My additional electrical cost was in the order of $20,000
Holy smokes! I'm hoping to keep it as low as possible, which is already going to be hard enough as we want to change to LED down lights throughout the house.
If you want to plan for the future, but not install straight away, you could arrange to have conduit dropped from the ceiling space down the walls at likely spots. That makes it much easier to pull the cables later.
I would very much consider this, but unsure if Brighton will be very obliging as they'll know I'm trying to skirt around their outrageous prices for HDMI cabling. It's certainly something I will be asking at the appropriate time. Only trouble I see with this idea is that I'll be pulling a cable up a wall cavity and then over a ceiling to the other side of the room. That might be a little complicated for a conduit?
I’m not convinced about USB power points. I have some, but they don‘t get used all that often. The wattage provided by the chargers is now much higher, so the wall plugs tend to be too slow.
I'd certainly not be choosing anything below 2.1A output, as there's no point if less than that.
Agree on checking bench heights. We had ours bumped up a touch.
The 900 width oven is fabulous, I love being able to put two trays of cookies on one shelf and not need to swap hot trays around.
I'll have to get back to you, and everyone on this detail as it escapes me now and I'm waiting for the plans to be drafted. When I know, you'll know, however it certainly felt like it was at the right height in the display home – perhaps because I wasn't actually using the kitchen for its intended purpose.
Not of a great deal of value to the new build, but FWIW: I made some extensions to my place about 10 years ago, including a 'media/TV room' with a small office nook (watch telly while I'm 'working'). I got it network cabled in the ceilings (from the street side) and walls anticipating NBN (or whatever was proposed back then) and/or 'cable TV' (I'm in the country, so still hoped for), put concealed ducts for HDMI cabling between wall mounted TV and the shelf with the gadgets, speaker cabling in the walls for the 6 or so 'surround' speakers and
heaps of power points, antenna ports etc. Just had enough of those at first
. Over the years, technology changed (as did my use of it). Now, most of the power points are unused and I
never used the network cabling as the NBN eventually arrived via by telephone line, cable TV never arrived and my TV runs off free-to-air and signal broadcast from a router.
A good point, you can plan for every eventuality except where technology goes next.... and how slow it is to get to your premises. If I imagine having a small cabinet with various game consoles and set top box at the front of the room, I imagine I could hide a powerboard to connect all those devices as well. Speakers are wireless these days – we use Sonos – so all we'd need is power to the back corners of the room and that's future Sam's problem (plus the wire could be behind a couch).
Have you considered a security system in case you might want to travel one day?
The wiring could be part of your electrical system, especially if you decide to have security cameras installed.
We already use the Anker Eufy system where we live, so will be looking to simply move those cameras into appropriate spots at our new build when the time comes. They have a bettery life between 180-360 days, charge via micro-USB and feature sirens, spotlights and motion/face detection. It's a good system. Also picks up audio from several houses away so we hear a lot of goings on out the front of our street, haha!
Solar power? At the very least have the wiring done in such a way that the batteries can go in the back yard rather than the front yard.
The included solar does allow for batteries, however the details are scant. When I know more I shall provide a better post on the offer to have a 6.5KW solar system installed for free – just waiting to be given more details. Ultimately though, I think I'll be skipping batteries for a while, as I know they're very expensive and very hard to pay off currently.
I’d be putting in a charging point for an electric vehicle. You may have heard of this ACT first, on EVs distributed energy.
“...As batteries on wheels, V2G technology allows EVs to discharge electricity back to the grid or even provide services to improve grid security”.
It's an interesting suggestion. Truth be told, we bought a new car last year and considered an EV. Problem was, at the time the new Nissan LEAF wasn't yet in Australia, and the only other appropriately sized vehicle (not saying the LEAF was) happened to be the Hyundai Kona EV and the price tag was ridiculous. We ended up buying two cars, matching cars for my mother and myself, for less than one EV.
I'd love a well priced EV and to feed back into the grid when home, but it's just not economical right now, and probably wont be for a little while. While it's true that it might be by the time we next change cars, and that will be well before we consider moving again, I'd hazard a guess that adding the EV infrastructure to the house at that time would be about as cost effective as it is now, probably better... and we'd actually be using the equipment.
I would offer to come swap them out for you post build but I don't think the QLD border will be open by then
It certainly seems that way, but thanks for the offer, may take you up on it in 2021 (when I expect the build to be done).
As @jb747 pointed out, the output is lower than most modern plugs. Off the top of my head the Clipsal ones are 2.1A max and 3.1A total if using both plugs simultaneously. Definitely worth having in the key spots though.
Yes, so it shouldn't be every spot, but certain spots that make sense could do with an upgrade. We'll always have standard chargers anyway.
arena.gov.au
