I presented at Westminister University, on the topic of automation in the house, the post report read “Bryan is not a science fiction invention or a billionaire”. Note to self, try harder! To read the full review with some great Connected Home Consumer Insights >> http://bit.ly/jQ7wO5
Last night I was thinking of some of the first automation that we probably had in UK homes, and I reckon the central heating and hotwater timers must be up there. 
Now I don’t know about you but I loathe the Casio watch style two button interface to program every day of the week, and even then I am never sure if I have programmed the times efficiently, and frequently the hot water will run out and I still need to turn on the immersion heater. Now I am accepting of this need in houses 20 years ago, but now? No. Yet in my new automated house I have no less than 16 thermostats and one hotwater and the intoduction of solar PV, that all individually need programming. While I do have a clever capability to collectivly do all of this online, I still have to control the system with on and offs by time of day.
In most households there is a regular pattern to people being home and away, their use of water and heating, and the cost of the fuel used. So why can’t the end user tell the timer via an easy browser interface my family takes 2 baths, 1 shower per day and we like the house to be at 19 degrees when we are home, then in return the system makes it work as efficiently as possible. Reality is the hot water may still run out even with the system effectively turning on and off the immersion heater, so when going back to the interface the system could advise an alternative schedule for hot water use and it could present this in context of cost* savings if baths are taken at this time. On days where users priorty is use vs savings, they would be advised of when the next volume of bath water will be ready.
*not to confuse the core story, but to add to the possibilities, a great example of contextual awareness can be illustrated where this system is aware of fuel prices being paid per unit. Today we buy electricity at a contract rate per Khw, that may be on a to two or three tier tariff, however with the introduction of smart meters it is entirely possible to vary that charge per minute, and electricty companies sell on a tracker rate, a bit like a mortgage where payment calculated at % above their buy rate. Influences of feedin microgeneration could also cause an excess of available energy on the network, i.e on a windy day. So if electricity was bought in this way by the end user, the cost of heating water using electricity could dramatically reduce for a short irregular bursts, and the intelligent home heating system with this direct knowlegde of price could use electricity to bank heat, where there is a cost and green saving on using gas or oil.
Spring Break 2011 with friends at The Warren, a set on Flickr.
Ok so the house is not complete, but we did have our first guests with all bedrooms in use ;-).
The largest assets most people will own are a home then a car. A car depreciates fast, while a house appreciates. Ironically cars have an ever increasing level of intelligent comforts and driving aids, yet most homes do not.
Part of the challenge to get technology into homes are people, traditionally we do not recognise useful technology until we see it. Compounding the problem, the majority of existing automation technology is behind the closed doors of the seriously rich, so the majority never will see it.
The opportunity to serve the masses is arriving;
I first built a wifi zoned sound system for my first home in 1999, I thought long and hard about bringing home intelligence to the masses, perhaps through a branded franchise for trades providing remote and onsite inlife service. Since starting the build I imagined this vision could become reality, and the possibiity of using the build to show case to would be customers.
In 2010 I visited a show run by CEDIA in Amsterdam, ISE, and recently noted a tweet a CEDIA tweet with an open invite to a webinar on the subject of a forthcoming report ’The Connected Home Report’. The report will focus on market acceleration and seeks to present the connected home landscape with all its challenges in a way that the issues are easy for anybody in the industry or government to understand. It will also identify specific areas around which it will make recommendations for policy, industry, or consumer related issues.
The webinar validated my beliefs about the time is now to start introducing integrated intelligence to everyday homes. To contribute to the final report The Warren has now been case studied and will feature to show the challenges faced, and benefits gained from our install.
So first goal achieved, The Warren has served a purpose to help the industry of the connected and intelligent home. The second goal, to find my place in the industry.
If you read our earlier post Project Manager Required?, you will have noted we were not interested in a main contractor, and with hindsight would not have recruited a project manager. So these are our steps for a first timer to have the confidence to do it yourself;
This should serve as a starter for 10, it’s not exhaustive, and most sites and builds may carry their own peculiarities that will need to be added; for example, our site required an archaeological survey.
So if you’re reading this and serious about a build and tackling it yourself, talk to as many self builders as possible first. Feel free to contact us, we’d be happy to provide pointers to help you build your dream home. You’ll soon be an expert ;-).
Altogether we had about 5 tonnes of limestone to cover 80m2. It took two of us, neither tilers, but both competent at putting our hand to most DIY tasks, we took five days to lay, grout and seal. We had been quoted £3k for a team of four to do this job! So huge thanks to Rob Bratley who I worked with, who charged a sensible day rate.
The cutting machines; the large orange one is a fantastic wet table saw, where the blade moves across the tile. The saw furthest from the camera is the more typically seen tile cutter where the tile moves across the blade. For heavy tiles and straight lines the table saw is by far better, but it has limitations as it can only fit tiles up to 650mm.
Flags going down; slowly the building site look is fading.
So much has happened over the past year and that’s even before considering the self build. Moving in inevitably slowed work down, and we are having to live amongst everything not being perfect, including the need to flush the toilet with buckets! All said, living on site has removed the cost of renting and enabled us to be closer to daily occurrences and important detail.
Perhaps we will finally get to have a house warming in 2011 - if not, definitely in 2012!
We will be creating retrospective posts for all the below, and have many good pictures to share of each stage. In the meantime you may spot daily changes on the main webcam as the drive is laid during January/February/March.
[As we add retrospective posts they will be crossed off this list]
Party or no party this year, we look forward to welcoming you at The Warren. Happy New Year.
Operating a digger is almost fun, I can testify - I have tried. They are also noisy, powerful and many manoeuvers take experience. So when it comes to digger acrobatics, leave it to an expert, as this video demonstrates…
Have you ever tried putting up a three section ladder? I managed that, I even managed to climb to the top with the aerial and lashing kit, before climbing down and finding someone with no rational fear of heights.
We went to York to return paint to Wickes, and ended up with this!
Claire takes a trailer full of pallets to Ron’s Farm
As a concept, buying an old car as a work horse was spot on. The X-Trail, despite paying just £2400 - then a year and 14,000 miles later, traded in for £3000 - was disappointing. We would have kept it for longer but it only ever returned between 20-25mpg. We suspect this was owing to a failing head gasket, possibly made worse by our use, like hauling stone cills from Sheffield and driving with a pallet of bricks fork lifted in the boot and another on the trailer!
We first planned to have the kitchen made and fitted in Spring 2009. Now a year and a bit on and living in the property it is most welcomed. The final picture includes the surfaces fitted.
Having seen the approach taken by George Clarke we decided to spray our house. Three reasons led to this choice; i/speed, ii/ finish, and iii/ DIY saving.
It took about 15 hours in total to spray all the walls and ceilings with three coats. We were very impressed with the result.
Would we spray again? Yes; in a new build, but not in an existing property. Why? Well we only had to mask windows, and doors. No other fittings or second fix joinery like skirting existed.
I took on the electrics myself… how hard could it be? Very. Although not impossible and logically very simple. It is however time consuming, and a small 
collection of skills, only gained from experience, could make the job easy. Through most of his career my father was an electrician, as my father-in-law. However, both their applied skills were in very different environments to a domestic build.
Then one day, about the time we were mustering up to start the cabling, an electrician who was short on work called by the site asking if we had any thing he could do. I snapped up his offer. I think in total we paid him circa £1000 for cabling the whole house, an exercise that would normally be circa £4-5k for the size of property.
We provided the cable route drawings and design for the circuits. For the lighting, my direction and design was important as it did not use the typical loop method; rather every light cable had to come back to central points for the intelligent control. All the switches used pink Cat5, a job my father and I completed.
Our 240v sockets also required significant thought. I previously posted in "How much electricty do you use, and do you care? " that we would split the mains rings into use type, rather than upper and lower. Not only did we do this, but we carefully considered how we connected each circuit into the split consumer unit. The net result; in any one room if a trip of power occurs most other things stay on.
It g
oes without saying that we have done all electrical work to the regulations, one interesting difference being the level of light switches. Because some have labels, conforming to the regulation height for wheel chair access would be too low for an adult to read, and low enough for a young child to play. Because our lights can be controlled by a remote, available to any visitors who require it, we have been allowed to position light switches at a sensible height for typical adults.
Our approach to finding a solution to the heating system and plumber was a strange journey. Original quotes came in at circa £30k when we asked for a full package price,. We rejected these prices as we had calculated materials to be £7k and labour time no more than two weeks. We started dealing with a business in York who came in at £12k for labour, but when I tried to squeeze a better price, they lost interest.
Then I took the most crazy approach to any of our recruitment; I advertised on Gumtree with a full spec! Within a few hours I had four responses; one from a tiler saying I can tile, and three from plumbers. One plumber was probably Polish, and had a poor command of the English language, so he was a no go, the other two sounded reasonably competent. I had a phone call with each and invited them to site.
The first was young but passionate, and had a history of working for others and he wanted to go it alone This would be his first house project. We liked him because he understood solar and had an answer and apparent experience of new technologies and methods. The second was equally experienced, in a team of two, and more years behind him. He had to finish a job at a custard factory in Leeds and could start the following week. He gave me a price of £7k there and then. Eventually the first plumber gave us his price, of £4k! Now these prices included everything for first fix less the boiler, UFH and cylinder.
Price won, and we had a plumber. When he worked he was good, but he would travel 50 miles from Rotherham, and do two hours work then drive back. He broke the back of the job but then stopped, telling me it would be a month before he could return. In the end we had a third plumber on site for about eight hours who got us ready for the plastering to take place. And finally for the post plastering plumbing, to install our boiler and cylinder we had another plumber complete the job! This final plumber was known to us and we had invited him to to quote originally, but he was simply too busy.
I have ommitted a lot of detail about the plumbing, including our concern for lack or recourse if we have any faults. However, what I can say, overall the labour cost us about £5k and parts £7k, including solar panels and all the UFH. Our approach at times gave us project nightmares, but has resulted in a fantastic price, and so far only one leak…
We had a few quotes for the plastering labour, varying from £7k-£12k. Ultimately we were faced with a choice of two teams. One was recommended, the other had a UK team lead and 10 eastern Europeans. The latter gave many promises on how tidy and quick they would be. We went with the recommended team, and on this occasion we were let down. They were friendly enough, but they took double the time they quoted and as they got behind schedule, the quality of finish was evident. Plasterers have another job, they add the insulation above the board. On a couple of occasions I removed plasterboard to find they had not properly insulated.
My check list for plasterers in the future will include;
All said and done we were pleased to finally see the transformation as the boards went up. This was the first time we could walk around the property and have a feel for the space we had designed.
The rest of this post is in pictures. Note the TV mounts to enable screens to be flush to the walls.
To be connected to the drains was an administration challenge for the council. For me, the process could have been rather simple, but it felt like they made up the process as they went 
along, including a week delay because someone was on holiday. In total it took six weeks of going back and forth to get the licence. When we finally did get the licence the ground worker was not available.
The cost of connecting the drain to our final chamber was circa £4500. We had quotes up to £8000. To put the scale of the work in context, the connection distance was about five metres. The challenge faced when getting quotes was that whoever took on the job took on some level of risk. No one, water board or council, had records of the foul drains in the street, and the CAT scan failed. As it turned out the drain depth was about 3m. The risk was if it were 5m the whole road width would have needed digging for health and safety.
When the dig started, the ground workers assumed the pipe to be on the far side of the road… they were wrong, and then had to dig the centre of the road!
Avid followers of our build will have noted we have not followed typical design, as all three floors are constructed of block and beam. We had two reasons for taking this Rolls Royce approach i/ ensure no creaking floor boards ii/ have effective UFH to each floor.
So where most UFH systems serve only the ground floor, ours serves three, requiring 2.7km of pipe to be laid. In the beginning the team consisted of four of us, Jim, our fathers and I. It took half a day to do one room. We learned a lot and over the next week Claire and I perfected the method spending our weekends and evenings from 6pm to midnight on hands and knees to lay pipe down in the rest of the house. Quotes for the labour to do this job were between £3000 and £6000. A beautiful saving banked.
All the boxes of pipe.
…
actual °C
