If you were building your own house.. what special features would you add? - General

As much as I hate exercising, I do it to keep in shape. In-fact, when I used to bike ride, I used to just do it to escape life for a little bit. Used to just go out and bike around my neighborhood, go grab a bit to eat from a local supermarket, and then come home. When I actually looked it up, I had been biking for almost 15 miles (round trip), and the next time I rode bikes with a friend (a few months later), he couldn't even keep up, and I wasn't even close to being tired. It was amazing.

I think the pool serves as great exercise equipment. I'm looking into one of those wall pumps so you can swim against it forever.

Small little detail but heating that can be controled by Smartphone apps/timeplan is really really nice.

Where are you going to hang the punchbag.

[QUOTE=garry;43769667]I think the pool serves as great exercise equipment. I'm looking into one of those wall pumps so you can swim against it forever.[/QUOTE] The off switch should be right at the pump so you can never turn it off :O!

just get a lifting platform, a squat rack, and a place for pullups and dips and you have the only equipment you need for strength training you can afford all that dont be a dweeb swimming would be great cardio but dont trick yourself into thinking its for strength, and also if you're gonna primarily be swimming you and yours could develop swimmer slouch which can be corrected with proper strength training

Home automation/sensor system, allow yourself to view the status and control the electrical systems in each room through a web portal kind of thing, should be able to detect humidity and tempurature of each room, read if your hot water heater/furnace/AC unit is running, see and control if the lights are on or off in each room, see the current draw of each room, also if you have something like that philips color kinetics lighting system, you should be able to control that as well. So instead of a light switch in each room, you would have a cheap tablet on the wall.

I seem to be the only person who like old fashioned light switches or mechanical devices. What if the power goes out? Or the software gets bugged? I could see having remote control for the AC/Heat, but for lights, just leave it old fashioned with light switches, but modern with LED's and color accenting controls.

Remote controlled lights can still have light switches. You just have the option of turning them on/off using other systems.. like if the fire alarm or burglar alarm is going off.. turn all lights on.. etc.

Did the UK ever adopt the X10 lighting standard or was that just a North America thing?

A while back I read about this bloke who insulated his house with space shuttle insulation. Maybe worth having a look into? [url]http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/24/diy_insulation_with_aerogel/?page=1[/url] [url]http://www.earth.org.uk/superinsulating-our-living-room.html[/url]

I'm sure I would like that electric frosted glass somewhere.

[QUOTE=gX;43856021]I'm sure I would like that electric frosted glass somewhere.[/QUOTE] That stuff seems so silly to me

[QUOTE=garry;42405369]I recently bought a house and am planning to demolish and rebuild it. [...][/QUOTE] 1x Like a bawss right there.

get a sauna that shits cash

[QUOTE=CLungcancer;43946863]get a sauna that shits cash[/QUOTE] I'm not sure if you're saying he should get a sauna that literally shits out hard cash for you to bathe in or if you're calling saunas cool with a slang. The apostrophe, or rather the lack of it, makes all the difference

I would dedicate about half the house to a large auditorium space, which would house a pipe organ made either from parts I made, or parts scavenged from other instruments that I've picked up, and it would be fully configured for MIDI. Maybe put a Steinway or Bosendorfer grand piano in there too, along with a custom synthesizer of my own design. The other half would be workshop space, primarily a metal shop, a wood shop, and a computer/electronics workshop. A nice gaming lounge would be cool too. As for a bedroom, I can sleep in a closet for all I care. Okay, maybe a window would be nice. Now I'm not sure if I'm describing my dream house, or my dream hackerspace.

A nice feature I would like is placed in the inside of the house. Just if there was an intruder, basically, I would have an INTERNAL MINI-HOUSE. Basically, there would be some sort of entrance under my bed, and I would have to have a key to open the entrance, and then it will allow me to go down steps, and the door will automatically lock behind me. The internal house would be able to have little spaces to observe any room in the house, then all the way down, under the house, would be a bedroom, small living room, and a storage space. I'm sure you can afford it Garry. And you need exercise!

[QUOTE=Pythonox;43954203]A nice feature I would like is placed in the inside of the house. Just if there was an intruder, basically, I would have an INTERNAL MINI-HOUSE. Basically, there would be some sort of entrance under my bed, and I would have to have a key to open the entrance, and then it will allow me to go down steps, and the door will automatically lock behind me. The internal house would be able to have little spaces to observe any room in the house, then all the way down, under the house, would be a bedroom, small living room, and a storage space. I'm sure you can afford it Garry. And you need exercise![/QUOTE] Those are called panic rooms and are not at all uncommon in luxury houses. Often they are just master bedroom closets, at least that's what their double purpose is. In an emergency steel lined bullet proof doors can be closed, sealed and locked and the walls are lined with ballistic materials. Inside would be an emergency kit, satellite emergency phone, and access to the homes security cameras. [img]http://jamiesarner.com/images/2013/08/Safe-Room.jpg[/img]

Hoard two dozen or so Minitel terminals. (you won't need them all but it's good to have spare parts to last you a few decades because you can't really kill them) The model with the flip down front will work best. [img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Minitel_terminal.jpg[/img] Build them into the walls at specific locations in the house like the front and back doors, TV room or by the phone in the kitchen. They will stick out from the wall a little bit so find places where they won't be a complete eyesore. Provide serial ports in other rooms so you can add one later that isn't built into the wall. Minitel units act like a serial terminal by default so link them all to a terminal server (probably a linux box) in the basement or in a closet. There's a pile of internet enabled ASCII terminal applications so you can just pop down the keyboard, login and you can access twitter, facebook, Google or if you have a home automation setup you could control the heating/AC, stereo, security system or the lights.

when my family build our basement (it was bare cement and stuff at first, we did everything by hand) we went through several ideas, some of which worked -instead of having single outlets for things like hdmi or network cables, you can just have a hole for many cables to come out (if it will be hidden behind something, like a tv) -heated flooring may cause fires if done wrong or broken, you have been warned - always check your cables before you put them behind a wall, so you dont have to tear out the wall to replace a faulty wire - make sure you dont wire switches to other switches. we done this mistake ourselves, so certain lights in our basement must be on for other switches to work -if you have a water boiler, ventilation unit, or other loud thing, build walls around it with fiberglass insulation or something to sound proof it a bit. obviously add a door should you need to modify it. -If you are going to put a home cinema, make sure the environment can be dark (closable panels over windows for example), that you have a great sound system and amplifier, and that it is 4K (its noticeably better on large screen sizes) - sorta irrelevant, but if you want to make an htpc for one of the rooms, I suggest the Moneual MonCaso 932 case -get a pool table if you like that type of stuff -most importantly, plan what you will be doing, plan with measurements of every little square inch -depending on what you want to do, you may need some new powertools - areas under stairs may make great storage space -line up your lights correctly

[QUOTE=da space core;44011566] -depending on what you want to do, you may need some new powertools[/QUOTE] I disagree. You need very few tools to build a house, and all of them are hand tools. You just need an axe for cutting lumber and a hammer for nailing nails. Done. [editline]23rd February 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=da space core;44011566] -if you have a water boiler, ventilation unit, or other loud thing, build walls around it with fiberglass insulation or something to sound proof it a bit. obviously add a door should you need to modify it. [/QUOTE] If you want it to be truly quiet though it's better to simply wall in the furnace and water heater without a door, just frame it in and seal it off for good.

If you want to die, go ahead and seal up a gas water heater or furnace with no fresh air. BOOM

[QUOTE=>VLN<;44020258]If you want to die, go ahead and seal up a gas water heater or furnace with no fresh air. BOOM[/QUOTE] Yeah Ajacks! Didn't you know they need to breathe you cruel cruel man! It will suffocate if you do that gosh.

[QUOTE=metallics;44020778]Yeah Ajacks! Didn't you know they need to breathe you cruel cruel man! It will suffocate if you do that gosh.[/QUOTE] Okay guys, let me explain this simply to you. If you seal up your furnace completely you do not, I repeat, do not, have to change the filter! It's simple logic, no junk will get stuck in the filter if the room is sealed off completely. It saves a bunch of hassle changing filters.

[QUOTE=Ajacks;44023986]Okay guys, let me explain this simply to you. If you seal up your furnace completely you do not, I repeat, do not, have to change the filter! It's simple logic, no junk will get stuck in the filter if the room is sealed off completely. It saves a bunch of hassle changing filters.[/QUOTE] I was being somewhere between sarcastic and ironic, sorry!

[QUOTE=metallics;44031291]I was being somewhere between sarcastic and ironic, sorry![/QUOTE] I was being somewhere between bullshit and total bullshit.