re: Building New House -- What additional amenities should I consider?

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ONE MORE THING:::

Install a manual transfer switch for a portable generator. Awesome use of $800

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Make sure you have a standby whole-house generator.

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porch pre-wired for TV

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Waste of time. None of the coax/speaker/phone wire that I installed in 2003 is being used. It was either the wrong type, or is in the wrong place.

Run 4 CAT5e (consider CAT6) to every room from a central closet. We use the hell out of Cat5e in my house. I just ran 2 more cables last night.

Install way more 120V receptacles than you think you'll ever need. In places where you expect to have computers or entertainment systems, install at least 8 duplex receptacles. I thought I had this covered, but I still ended up with power strips. Next time, I'll do 16 receptacles behind the TV, and 24 behind the computer.

Same for the kitchen. Along the counter, install 4x4 box everywhere you plan to put a receptacle.

Outdoor receptacles, two on each side of the house, and put them on a light switch.

Another thing I saw in one house was the kitchen outlets under the cabinets. Cleaned up the back wall if you don't plan to have a bunch if stuff plugged in on your kitchen counters.

Also I did not put outlets in the sofit for christmass lights (didn't think of it) but I did put them on the back porch ceiling in the corners on a switch. Plan is for either those decrarive light strings with the eddison bulbs and/or directional fans to help the regular ceiling fans on hot no wind days.


I have a dedicated a/v closet that will have any and all electronics...if you do that run dedicated power to it. I ran 2 20amps just for the closet. Also ran a dedicated 20amp to the living room for the 2 2400w subs I plan to run for my 7.2 system.

We are in middle of building a new house too .
I'm going with kenmore elite appliances.
Stained concrete and porcelain tile floors.

didn't really read much in this thread that was helpful.
I bookmarked one last year had lots more into and not all trolling.

I'm still undecided about insulation.

Here is something that I forgot to put in the OP. What about Satellite/Cable/etc.? Where we are moving, the only option is DirectTV or Dish. Should we opt for one of those or for the Roku/ChromeCast/AppleTV route?

We'll have 8 TV's so I am sure that this will factor in. Also, we definitely will want to be able to see college football. (don't need to see all of the games, but the major games ie, SEC vs. SEC or any other BCS school).

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We turned that somewhat wasted space under the stairs into the media close

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Exactly what I did as well. It could have been a closet for coats and whatnot but there would have been a lot of space behind that wasted. We have another closet we can use for coats so it became mine. I have some AC pumped in there (will close off in winter so no heat). Everything will be in there router, switch, modem, alarm, security camera, HT receiver, DRTV swim switch and so on in a nice rack system.

My last house I had all kenmore elite from sears (bought in 2007). I also got the 5yr extend warentee from sears...and thank god I did. Every thing except the gas cook top had been repaired more than once. Not even exaggerating a little...I was amazed and how many thing broke on every single appliance. I wound up renewing the 5yr coverage when sears called when the original was up. Maybe it was a bad batch but wow was it bad.


OP if you have a central AV room look into a matrix switch and running HDMI over cat5e/6 HDbaseT. You can hook up a few devices and send that to a bunch of different TVs if you want. Can also control it with a app called iRule. They have devices that will also convert your signal from your iDevice into IR to work with the extenders in the matrix switch.

I think it would be cool to have one just make sure its setup correctly. A builder in my neighbor hood has one in his garage...cool idea but its just there in the middle of the wall out in the open. I dont know...id have one in a "bathroom" but not just out in the open stuck on the wall like that. Might as well go piss on your tree in your front yard

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Here is something that I forgot to put in the OP. What about Satellite/Cable/etc.? Where we are moving, the only option is DirectTV or Dish. Should we opt for one of those or for the Roku/ChromeCast/AppleTV route?

We'll have 8 TV's so I am sure that this will factor in. Also, we definitely will want to be able to see college football. (don't need to see all of the games, but the major games ie, SEC vs. SEC or any other BCS school).

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You'll get a million opinions on this. We have directv and also have a lot of tvs (we have 9 and that includes the garage). I tipped the installer before he started and it got me a lot of perks installed like boosters and such. If you're going that route definitely hook up your installer from the get-go.

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We'll have 8 TV's

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Use DirectTV's wizard ( or whatever the name of is).
Run the cables to a central point, put the 4 boxes in there, share the 4 boxes through the 8+ TVs.

In other words, you can have 4 different sat. feeds on the TVs. Plus, you don't need a crappy cable box in every room.

ETA: Genie

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Also, put every light on a dimmer

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Be aware that some LED bulbs and most of those shitty CFLs aren't dimmable.

LED bulbs in high ceilings for sure.