Automated Home 2.0

All building work stopped on the 24th March, due to the Covid-19 lockdown, but there’s still some things we can be getting on with, especially…

Building stopped yesterday. It’s disappointing of course, but we’re happy that the builders have decided to shut down to protect their team. Who knows when…

I love a real fire, who doesn’t, a warm and atmospheric focal point for any room. We originally had 2 wood burning stoves on our…

Our electrical first fix is complete. It’s great to have another stage over, although we also move forward with a hint of trepidation. If I’ve…

In the first part of our home networking series I looked at the reasons why I decided to go with Ubiquiti for the LAN in…

Just a quick update this time, but an exciting one. On Monday these cables were delivered by Epitome Living as the electricians started their first…

Our mechanical first fix is almost complete so it’s a good time to look at our MVHR system. When spec’ing our first self-build in the…

Name the most important services going into your home. Water? Sure. Electricity? Of course. But there’s a fair bet “WiFi” would be number 3 on…

Over the last few months we’ve been working away on the Loxone plans for the new house. Loxone is a BMS (Building Management System) built…

We’ve covered Loxone smart home products since 2011 and I’ve always looked at the system with an envious eye. So I’m really delighted to announce…

We’ve already looked at how we arrived at our target room sizes, and the process around the design of the house, so next it’s the…

Last time we looked at our building site and work getting underway. Today we’re revealing our design for the new house. Contemporary We started working…

Just a quick update this time, but a significant one. Work Has Begun A few weeks ago we tied things up with our chosen builder…

Last time we looked at our spreadsheet of room sizes which was a great starting point for our floor plan. But what about the plot that…

After we chose our architect it was time to get into the design process proper. For our second meeting, Michael visited us in our own…

It’s not everyone that can easily visualise a 2D plan as a 3D space. Whilst architects and builders are used to this automatic in-head conversion,…

The original Automated Home was built in 1999. We were young and enthusiastic, but perhaps lacked some life experience which meant we didn’t get everything…

When we announced we’d sold the Automated Home quite a few of you asked what items we were taking with us. It’s a great question,…

Although there’s no tech here (next time we’ll be checking out what tech is good enough to take to the new build) hopefully these are practical…