front door
- shaft mount garage door motors
- low voltage wiring to each window for motorized blinds
If I was doing it, I'd get a big sub panel and put all my critical loads on the sub panel - maybe a bunch of lighting circuits, fridge, microwave, networking stuff, plus maybe one outlet per bedroom. Plus the EVSEs (and solar, if you're permitted to). Then I'd have a generator input and a manual lockout installed.
I think that would give you a lot of future flexibility. V2H (vehicle to home) isn't really that prevalent yet but could be.
There are two huge variables here, which is how your energy utility handles solar billing and also how reliable they are for outages.
Like knock on wood but I'm in a state with net metering and I am a few blocks from a big substation so I lose power once a year and never for more than a few hours. It's simply not worth investing big money in battery storage or a generator. If power is out for more than 4 hours I have a 1000w inverter I hook up to a car and run my fridge just long enough to cool it back down. I also have 2000w portable generator that hooks up to a grill propane tank (as a two EV household I don't have any gasoline and don't want to store any) and just run an extension cord to my fridge. Keep in mind a lot of EVs don't like inverters though.
>Keep in mind a lot of EVs don't like inverters though.
Meaning you can't charge an EV with an inverter? Is this because the inverter is producing a square wave and not a sign wave, or something else? If so, it seems like an inverter quality issue not an EV issue.
No, I mean like there isn't a good way to attach an inverter to run household loads off of the traction battery, aside from the newer EV pickup trucks that are now starting to come with high power 240v outlets in the beds.
But for most other EVs, you need to run an inverter off the 12v system which has a lot of limitations - a lot of EVs only use the 12v for lights and infotainment so they only have a ~1000w 12v power supply and they may not constantly be running it so you risk draining the 12v battery, or they may have a load management system that throws an error code if there's a large unexpected load. Running anything more than a ~200w inverter (which can plug into a cigarette lighter) is a dicey proposition and depends a lot on the model.
You very well could have 100 kWh parked in your garage during a power outage and no way to use it to keep your fridge from thawing.
That’s not the way it works. You move the car battery energy to the house batteries. The inverter pulls the power from the house batteries. The car is hooked to the inverter through a generator input.
Put solar on your roof. Get yourself a flat roof with a slight pitch to the south.
For solar on the ground, you need a lot of land. If you angle the panels towards the sun then they cast a shadow that will interfere with the other panels. So you'll need a lot of land.
Smart electric panels are a solution to a problem that you don't have. They can turn off circuits if you overdraw your mail n breaker. Just put in 400A service instead. If you really want, you can put in monitoring.
Dig deep for a ground-sourced heat pump.
100% would not ever put a smart panel in. That's just asking for expensive problems later (and extra expense out the gate for why?). I'm annoyed that I have a smart fridge (BTW Bosch fridge sucks ass, 2/10). Keep in mind MD has a rain tax, so make sure you make your roof small if you decide to go there.
Definitely set up for a backup generator. The battery systems all seem pretty nice and nifty, but at the end of the day that generator doesn't care about the temperature or the weather.
Do make sure you are set up for at least 200 amp service, if not 400 if you're planning on multiple EVs, and a big panel to match. Or, as others have suggested, a sub panel for the necessities that's wired to a backup in the event of power loss. Obviously solar power changes this a bit, but I would probably still do it that way to extend the batteries if something happens.
A giant robot arm that will carry me from the bed to the bathroom to the kitchen to my easy chair. Not once will my fat round feet will touch the floor
I am going through the planning stages for our next "forever" home. I will definteltely be utilizing the SPAN smart panels (or other options that may be available, when we break ground.
We will also be getting the MOST DENSE battery options available, currently considering everything LFP based.
Heat pump for cooling - AC - solutions as we live in Florida, is a must.
ALL LED lighting, smart lights, as well.....
Solar panels on every beneficial spot we can find, and micro-grids around the yard, for remote power....small solar panels and battery storage for patio and work spaces, not on the main house grid.
We will have enough solar power to fill the main house batteries to supply all our power needs, as well as power any future EVs we will be purchasing, as well.
It is. It's also interesting to note how many of those against them are IT experts, and how few of those in favor of them cite computer expertise.
I wholly get the convenience factor of having everything "just work"! I'm just taking notice of the fact that those with the most understanding of the underlying systems and vulnerabilities seem most against them.
I currently have everything IT locked down, and am completely confident that future home will also be quite secure.
It's not hard to do, if you know what you want to do, and how to do it.
No electrical permit required, a lot less headaches keeping the wiring up to code because it's such low voltage, etc. And much less juice to run them off a backup battery or generator. The cable costs a shitload less than typical copper wire, too. I guess it's super nonstandard in that I haven't ever seen anyone else do it, but then again I've never seen another hay bale house either, and apparently those aren't entirely uncommon.
Up on our mountain the snowfall gets very heavy sometimes. Year before last we had like 6' over the course of winter, and it started with a 3' dump. You don't want to be stuck in that wondering how TF to power your lighting.
I could be remembering wrong and they were 12v lights, but either way the system ran on 12v power.
I'm in this process now.
100% will put in battery back up and ground mount solar. I'm going to do ground source heat pump. I'm also going to super insulate. I'll likely go with at least a 20kw of backup.
My local power company offers rebates for ev charging if you get the right charger and higher levels if they can interface with your car.
I'll also have a main panel and a few sub panels. Victron is the gold standard for battery back up and management. They can do multiple controllers with communication between the two for total management. With that I'll have a 'critical power' sub panel so that if I need too I can kill all but refrigerators and heat pump. Coupled with a well insulated house this will be more than enough for even a few days outage (which I've never had).
I'll also run cat-6 to every room and have a mesh network with wired back haul.
We are in the northeast and have the following, 33 panel solar producing around 15mW/yr, Whole house 14,000w generator. Plus 2 wood stoves that we use our own cut wood from our property and oil furnace. We have 2 EV’s a hot tub and pool that help eat up our solar production.
While you're at it don't neglect your low voltage wiring. Being able to have a wired back haul to a wired switch for your wireless access points will get you very solid results vs just running mesh systems. Also consider future potential placement of IP cameras.
A heat pump water heater is so efficient (depending on your climate, where it is installed, etc.) that you kind of don’t need to worry about when it cycles.
For hot water, maybe have a heat pump heater with a separate external storage tank, that could be a really efficient way to get a lot of hot water accessible on demand and use extremely little energy. Could also play around with ducting the heat pump’s air intake and exhaust differently in different seasons, to maximize the efficiency. And/or place it near another appliance that generates heat. Etc.
The difference angle makes to solar panels can be made up for by adding a couple of more panels. Also, since you're designing the house, you can optimize the roof angle and direction. The upside to putting them on the ground is easier access for cleaning, and easier access to the roof for maintenance. Pigeons nest under the panels on the roof and make a mess, too.
If you live somewhere that gets a lot of sun, solar on the roof can give an added benefit of keeping the sun from heating up your roof and requiring a lot more AC to cool.
If you are in a more temperate place, having the entire shell of your house blown full of foam insulation could keep your house around 71 degrees when the outside temps dip to 45-60... just from the heat absorbed thru your roof.
When it is 45-65ish here unfortunately it's rarely), no heater is necessary.
In my neck of the woods (NE US), ground mounted solar is taxable as part of property taxes while roof mounted is not.
But if you have enough land to make it worthwhile it t not be a factor.
If you are getting your primary power from solar which is DC its more efficient to power it directly than converting to ac only to have it convert back to dc again inside the appliance.
Supposedly theres less motor noise as well.
I was thinking it would be cool to do 2 separate internal grids. outlets that are connected to your utility grid and a separate set of outlets connected to a different panel that is for off grid battery+solar.
Then when you get solar you can be offgrid but have the option to plug into grid electricity.
The reason for this for me is that SRP in phoenix charges insane fees for solar which wash out any savings. By having solar off grid i can get the savings without the fees.
Consider going with more than a 200 Amp panel. Or in any event make damn sure your electrician doesn't think that "100 Amps is plenty."
Believe it or not, I just built an ADU for my brother up near Cape Cod. The "Master Electrician" was going to put a 100 Amp panel in! He seriously thought that would be plenty, even though we were installing an EV charger (Tesla wall charger), electric washer/dryer, induction cooktop, separate wall ovens, and a Heat Pump with electric coil backup heater. If I hadn't notice the box during a walk-through, that's what he would have done. I also asked him to have 2 panels (one master, one sub): one for outlets and 220V items, and one for wall switches. He told me I am crazy, that's a stupid way to do it, etc. on end. And yet, the last 4 homes I've had (Virginia and Georgia) have been wired that way. Gives you room to grow for circuits, and makes finding the right circuit easy-peasy.
Cool electric systems break and their design is so novel that few if any can repair it and it's very expensive. And now you have a broken cool thing you'll never repair. It's why you don't see a lot of cool electric designs in houses.
If you want a battery backup, just build your own bank using lead acid batteries. Lithium can handle only so many charge cycles, plus they can be dangerous with spontaneous combustion. Building your own system is pretty basic once you understand it, and depending on how much wattage you're trying to get, not that expensive.
Sounds like you like the idea of going full green, but having a large propane tank to supply heat and cooking is quite efficient and will cut down on your electric demand.
If you're building the house from the ground up, I would install radiant floor heating. It's extremely efficient and comfortable.
I would also consider a tankless water heater (instahot), if only for the kitchen sink and not the entire house as it cuts down on water usage. You can hook these up to propane for even better efficiency.
Some companies out there are offering fully built units to pull water from the air. They are generators that condensate the water into a reservoir. You can buy as large as 500 gallons a day, down to say 13 gallons a day. Powering it would be your major concern, but weighing the cost against a well might be something to consider.
I would not bank on using the car batteries as a power source for the house. In an emergency, you don't want your house and your car to be dead at the same time.
Solar roof might be an expensive but do-everything option.
I would use solar thermal water heating with a heat pump tank WH to back it up. You could probably even schedule the heat pump water heater so it doesn't run during times when you're unlikely to have solar power.
Keep this in mind: You will likely find that you'll spend far more than you'll save. If this is a plan to save money on electricity, it may not pan out. You'll be increasing the cost of your construction by a significant amount, probably paying mortgage interest on it, and it may not save you enough over the life of the equipment to create a very positive ROI.
Have you checked your state/local power buy back rates on any of your solar/generation plans? I know here in Iowa the buy back rate is so low that unless your footing the bill yourself installing solar is not a good financial move. I want solar badly but not at the current cost. However Minnesota has a much more favorable buy back and it makes solar a much easier sell.
It's all down to the current state governments and their priorities, Iowa's being to drive us back into the stone age.
Have both GFCI and AFCI for all likely circuits at the panel (not just for an outlet). They can protect the entire circuit that way from both zaps and dirty or uneven power. Those and the whole house surge protector will help protect your expensive electrical appliances and devices.
This is a small thing in tespect to some of the huge ideas folks are coming up with, but Think about wiring for powered shades in your living areas, study and master bedroom.
They are getting more affordable every year, and if you ever decide to do them, you’ll be ready.
Get the best windows with smart glass and insulation you can afford and get the biggest electrical service line your provider will allow. Build on a slope and have a walkout basement and have all your hvac and hot water heater down there. Get an insulated garage door and the best insulated exterior doors and solar powered attic exhaust fans. Get the most efficient hvac you can afford.
I wouldn’t put much money into solar. It’s still pretty inefficient and very expensive and even if your area still has net metering, that could change at any time. Some states have changed the rules and $ amounts that the electric company has to pay you. Solar companies in my area have had to diversify into electrical and hvac work.
For smart panels, I’d stay away from brands that aren’t well established. I’ve seen some startup brands offering that. I’d look at the Leviton panel. It’s pretty nice looking and offers smart breakers.
Solar quality review guy here: Span panel for smart load management plus Tesla Powerwall is super efficient. If building home from scratch, add a pull box to attic and crawl space for future unforeseen circuit needs. If trying to charge from vehicle, battery back up is sort of irrelevant. One or the other set up makes most sense. Cheers!
How much money do you have?
So my dream with unlimited cash:
1) solar panels on top of the entire roof
2) proper sloping / drainage at each part of the solar panel roof to enable catchment of rain water into a filter then a rain water tank
3) small wind turbines at the roof to catch wind power
4) a really large ups (or 2 for a HA system) to store and cycle the power in the house in a consistent manner
5) using the rain water catchment to cool/heat the house, as well as using it for day to day uses such as WC flushing, watering plants etc
6) high ceilings to circulate air and cool the house
7) windows to have solar film that acts as solar panels
nothing fancy. have every room on its own breaker for ease of electrical fixes in future. have 2 20 amp lines running to the kitchen on separate breakers to minimize of tripping breakers. where ever you have designated as being "entertainment" rooms, run seperate a 20amp line.
the house itself. use passive design to conserve energy. using less power in summer to cool it and less power in winter the heat house.
If there is a panel/ switch that couldn't connect the solar, battery, and ev at the same time, you could probably wire a series of switches that turn them on in a certain order during a blackout.
I'd be really tempted to skip the smart panel due to concerns about it working after the company stops supporting it in 10 years or goes out of business and stops producing parts. If you know what you want powered before you build, an alternative could be two panels. A small one with the circuits that will be powered during a blackout and a larger one for everything else. This is not a flexible solution, unlike smart panels, but it could reduce repair costs.
Ideas:
~Smart light switches instead of smart light bulbs.
~Adding an electrical monitoring device to provide better insight into your power usage. (Some smart panels could do this).
~Run DC outlets next to the ac ones or put in dc lights. It takes energy to convert from DC solar panels/ battery to ac wires and then back to DC electronics/appliances. (Not sure if this technology is available yet outside of vehicles or low voltage outdoor lights).
Decorative light led strips that are permanently attached to your roof line/ house. (Permanent Christmas lights)
~Depending on the style of house, wiring in window sills for electric candles.
~I believe having a garage attached to a house requires a carbon monoxide detector. Code might require one to be placed high up, but go above and beyond code by placing an additional one at knee level. (I think low ones are more prone to issues due to dust).
~Security system wiring.
~Whole house speakers or speaker zones. Surround sound for the tv.
All of these sound like good ideas. Just to add to it, IMO the best thing you can do is design the building to need as little thermoregulation as possible in the first place. Around 50 years ago our society collectively forgot 5,000 years of experience with natural thermoregulation, on the assumption energy would be cheap forever. Have lived in buildings with both good and bad thermoregulation- even in 2024 there is no HVAC technology that can make a small building nearly as comfortable as good natural thermoregulation can.
Consider more passive designs to conserve energy to reduce demands on electricity... Geothermal water circulation keeps water cool in the summer and warm in the winter reducing the demand on heaters and chillers. Wall thickness and roof overhang to address sun angle heating and cooling can be another move... Lots more out there to research.
Water heated floor using glycol is awesome too. The concrete layed on top of the piping act as a thermal mass. If you have some large windows getting sun in the winter that can heat the floor at the same time it reduce the amount of energy your water heater has to put in. Plus in the summer it keeps the house cooler (as long as you have proper shades/overhang preventing the sun to heat it or extract the heat to somewhere else).
I’m curious of the longevity and failure rate of this. It sounds great, but also expensive to fix if something bad happens
I had one installed in my previous house when I had it built. The plumber was telling me I could expect a lifetime of approx 80 years for the system. You can't obviously do it on the cheap. All the piping need to be extremely good. Keep in mind that the plastic pipes they run in the concrete is a single run for each zone, so there's no joint to fail. The plastic pipe has to fail. It has some flexibility into it, so even if there's some settling happening and ultimately concrete fracturing, the pipes themselves should survive. Otherwise, if something was to happen, you'll need to remove the flooring, and break the inch and half lightweight concrete to expose the pipe. It would be a messy process, but not any less than if you'd had to open the up the walls or ceiling to fix duct work. I really loved it. It is so comfortable and ridiculously efficient. The house was built to modern standard and high efficiency code, but my total power bill to heat 2 stories and base of 930sq ft each was 800$ CAD a year. I could even have installed a solar water heater to reduce it further.
You don't need glycol to heat your floor, water is more efficient
Yes but if you live in a cold climate where you could lack power for an extended amount of time, you'll need to drain the system to prevent freezing in the pipes. It's an added safety.
Water freezes.
Virginia is very hot and humid, so air conditioning is at least as important as heating. For that reason an all-air system would be much more cost effective.
Are the aerogel insulating strips still available? They went on the room-facing edge of the studs and, while a bit expensive at first, supposedly paid off in a couple of years.
You could just make Bonfig-style walls for a lot cheaper than the aerogel stuff.
I've never heard of these before. I can definitely see where all my studs are on a thermal camera. I can't find an actual product for this after a bit of searching though.
You pull the drywall off, run horizontal steel studs with some kind of thermal break between the steel and wood stud contact points, then you add 1.5" insulation in the new cavities.
I live in the northern Midwest and keeping the water an even temp would be amazing for us. We use dramatically more hot water in the winter because our water tower gets cold as hell. The cold water coming out of the tap is literally painful in January.
Unless you’re right by the tower, it’s more the temperature in the main and lateral piping that does this. 8-10 feet below grade is still chilly in the winter, although warmer than ambient temperatures.
I live and die by my eaves. It makes such a huge difference on south facing windows especially to have an appropriate overhang depth
looking at simple electric here; breaker meticulously organized. a switch for each room and separate switches for each 220 plug.
Getting back to basics, nice! Overkill with circuits sounds good to me. Would love to shut off power to only one bedroom when I have to do electrical work in there!
Better yet - separate circuit for outlets and lights per room. That way if you are working on an outlet - you still have lights. And if you are working on lights - you have outlets so you can power a portable light out of it.
I wired our house when we built six years ago and did this. Each room has a dedicated lighting and a dedicated outlet circuit. It works well (and the cost in the grand scheme is small if you're doing it yourself).
YES YES HOLY SHIT YES Also, for pure aesthetics: all my European friends shit on American electrical systems for our lights flickering when you turn a hair dryer on. It does make you feel like you live in a crappy house.
I mean you do live in a crappy house if that is happening.
This just gave me a semi
I did this when I rewired my house and it is \*chef's kiss\* amazing.
Do you have a generator backup? That's my only concern with "one room per breaker" is that if I end up with a subpanel of critical loads for generator/battery backup, I'd want one outlet in each room coming from that I think
sure, that works too, i actually thought of that while writing the post but skipped it. each "critical plug" would have the same cover but the plug itself might be black instead of white or something
I think hospitals do this. The orange plugs are on the generator system
Correct. The orange outlets are on the emergency generator. And it wouldn't be super difficult to do this for a house. Mostly just remembering to spec it and check that it's done.
Why not size the generator for whole house power. That way you don’t have to have “critical outlets” and instead know that when the power goes out you can turn on whatever you want in the house just like you still had power from the power company?
Could do that. Biggest draw would be HVAC though. Would probably have to be a pretty decent sized generator
You can have modules on larger draw items to shut them down if the load is high. We have them on HVAC and water heaters.
Where I live, about half of power outages happen during winter storms. HVAC is probably the *most* important load for the generator. If the house freezes, the pipes freeze, and that's a disaster.
You can adjust the order they go off....we have hotwater first then different zones of HVAC. You need to know your draw and then decide what to prioritize. If you have electric aux heat you need to see what that draw is if you are really worried about house freezing. In my case I monitor full draw on my panel and have never seen anything close to what our generator can handle. But we don't have cold winters.
I’ve had a few neighbors who have the whole house generators. They can be pricy but the few times I’ve lost power for multiple days they all seemed to really appreciate having full power in their house without having to run extension cords to different devices in the house from a stand alone generator, or only have specific outlets that worked. Also with a standby generator with automatic failover you don’t have to be home to throw the transfer switch yourself!
> Biggest draw would be HVAC though. Have you looked into heat pumps for HVAC needs?
My current house has a heat pump. The 4ton outside unit is on a 40amp breaker, which I assume means it can draw 32 amps. Have not checked actual draw though. That's like 7.5kW, plus the air handling fans/etc inside. So if I want to cover that, well pump, water heater, stove, and some outlets....I'd probably need something 15-20kW at least
Traditional compressors have a huge draw, far in excess of the circuit rating, on startup, for a very brief period. This can be an issue for electronic inverters, as they need to be able to handle that momentary load. You would be better off with a variable speed compressor, as they are typically DC and run from an inverter, and start slowly. Unfortunately, I didn't think they have this option for well pumps, but pool pumps do have that capability. Also, newer air conditioners typically have a lower power need than the ones they replaced. My 3 ton AC units are fed by 30A breakers, but there is a 20A breaker in the disconnect, as that's all the new ones need. One sizes the circuit from the compressor ratings plate. The highest usage I've ever seen from my house is 15kW. An electric dryer, and electric stove contribute to those peaks. A heat pump dryer would reduce one of the things that add to the peaks, but they are slower. On a new build, better attention to air sealing and insulation can dramatically reduce air conditioner size, but ironically increase the need for dehumidification and an ERV for fresh air. Direct vent to the outside for over a cooktop, and makeup air fans to replace the air removed by the vent motor are also needed in a tight house.
I have a generator but I haven't done the done the interconnect yet. Had a baby so I had to hold off on the sub panel in favor of getting in the house. Hoping soon to get it done though, and that's my plan is to add at least a few backup outlets throughout the house.
That would be nice. My panel was clearly wired for electrician convenience and you never know what a given breaker is going shut off. Two bedroom outlets and two hallway outlets, and a hallway light, for example. It's not helpful. I spend so much time looking for the right breaker it's usually easier to just shut down the whole panel.
Spend an hour figuring it out and then never have to again. One of the first things I did when I moved in, and how I discovered someone had spliced two circuits together (meaning tripping one breaker wouldn't cut the power, and the wires could melt etc.).
That's how most houses are wired. Geraldo a 20 amp breaker per room for plugs. However lighting is usually separate from plugs.
And leave some space in your panel. My current house is not old and was built with the panel almost at capacity. No open spaces and most of the double breaker spaces already filled with doubles.
Add a whole house surge protector to the box.
Total waste of copper. Better idea would be subpanels on each floor for quick access. Even better would be a mechanical room on each floor with dedicated water heater, panel, etc.
Subpanels are awesome, there's only one downside: if you want to put in a generator and a transfer switch, you can't really pick and choose critical circuits to power with a generator, and it basically becomes an "all or nothing" deal.
What the guy below said. Not a big deal at all unless your power goes out monthly.
The easiest way to put in a generator is directly into the main panel and then you turn on the circuits you want to have power. The only pain with sub panels is you would have to first run all over the house to turn off all the circuits before connecting the generator. The generator panel feed has a sliding plate that requires the street mains to be shut off before you can turn on the generator feeds.
I had a house with a water manifold to shut off water for each feed. The cost is minimal, especially with Pex.
Is there any reason that's frowned on, code, etc? Dear god I would love to just rip out all the wiring in my semi-finished basement, run a sub panel and do it all from scratch.
Don't forget a dedicated circuit for the corners of your house under the eaves. Christmas lights or home security cams.
One dedicated 20 amp outlet for each bedroom/room as well. Never know when you might want a space heater or window AC for supplemental heating/cooling... OR you buy a laser printer that dims the lights and causes the battery backup for your computer to chirp any time it starts up...
As a tesla customer.....don't use tesla brands. THey've been going to shit lately. My neighbor has been waiting for 3 years for his tesla roof to get finished too.
Not surprised about the Tesla roof. It was a different company (SolarCity) that Elon and his brother sat on the board of (as well as Tesla the same time, certainly no conflict of interest), and Musk lied his ass off to shareholders so he could buy the company using Tesla stock, and it was such a scam that Tesla shareholders sued him. Eventually Musk won because it's really, really, really, really, really hard to win a shareholder derivative suit. Musk just needed to make a not-transparently-bullshit justification to win. And that's obviously easy to do when you are working on an EV/solar panel/battery deal. He's not liable *legally*, but it doesn't change the actual facts.
You didn’t mention your budget - this is the first thing you should be deciding. Everything you mentioned is possible, except maybe the EV backfeed, as I’m not sure how many backfeed-capable vehicles there are out there right now. Keep in mind that a battery backup system capable of powering your entire home is going cost many 10’s of thousands of dollars, only to sit there unused for 99.99999% of the time. Even if you have solar. Because currently the rates for backfeeding electricity into the grid are 1:1, meaning there’s no benefit to storing electricity to sell it during off-hours (in most states). The bottom line is that fossil fuel-powered generators are still by far the least expensive way to have whole home backup power. And emissions aren’t really a concern, as they have almost 0 carbon footprint. Because they just sit there unused for basically their entire service life, unless you live somewhere with an extremely unstable power grid. From the sounds of it, you’re trying to design a fully resilient off-grid system. Which is only useful if you have extended long-term power issues. But, if you’re dead-set on a full battery system, a solar or renewable power company can help you figure out the specifics of the system, and can help you come up with some actual numbers.
>Keep in mind that a battery backup system capable of powering your entire home is going cost many 10’s of thousands of dollars, only to sit there unused for 99.99999% Yes, but... where I live off-peak rates electricity rates are 20% of peak rates and \~40% of the standard rate. Being able to run off batteries during peak times and charge during off-peak would pay for itself over time. I don't use enough power to get the ROI needed for this. But when home battery prices come down, this will be a viable option. Best-case I have a 5 year ROI. Likely closer to 10. I don't expect to live here that long. I don't know how soon home battery prices will come down significantly. Likely not until we have next-gen battery technology. Maybe super-capacitors with batteries will be the answer? I'm not an EE so not sure what the viability is.
*backfeed capable* is also not really the standard. Some are V2L and some are V2H and there are different ways to connect them to your house. That said, the US/CAN market has only a few. The markets outside of them have a lot more.
Go big on solar and battery backup, dude.
Fact. Plan on 1kw per hour and be able to store any excess energy. An electric car battery is a good option but needs to be bidirectional.
It sounds good on paper but EV batteries are expensive and degrade with number of cycles. If you are using the battery to shift solar power daily, probably cheaper and more convenient with a home battery.
Not as the main, but more like a backup or reserve.
I see the value in it, but I feel that reducing the range on my car during a power outage has more risk than benefit.
Pedantically, 1kW/h indicates an *increasing* draw as time goes on, i.e. you use one kilowatt more for every hour that passes. I think you mean 1kWh/h or...1 kW.
This. Do what I did. 2 EV charging stations at 22kW each and a V2L line hooked up to the inverter to transfer energy from car batteries to house batteries.
Except no cars can take 22kW in North America, except I think the F150L? And I don't think they will be coming in the future either. I thought 22kW was an EU thing because they have 3phase. I have 11.5kW to my car and I feel that is way overkill, I could easily get by with 6kW comfortably
I read that the F150L has the battery capacity of 8-10 Tesla Powerwalls , and the cost of either was about the same. So get the F150L for the same price as the Powerwalls and get a free truck too!
Was it this video by any chance? They were very convincing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATAFIoXTEe8
If you’re going big, look into geothermal HVAC. very efficient - especially for heat pump mode, and makes hot water as a byproduct. Expensive, and not really an ROI when considering cost to energy savings, but excellent for electric HVAC source. If it were me, I’d do a geothermal HVAC and a gas water heater. Run the water heater on propane and only turn it on when power is out. My hot water heater hasn’t turned on in the 4 years I’ve owned my home because of the byproduct from the geo.
> Smart panel I am a software engineer working in cybersecurity, you could not pay me enough money to put a smart panel anywhere near my house. It will be a BIG (think thousands of dollars minimum) problem, it is just a matter of time. There is a common joke / saying, the S in IoT stands for security and the P for privacy. It's only a joke because if we didn't laugh we'd be crying too much. > Ground mounted solar, assuming we have the land. Avoids interference with roof You are building a new home, just put them on the roof. Unless you have a lot of spare land to use. > Some sort of battery backup Depending on your time frame and where you are building, it might be more economical (in terms of tax breaks & credits) to put this in down the road. It also depends where you live and power restoration times, if it might take more than a day to restore power I would look at a generator first. Less than a day battery system. > Ability for EV's to back-feed the house I don't know that this is so useful, generally you want your vehicle ready to go rather then drained to save a few dollars on power. Especially if you have decent solar you shouldn't be needing to back-feed from your EV. I would get more than one EV charging outlet, you can use them to run other things. > heat pump HELL YEA! heat pumps are 100% the way to go. Basically if there is a heat pump option you should probably take it, obviously do the research but they are some of the best option on the market. --- OK all that out of the way, my priority would be to get to as little energy usage from the grid as positive, negative usage (e.g. you are feeding more in that you are taking would be ideal). Once that is done, then I would start looking at storage solutions, and backups. As I mentioned a lot of this depends on where you live and the utilities options around there.
What my smart panel built by a company that knows nothing about privacy is susceptible to being compromised?? No. My ring doorbell that stores all footage on the cloud would alert me if any malicious actors! /s
Exactly! And not only that, companies like to slap "smart" crap onto things without having a software engineering team and then you get shit like [AirBnb's Locks getting remotely bricked by an update](https://boingboing.net/2017/08/14/airbnbs-preferred-smart-lock.html). That is the last thing I want, a bad update shutting off power to my house till who knows when.
Damn I hate ring doorbells. When we got our cameras, local storage was a must.
Why not just make it local, restrict it to a LAN? I cannot imagine they NEED an outside connection just to work. If anything, connect it to the cloud periodically for updates, otherwise I’d keep it off.
> I cannot imagine they NEED an outside connection just to work You would be surprised. It is upsettingly common you have to do some research to make sure the stuff you are buying doesn't need cloud connectivity.
The majority of home automation / IoT stuff sold today requires connection to the public Internet. Everyone wants to be able to use a mobile app / Alexa / Siri to control their widget and the easiest way to do this is via the Internet. Plus companies like it because data. I do a lot of research and avoid buying things that will require a proprietary app and Internet connection to use, and it can be really hard to find something sometimes.
>I am a software engineer working in cybersecurity, you could not pay me enough money to put a smart panel anywhere near my house. s/w engineer here as well. I worked in cyber for a while, now doing other stuff. The amount of enabled IoT in my house is exactly 0 . All of it is hackable and it looks like a big gaping hole in your network to a hacker. If you must use IoT, get a router that allows you to enable a guest network. Not 100% hacker-proof, but makes it challenging enough that you will probably be left alone.
I'm building a house right now and my entire security system and "smart" house items will be hosted from my own internal servers with my own IP address, etc. my brother works in IT security and I work in healthcare cybersecurity. With our powers combined we are both paranoid AND tactical! Also, unrelated to anything else, I'm wiring a raspberry pi to an antique organ I bought and when you play a certain cord my bookshelf will slide over to reveal my arcade room
That’s how all of mine is done. I have over 100 devices on my network, but all run through a personal server behind a firewall.
IT'S REX MANNING DAY! Easy to run a system like that when there's 24 useable hours in every day.
My house's builders went all-in on IoT bullshit. Or, rather, all-in on the cheapest possible implementation. No smart appliances thankfully, but literally dozens of other devices. Bulbs, switches, thermostat, locks, garage door opener, an Alexa device in every room... Ripped everything except the thermostat out ASAP, and that's on its own VLAN. I know I SHOULD get rid of it, but it's nice to be able to check when I'm out of town in the winter to make sure that the heat is still working and I'm not gonna come home to an icebox with burst pipes. There is no goddamn reason for my kitchen light bulbs to have IP addresses, and I sure as hell don't want the ability to open and close my garage door to be available through some offsite server. Standard rolling-code openers are already vulnerable enough, thank you very much.
counterpoint: you are insigificant and no one gives a fuck about hacking the gibson to steal your underwear that's the flip side to security that security pros often ignore it's the same with trauma surgeons who will never get on a bicycle bc they've operated on people who've been hit by cars while cycling
You can be hacked for more than just theft or data. Your system can be abused remotely to commit other crimes. Also: anyone in security is already more of a desirable target.
Just because you're insignificant doesn't mean you're not a target. Not every hacker out there is exclusively looking to hit big targets in hopes of a massive payday. Most of them are just looking to add as many devices as they can to botnets, get keyloggers into networks to steal credentials, and/or get ransomware into networks to squeeze a couple hundred to a few thousand dollars out of people. They may not "give a fuck about hacking the Gibson to steal your underwear," but there's plenty of malicious shit that can be done if your network has an easy entry point, and IoT devices are ***notoriously*** insecure. I'm not interested in giving bad actors several dozen such easy entry points in exchange for the ability to turn my bedroom light on and off from my phone.
And as pointed out elsewhere, IoT devices have had bad failure modes from stuff like poorly-tested updates from the manufacturer; incompetence can be just as bad as malice.
“My light switch got bricked by a firmware update.” The future is stupid.
What I've never really grasped is why a hacker is targeting my network and looking for a big gaping hole? Like what harm does that actually cause me? I understand some of the nasty things they *can* do. But why would they waste the effort? I'm not overly concerned about my privacy; I mean I'd rather have privacy than not, but if someone hacks in and steals all my data, what does that actually do to me? I have to change some passwords or maybe file a fraud report with the bank? There may be some dire consequence I haven't fully understood, and please let me know if there is. People feel very strongly about this, and I'm sure their reasons are valid. But with how I see things, the rewards of convenience of smart stuff on my network vastly outweighs the risks of potential vulnerability.
> you could not pay me enough money to put a smart panel anywhere near my house. what is the attack vector for a smart panel that is inaccessible outside the LAN if someone gets into my house and patches into my home network, i could care less if he flips a few breakers
Also software engineer here... Agree on the IoT lack of security/privacy because of the inaccessible firmware and internet connections. If money was not a constraint, and assuming I could get around building codes, I would not have a single wall switch in the house. How can this be done with security/privacy and get reliability? * Wire all lights and outlets to hub(s), linen closet size, located in central locatoin. * Use relays in the hubs to control lights. * Motion sensors, temp sensors and microphones in the ceiling of every room. * Use traditional compute resources to control security * None of this connected to the internet. I had a working version of this in a desktop prototype using a Raspberry Pi... but it is not practical to implement in an old house with existing wiring and money making life got in the way.
Wow. I can imagine now being out of town, on the phone telling my wife to reboot the lights because the controller froze haha What if I want to sit in a chair and read a book? Do the lights go off?
I dislike having to go to my phone to operate switches that I use often. And it would drive my wife nuts, not to mention hose guests. If you want this functionality, try smart switches. Kasa brand has done me well over the past 5 years. And if tech changes, just swap them out.
I already have all smart switches... OPs question was about ideal new build. My ideal is no switches at all... everything voice/motion/schedule controlled. With obvious names like family room, living room, kitchen front, kitchen back, house guests do not have any issues... I would say it is even easier than them figuring out which of the 4 wall switches does what they want.
As someone who has a systemlike this (except I kept physical switches), I *promise* you the rules to govern this behavior are so insanely complicated you'll spend years being super pissed off until you get it right. And then you'll have a new kid, or a guest will crash at your place, or someone will die, and all those behaviors change in ways that break all your rules better to have switches
What happens when you can't turn on or off the lights because there is a pending update? Similar enough things [have happened](https://twitter.com/HardPass4/status/1463886150171566084). The AirBnb Lock getting bricked? Lights that stopped working because the company forgot to renew a domain? Lights that opened up an open wifi network anyone could connect too? Thermostats that override your temps when the utility provider wishes? Switches work, adding tech to it makes it more complicated. If you understand the tech it's one thing if you are an end consumer buying a black box you are in for a rough time. I think it is important to note, I am not hating on IoT out of fear, ignorance, or some old man yelling at the clouds... I am hating on it because I have to deal with it. I've seen how those systems are made, I've seen the issues, I've been called in to clean up the mess.
After approx. 10 years of going voice control, I can't imagine living in a house without it. It would feel like going back to a push button cable box to change channels on a TV. I currently say "Turn chair to 40%" to sit and read a book. It is not that hard. My cat gets fed and water bowl filled when we are out of town. Lights go off when we leave the room. My thermostats adjust. The inside lights come on when I pull in the drive. My outside lights turn on when someone passes the light pole in my drive and I am not home. We can say "goodnight" and all lights go out... or "lights on" and all interior and exterior lights come on. I am a leaking sieve of privacy, but all this is on a separate network from our compute resources. My ideal, build from scratch view above would add significant reliability to the system instead of having the controllers at the "leaf nodes" of the system. It would also eliminate the firmware at each switch which is the biggest security risk.
I think it's worth pointing out that physical switches and voice control are not orthogonal. I have both. Plus remotes I can carry in my pocket. I often do that late at night. I can't "Jeeves, turn on my reading light" bc my 4yo would wake up down the hall.
That sounds pretty cool! I do something similar, I run a local instance of [home assistant](https://www.home-assistant.io/), nothing is exposed to the internet. It's connected to a network of PoE sensors running on ESP32 boards to measure temp, humidity and VoCs in different parts of the house. For me it is great, been slowly building it out, has the wife approval factor. If one has the desire learn or technical skill it's very possible to have good "smart" infrastructure in your house.
Lutron Ra2 will run without internet once programmed. Not confident if it is controllable from device via wifi, without internet connection tho
I'm a software engineer and a security/privacy "hobbyist". Home Assistant has my 100% seal of approval. I got a cheap touchscreen monitor off amazon, plopped it on the wall, ran a cable to a small, quiet NUC-like pc running pop_os!. All the wires out of sight and the screen just shows my HA dashboard 24/7. My other half likes it and uses it regularly. I've got a NAS that runs all my other crap. Custom redundant DNS servers, a few (LAN only) security cams w/ frigate, some esp32 devices, etc. The whole setup is pretty sweet and 99% offline. We got google thermostats before we knew better, so those phone home unfortunately. I've also got a self-hosted "wireguard with a gui" setup using [netbird](https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird), which is very nice and allows me to tunnel in from anywhere if I _need_ to.
> I would not have a single wall switch in the house. Until your controller fails and your previously-off lights all spontaneously turn on in the middle of the night, waking everyone up, which is the default behavior for Hue lights after a power outage and then you can't turn the lights off for a minute or two as your Hue bridge reboots and re-connects to the network that is also rebooting because it lost power. Ask me how I know about the setting to change Hue lights' default behavior on power-resume
I would just be wary of installing systems that the technology will be much better in the next 5-10 years. And keep a backup solution in case the solar goes down for whatever reason.
Look into passive solar house design, get with an architect/engineer who specializes in this. There are so many ways to orient your house and make design choices that reduce loads, utilize natural wind and shading, and can help offset peaks. With everything you're putting in to be innovative and efficient, I think it's time to think beyond electrical systems.
If you are building a new house - then you can orient it E-to-W, with the roof strategically positioned to maximize sunlight. And then you put in roof solar. That will be cheaper and waaaaay better than anything ground-mounted that are hoping to get, especially if you are thinking tracker systems. “Smart panel” - no, just no. I am a former industrial automation Engineer and was there at the onset of industrial cyber-security awakening when those Iranian centrifuges were blown up, remember? (Pepperidge farm remembers). IoT is not there and I am not sure there is a strong enough push for it to get there any time soon. Either wire all your critical loads to a sub panel and only power that panel from backup, or don’t worry about it at all. 90% of the time you don’t even need backup power - grid is reliable enough in most urban places. Whatever panel size you think you need - make it even bigger. Cheaper to add circuits to a panel with spare capacity than to add another panel.
Yeah good point on the smart panels. My cybersecurity friends would say the same thing. What is your opinion on IoT thermostats? My current house is all-electric, we have two 200amp panels since the HVAC has resistance heating as a backup to the heat pump which occupies a 120A breaker within one of the panels. I'd like to think I can manage on a single 200amp panel, especially with modern LED lighting and heat pump water heater and EV load sharing, but you are right it may be better to go with a single 400A panel, with a 100 or 200A subpanel for critical loads
Replying to you here so you'll see it: Consider setting up a proper network switch with Power Over Ethernet. It's great having a couple hardwire internet ports in every room of the house, and few outdoors as well for security cameras and the like.
Your comment shouldn’t be overlooked. The good news about switches is that as long as the wiring is done, they can always be swapped.
IoT Thermostats are OK, I do like Nest that I have in both our houses. Still sucks for Cybersecurity, but the only thing people can mess with if they were to get in is my ambient temperature setting, so, not the end of the world. No camera or mic in it as far as Google is telling us, so, no concern there. PS: go 400A if you can, with multiple EVs you wanna go big or go home. But it will also depend on what the local Utility will be able to provide you with, some will only go up to 200A on service feeds.
Connected thermostats are useful, but I'm not sold on *smart* thermostats particularly if you're building a new house with energy efficiency designed in and heat pump HVAC. The smart features really require a heating system that is designed for fast recovery (eg the typical American gas furnace) to work effectively, and are ultimately making up for the fact that a typical older home loses heat pretty rapidly and wastes a lot of energy keeping itself warm while unoccupied. I have a fairly efficient but still relatively old home with a 2-zone heat pump system and I've used programmable thermostats for the past 15 years. I've played around with the programs quite a bit and basically never really got a payoff from emulating "smart" thermostat behavior, mainly because of the inherent long recovery time of heat pumps and the fact that I don't have newer style deep cold heat pumps so they tend to be more efficient and stay out of aux heat mode if the house is kept at a steady temperature. Being able to access a manual program remotely is still useful for times when you know the house is going to be unoccupied for a while. Even the most basic beige Honeywell thermostat can be set up for things like low temperature alerts. You're just going to get a lot less benefit from things like geofencing or coordinating with the weather the more efficient your house is.
220, 221. Whatever it takes
The coolest electrical system of all is building a house that does't need to use much electricity because it's very well-insulated, has windows placed in ways that won't funnel solar heat into your house, and can use natural drafts to keep the house cool many seasons out of the year. Don't approach your cool solar-powered house as "just slap a few more solar panels on the ground and paint some lightning stripes bc it's cool." Approach it as a game of how you can build your house so that you don't need many. It would be cool if your AC/heat (the largest consumer of electricity) kicked in very rarely at all.
Ground based heat pump Easy electrical distribution in crawl space or attic for running future circuits Conduit for future proofing communications cables Battery backup ~30kwh if want to overkill and run mostly off grid. No need to do smart panel, it’ll be easier to maintain by going overkill on the battery backup and smart switch rather than switching off power via the panel.
I would just want an electrical switchgear for an external generator. I could at least use it for other things, especially if it's portable.
Geothermal heat pump and house wired for Ethernet throughout
I wouldn't use the EV battery for storage, I don't think. It sounds cool on paper, but I tend to prefer to avoid extra complexity in an already necessarily-complex system. My opinion might change if it became a well-established and reliable standard practice.
Oh for sure. EV backfeed would only be for emergency power outage situations, not normal daily solar-leveling. The new NACS standard includes provisions for V2H/V2G so it would be cool to future proof it, I think more cars in the next 4-5 years will start to support it. With a 75+ kWh battery you could power a house for DAYS easily.
Induction Stove and Electric water heater hookups- this and a heat pump get you free of natural gas, so you don't have run that pipe to or in the house, and don't have to pay 30$/month in fees for minimal actual usage (varies by area, but probably a long term trend everywhere). I'd love Data and power conduits to attic/basement. You might cut budget on your build (ie no solar), but having conduits is future proofing to ease installation later. Overkill, imo, but Christmas light outlets at roofline is a silly thing some people love. Bonus points for including a switch for them in the main house.
Oh yeah, our current house is all electric and our next one will be also, if we build it. Induction is great. Water heater will be heat pump type. Conduits are good, I wish I had those in this house....
Honestly, I’d save money on some of that stuff (the smart panel for sure) and make sure you’re getting the most energy efficient insulation and windows possible.
Second the heat pump. Also, I live out in a rural area where we get a lot of outages. What we do here is have backup generators, generally run off propane. While you may want a "greener" setup, the basic wiring changes to run part of your house during an outage remains the same. This entails deciding which circuits need to be on a separate panel and installing the switchover ability. Pay attention to what you really need if the power is off for say, a week. You need water (flush toilets, drinking, cooking), so you need to power the well and pressure tank, but not necessarily the hot water heater. Do you want to power a freezer, your fridge? Stoves suck a LOT of energy, so we just support enough in our kitchen to run the coffee Maker, microwave, and a hot plate. We have two fireplaces, one gas and one wood, so we don't run the furnace off the generator. So think about what you would need to be reasonably functional with no power during a winter ice storm outage that lasts a week.
Definitely Lutron Caseta switches on every single light, emporia power monitoring system, and plentiful outdoor receptacles
We did 20kw in panels with three Powerwalls with 3 zones of heat pump and an EV. I still have fossil for back up and hot water. Infinite hot water and we always know the backup system is working. In the NE we are likely to need the batteries when there's the least solar to charge them. So a backup for your backup is a good plan. With HVAC don't forget the V. Look into ASHRI standards for air quality. Contractors usually concentrate on heating and cooling. Looked into SPAN panel. But I wasn't convinced of the long term support. Went with a big load center and sub panel.
Yeah good point, I'd like the option for HEPA filtration on the HVAC. Pollen season is rough
When I design my house I'm seriously considering putting all the fixture lighting onto 12v circuits separate from the plug circuits. USB and ethernet plates in every room which run to a dedicated data closet. Roof mount solar, obviously. Not sure about battery backup; I'm not convinced by the RoI in my area (I can count the number of longer-than-a-second power outages I've had at my current place in the last decade on one hand). I'd be okay just feeding back to the grid. Not exactly electrical, but if my house has a pool I'm tying the house, the pool, and the water heater into the same heat pump loop with a secondary ground source. Seems stupid to pay to heat a pool and then simply eject the unwanted heat in my house into the ground. Same vein, also going with hydronic heating and cooling with zones for every room.
Why 12V? Seems like voltage drop would be nasty over any distance with DC power like that
It's a standard voltage for outdoor lighting. The plan is/was to step it down with a driver for every room. A lot of the specifics are going to be based on what's actually commercially available for lighting fixtures, but the idea is that it's wasteful on parts and heat to run 110 and have an in-bulb driver that steps it down for every socket.
Always-on night lighting for bathrooms / kitchen / hallways. A 1W LED can go a long way towards lighting up a room at night.
Before you buy in VA. Make note.. your property tax will add everything you own. Cars, boats, even a 9' dingy, any and all buildings, even a portable shed.. all taxed. Although I love the area near-ish to Abingdon, where we purchased property a few years ago, I wish I knew about the taxes on everything you own.
Install a whole house surge protector. It will keep your expensive appliances and heat pump from failing early due to surges in your power line. My power goes out several times a year and I imagine every time the power comes back there's a surge.
Consider that if you need heat in the winter you might not want it to be electric because that's when your solar resource is low. Less hours of daylight, plus sun is lower in sky.
Face your house south and get a roof pitch to optimally maximize Solar panels.
EE here who does infrastructure and multi-family home design: PV with battery, and also a generator interconnect, something like this: https://catalog.eslpwr.com/product/70-200a-up-to-600vac-temptap-generator-docking-station-with-breaker/ a "smart panel" like you described probably isn't useful. turning off circuits really provides no benefit unless your panel is overloaded. Just get the largest service size you can get without getting a CT (probably 200A service). Conduits to everything! Every switch, receptacle, light and fan should be in conduit. Networking in conduit, in the walls, to a central location. 3/4" conduit minimum, 1" preferred. 3-cat6 to each room or TV location minimum. To answer your question regarding the solar/house/ev question yes, it's possible to have them all feeding the house at once, I'd suggest just using different panels for each set of "power sources" you want. Essentially you'll have your main panel and then off of that, you'll have sub panels: Main grid, PV, EV, Generator, etc. Whatever loads you want on each source in an emergency will be on each of those panels. You'll need a complex ATS system to do all the switching and phasing of start up during grid power loss but it can be doable, just depends on how much $$$$$$$$$ you wanna spend.
If everything is in conduit, does that mean all wiring is THHN? I've heard conflicting code interpretations about using Romex in conduit
So long as it's not underground conduit, it's fine. In fact the NEC requires NM cables (which is the type of cable "Romex" is) to be in conduit when being protected from physical damage. (NEC 334.15(B))
Smart panel is useful for load monitoring and shedding with solar.
Still not needed IMO. What's OP going to load shed? some appliance that isn't turned on and pulls negligible power? A TV that takes up 1Wh while turned off? The benefits are too small for the added hassle of a complex system that could break and accidently turn off his fridge when they're away or something. Off the top of my head I can't think of any loads they'd be able to shed that would make an impact worthy of the cost or risk of such a system.
Dumb answer but... Conduit - you will inevitably have to add/change/upgrade down the road - not having to rip the walls open to do so will make you much happier.
- Solar with whole house battery, V2G and grid tie - Smart panel integrated into solar management - smart switches (use a real system like Lutron Caseta or RA3, not shitty WiFi on individual components) - adaptive lighting (color temp matches time of day) - radiant floor heat in at least the bathrooms (either electric or hydronic with… - geothermal heat pump for both HVAC and domestic hot water - low voltage data lines to every room, outside corners of the house, and the front door - shaft mount garage door motors - low voltage wiring to each window for motorized blinds
Not electrical, but look into a water manifold. Imagine one control unit like a breaker where you can turn on and off water whatever in your house.
Wireless electricity. Put outlets anywhere and don’t have to run wires !
SPAN panel and 400 amp service.
What about wired for Ethernet everywhere? Not exactly high voltage, but it is a cool electrical thing.
agreed on that very much useful for sure (also run at least 4 lines to each point if you can)
If I was doing it, I'd get a big sub panel and put all my critical loads on the sub panel - maybe a bunch of lighting circuits, fridge, microwave, networking stuff, plus maybe one outlet per bedroom. Plus the EVSEs (and solar, if you're permitted to). Then I'd have a generator input and a manual lockout installed. I think that would give you a lot of future flexibility. V2H (vehicle to home) isn't really that prevalent yet but could be. There are two huge variables here, which is how your energy utility handles solar billing and also how reliable they are for outages. Like knock on wood but I'm in a state with net metering and I am a few blocks from a big substation so I lose power once a year and never for more than a few hours. It's simply not worth investing big money in battery storage or a generator. If power is out for more than 4 hours I have a 1000w inverter I hook up to a car and run my fridge just long enough to cool it back down. I also have 2000w portable generator that hooks up to a grill propane tank (as a two EV household I don't have any gasoline and don't want to store any) and just run an extension cord to my fridge. Keep in mind a lot of EVs don't like inverters though.
>Keep in mind a lot of EVs don't like inverters though. Meaning you can't charge an EV with an inverter? Is this because the inverter is producing a square wave and not a sign wave, or something else? If so, it seems like an inverter quality issue not an EV issue.
No, I mean like there isn't a good way to attach an inverter to run household loads off of the traction battery, aside from the newer EV pickup trucks that are now starting to come with high power 240v outlets in the beds. But for most other EVs, you need to run an inverter off the 12v system which has a lot of limitations - a lot of EVs only use the 12v for lights and infotainment so they only have a ~1000w 12v power supply and they may not constantly be running it so you risk draining the 12v battery, or they may have a load management system that throws an error code if there's a large unexpected load. Running anything more than a ~200w inverter (which can plug into a cigarette lighter) is a dicey proposition and depends a lot on the model. You very well could have 100 kWh parked in your garage during a power outage and no way to use it to keep your fridge from thawing.
Got it. Agree. I hope we'll see more bi-directional EV batteries in the future.
That’s not the way it works. You move the car battery energy to the house batteries. The inverter pulls the power from the house batteries. The car is hooked to the inverter through a generator input.
separate circuits for each room. This is so convenient with maintenance. But also enables you to troubleshoot stuff fast.
Put solar on your roof. Get yourself a flat roof with a slight pitch to the south. For solar on the ground, you need a lot of land. If you angle the panels towards the sun then they cast a shadow that will interfere with the other panels. So you'll need a lot of land. Smart electric panels are a solution to a problem that you don't have. They can turn off circuits if you overdraw your mail n breaker. Just put in 400A service instead. If you really want, you can put in monitoring. Dig deep for a ground-sourced heat pump.
100% would not ever put a smart panel in. That's just asking for expensive problems later (and extra expense out the gate for why?). I'm annoyed that I have a smart fridge (BTW Bosch fridge sucks ass, 2/10). Keep in mind MD has a rain tax, so make sure you make your roof small if you decide to go there. Definitely set up for a backup generator. The battery systems all seem pretty nice and nifty, but at the end of the day that generator doesn't care about the temperature or the weather. Do make sure you are set up for at least 200 amp service, if not 400 if you're planning on multiple EVs, and a big panel to match. Or, as others have suggested, a sub panel for the necessities that's wired to a backup in the event of power loss. Obviously solar power changes this a bit, but I would probably still do it that way to extend the batteries if something happens.
Backup generator/ Solar with storage
Heated driveway and electric blinds.
A giant robot arm that will carry me from the bed to the bathroom to the kitchen to my easy chair. Not once will my fat round feet will touch the floor
Saving on heated floor install, and cleaning. Smart.
I would go with an Anker or Ecoflow whole home battery backup system. It's cheaper than Tesla Powerwall and more modular so it's easy to upgrade.
I am going through the planning stages for our next "forever" home. I will definteltely be utilizing the SPAN smart panels (or other options that may be available, when we break ground. We will also be getting the MOST DENSE battery options available, currently considering everything LFP based. Heat pump for cooling - AC - solutions as we live in Florida, is a must. ALL LED lighting, smart lights, as well..... Solar panels on every beneficial spot we can find, and micro-grids around the yard, for remote power....small solar panels and battery storage for patio and work spaces, not on the main house grid. We will have enough solar power to fill the main house batteries to supply all our power needs, as well as power any future EVs we will be purchasing, as well.
Interesting to see those very in favor of smart panels, and those very against them
It is. It's also interesting to note how many of those against them are IT experts, and how few of those in favor of them cite computer expertise. I wholly get the convenience factor of having everything "just work"! I'm just taking notice of the fact that those with the most understanding of the underlying systems and vulnerabilities seem most against them.
I currently have everything IT locked down, and am completely confident that future home will also be quite secure. It's not hard to do, if you know what you want to do, and how to do it.
My neighbor built a cabin on his mountain property and for lighting he wired up a bunch of 10v using cat6 cable.
What's the advantage of that? Seems very non-standard, I'd be worried about what happens in the future
No electrical permit required, a lot less headaches keeping the wiring up to code because it's such low voltage, etc. And much less juice to run them off a backup battery or generator. The cable costs a shitload less than typical copper wire, too. I guess it's super nonstandard in that I haven't ever seen anyone else do it, but then again I've never seen another hay bale house either, and apparently those aren't entirely uncommon. Up on our mountain the snowfall gets very heavy sometimes. Year before last we had like 6' over the course of winter, and it started with a 3' dump. You don't want to be stuck in that wondering how TF to power your lighting. I could be remembering wrong and they were 12v lights, but either way the system ran on 12v power.
how is it less power per lumen than regular led lighting?
I'm in this process now. 100% will put in battery back up and ground mount solar. I'm going to do ground source heat pump. I'm also going to super insulate. I'll likely go with at least a 20kw of backup. My local power company offers rebates for ev charging if you get the right charger and higher levels if they can interface with your car. I'll also have a main panel and a few sub panels. Victron is the gold standard for battery back up and management. They can do multiple controllers with communication between the two for total management. With that I'll have a 'critical power' sub panel so that if I need too I can kill all but refrigerators and heat pump. Coupled with a well insulated house this will be more than enough for even a few days outage (which I've never had). I'll also run cat-6 to every room and have a mesh network with wired back haul.
We are in the northeast and have the following, 33 panel solar producing around 15mW/yr, Whole house 14,000w generator. Plus 2 wood stoves that we use our own cut wood from our property and oil furnace. We have 2 EV’s a hot tub and pool that help eat up our solar production.
They make smart electrical panels. You'll want one of those for controlling exactly which circuits in the house stay operational in case of an outage.
While you're at it don't neglect your low voltage wiring. Being able to have a wired back haul to a wired switch for your wireless access points will get you very solid results vs just running mesh systems. Also consider future potential placement of IP cameras.
Yeah for sure, that's a different conversation though!
A heat pump water heater is so efficient (depending on your climate, where it is installed, etc.) that you kind of don’t need to worry about when it cycles. For hot water, maybe have a heat pump heater with a separate external storage tank, that could be a really efficient way to get a lot of hot water accessible on demand and use extremely little energy. Could also play around with ducting the heat pump’s air intake and exhaust differently in different seasons, to maximize the efficiency. And/or place it near another appliance that generates heat. Etc.
The difference angle makes to solar panels can be made up for by adding a couple of more panels. Also, since you're designing the house, you can optimize the roof angle and direction. The upside to putting them on the ground is easier access for cleaning, and easier access to the roof for maintenance. Pigeons nest under the panels on the roof and make a mess, too.
If you live somewhere that gets a lot of sun, solar on the roof can give an added benefit of keeping the sun from heating up your roof and requiring a lot more AC to cool. If you are in a more temperate place, having the entire shell of your house blown full of foam insulation could keep your house around 71 degrees when the outside temps dip to 45-60... just from the heat absorbed thru your roof. When it is 45-65ish here unfortunately it's rarely), no heater is necessary.
Lights on a low voltage line (LED)
3 or 4 people have said this. What is the advantage to this??
It's the future.
In my neck of the woods (NE US), ground mounted solar is taxable as part of property taxes while roof mounted is not. But if you have enough land to make it worthwhile it t not be a factor.
Geothermal , solar panels, back up generator for whole house. For something a little more techy I’d get electric smart window tint.
Go DC on lights and ceiling fans
WHY
If you are getting your primary power from solar which is DC its more efficient to power it directly than converting to ac only to have it convert back to dc again inside the appliance. Supposedly theres less motor noise as well.
I was thinking it would be cool to do 2 separate internal grids. outlets that are connected to your utility grid and a separate set of outlets connected to a different panel that is for off grid battery+solar. Then when you get solar you can be offgrid but have the option to plug into grid electricity. The reason for this for me is that SRP in phoenix charges insane fees for solar which wash out any savings. By having solar off grid i can get the savings without the fees.
Consider going with more than a 200 Amp panel. Or in any event make damn sure your electrician doesn't think that "100 Amps is plenty." Believe it or not, I just built an ADU for my brother up near Cape Cod. The "Master Electrician" was going to put a 100 Amp panel in! He seriously thought that would be plenty, even though we were installing an EV charger (Tesla wall charger), electric washer/dryer, induction cooktop, separate wall ovens, and a Heat Pump with electric coil backup heater. If I hadn't notice the box during a walk-through, that's what he would have done. I also asked him to have 2 panels (one master, one sub): one for outlets and 220V items, and one for wall switches. He told me I am crazy, that's a stupid way to do it, etc. on end. And yet, the last 4 homes I've had (Virginia and Georgia) have been wired that way. Gives you room to grow for circuits, and makes finding the right circuit easy-peasy.
Cool electric systems break and their design is so novel that few if any can repair it and it's very expensive. And now you have a broken cool thing you'll never repair. It's why you don't see a lot of cool electric designs in houses.
If you want a battery backup, just build your own bank using lead acid batteries. Lithium can handle only so many charge cycles, plus they can be dangerous with spontaneous combustion. Building your own system is pretty basic once you understand it, and depending on how much wattage you're trying to get, not that expensive. Sounds like you like the idea of going full green, but having a large propane tank to supply heat and cooking is quite efficient and will cut down on your electric demand. If you're building the house from the ground up, I would install radiant floor heating. It's extremely efficient and comfortable. I would also consider a tankless water heater (instahot), if only for the kitchen sink and not the entire house as it cuts down on water usage. You can hook these up to propane for even better efficiency. Some companies out there are offering fully built units to pull water from the air. They are generators that condensate the water into a reservoir. You can buy as large as 500 gallons a day, down to say 13 gallons a day. Powering it would be your major concern, but weighing the cost against a well might be something to consider.
I would not bank on using the car batteries as a power source for the house. In an emergency, you don't want your house and your car to be dead at the same time. Solar roof might be an expensive but do-everything option. I would use solar thermal water heating with a heat pump tank WH to back it up. You could probably even schedule the heat pump water heater so it doesn't run during times when you're unlikely to have solar power. Keep this in mind: You will likely find that you'll spend far more than you'll save. If this is a plan to save money on electricity, it may not pan out. You'll be increasing the cost of your construction by a significant amount, probably paying mortgage interest on it, and it may not save you enough over the life of the equipment to create a very positive ROI.
Have you checked your state/local power buy back rates on any of your solar/generation plans? I know here in Iowa the buy back rate is so low that unless your footing the bill yourself installing solar is not a good financial move. I want solar badly but not at the current cost. However Minnesota has a much more favorable buy back and it makes solar a much easier sell. It's all down to the current state governments and their priorities, Iowa's being to drive us back into the stone age.
Have both GFCI and AFCI for all likely circuits at the panel (not just for an outlet). They can protect the entire circuit that way from both zaps and dirty or uneven power. Those and the whole house surge protector will help protect your expensive electrical appliances and devices.
I think AFCI are code required now for everything
True as of 2023, although I’m not certain that code has been adopted by all 50 states yet. (?)
This is a small thing in tespect to some of the huge ideas folks are coming up with, but Think about wiring for powered shades in your living areas, study and master bedroom. They are getting more affordable every year, and if you ever decide to do them, you’ll be ready.
Solar ceiling lights!
Find a way for your batteries to be insulated from temperature swings, nothing worse than the batteries being too cold to provide a charge.
Get the best windows with smart glass and insulation you can afford and get the biggest electrical service line your provider will allow. Build on a slope and have a walkout basement and have all your hvac and hot water heater down there. Get an insulated garage door and the best insulated exterior doors and solar powered attic exhaust fans. Get the most efficient hvac you can afford. I wouldn’t put much money into solar. It’s still pretty inefficient and very expensive and even if your area still has net metering, that could change at any time. Some states have changed the rules and $ amounts that the electric company has to pay you. Solar companies in my area have had to diversify into electrical and hvac work.
For smart panels, I’d stay away from brands that aren’t well established. I’ve seen some startup brands offering that. I’d look at the Leviton panel. It’s pretty nice looking and offers smart breakers.
Automatic pocket doors that detect motion and close behind you.
Leviton makes a nice panel that is a smart. Can give you data outputs.
Lasers.
Solar quality review guy here: Span panel for smart load management plus Tesla Powerwall is super efficient. If building home from scratch, add a pull box to attic and crawl space for future unforeseen circuit needs. If trying to charge from vehicle, battery back up is sort of irrelevant. One or the other set up makes most sense. Cheers!
How much money do you have? So my dream with unlimited cash: 1) solar panels on top of the entire roof 2) proper sloping / drainage at each part of the solar panel roof to enable catchment of rain water into a filter then a rain water tank 3) small wind turbines at the roof to catch wind power 4) a really large ups (or 2 for a HA system) to store and cycle the power in the house in a consistent manner 5) using the rain water catchment to cool/heat the house, as well as using it for day to day uses such as WC flushing, watering plants etc 6) high ceilings to circulate air and cool the house 7) windows to have solar film that acts as solar panels
nothing fancy. have every room on its own breaker for ease of electrical fixes in future. have 2 20 amp lines running to the kitchen on separate breakers to minimize of tripping breakers. where ever you have designated as being "entertainment" rooms, run seperate a 20amp line. the house itself. use passive design to conserve energy. using less power in summer to cool it and less power in winter the heat house.
If there is a panel/ switch that couldn't connect the solar, battery, and ev at the same time, you could probably wire a series of switches that turn them on in a certain order during a blackout. I'd be really tempted to skip the smart panel due to concerns about it working after the company stops supporting it in 10 years or goes out of business and stops producing parts. If you know what you want powered before you build, an alternative could be two panels. A small one with the circuits that will be powered during a blackout and a larger one for everything else. This is not a flexible solution, unlike smart panels, but it could reduce repair costs. Ideas: ~Smart light switches instead of smart light bulbs. ~Adding an electrical monitoring device to provide better insight into your power usage. (Some smart panels could do this). ~Run DC outlets next to the ac ones or put in dc lights. It takes energy to convert from DC solar panels/ battery to ac wires and then back to DC electronics/appliances. (Not sure if this technology is available yet outside of vehicles or low voltage outdoor lights). Decorative light led strips that are permanently attached to your roof line/ house. (Permanent Christmas lights) ~Depending on the style of house, wiring in window sills for electric candles. ~I believe having a garage attached to a house requires a carbon monoxide detector. Code might require one to be placed high up, but go above and beyond code by placing an additional one at knee level. (I think low ones are more prone to issues due to dust). ~Security system wiring. ~Whole house speakers or speaker zones. Surround sound for the tv.
All of these sound like good ideas. Just to add to it, IMO the best thing you can do is design the building to need as little thermoregulation as possible in the first place. Around 50 years ago our society collectively forgot 5,000 years of experience with natural thermoregulation, on the assumption energy would be cheap forever. Have lived in buildings with both good and bad thermoregulation- even in 2024 there is no HVAC technology that can make a small building nearly as comfortable as good natural thermoregulation can.