i absolutely love the house i live in and that's no accident it's taken me 10
years to get everything just the way i like it perfect Wi-Fi coverage a server
room with copper and fiber optic cabling running everywhere i need it vr base
stations hard mounted into my ceiling and of course my epic diy air
conditioning project that saved me like 20 grand but then my kids asked very
nicely i might add if they could have their own rooms instead of all sharing
one giant one so here i am in my new house that has absolutely no technology
in it whatsoever and this very 90s
aesthetic let's talk about what we're going to be changing and how you guys
can actually maybe help me here because i'm a little out of my depth but first i
need some help from our sponsor glasswire are you having poor quality video meetings use glasswire to
instantly see what apps are wasting your bandwidth during the meeting and block
them get 25 off today using offer code Linus at the link down below
okay i lied to you a little bit before there is technology in the house it's
just that um
this thing's hilarious the issue is just that what passes for cutting edge home
technology has changed a little bit in the last two or three decades so we got
whoa
look at that so the first thing we're going to change is to rip all of these
off the wall and patch over them actually the first thing we did was the
opposite of that ripping open a hole in the wall by removing this built-in
speaker a to have a look at it and see if it's still
pretty decent and it's something we can reuse and b
because the box that comes in from the street is right on the other side of
this wall and we needed to use a fish stick to bring in fiber optic internet
that's right at least here anyway the isp will not
come on site and confirm fiber is coming into the building until you have
actually taken possession so that was one of the first things i wanted to
check because if i was going from gigabit up and down fiber to
docsis or adsl that would have been a pretty crummy downgrade and i really
wanted to know i could do it fortunately i can it's already going down into the
basement so we can just pop this out
with that very important thing out of the way we're ready to move on so
obviously for my wife things like swapping out this wonderful blue carpet
were very high priorities and i'm with her on that we i do want to do that but
the tech is where i'm focusing 98 of my attention
starting with things like this built-in bookshelf slash media console that's
here in the family room now it's super nice really high quality build and my
goodness there's so much power in it we've got four outlets in here they've
got two in here the only small problem is that it was
designed for televisions that were a slightly
different size and shape than modern ones
this is cool you can pull out your tv and angle it towards the kitchen if you
want the intention is that when the kids have taken over the basement mom and dad
will still have somewhere to sit and watch a movie and cuddle on the couch so
we're gonna put a subwoofer in here with some kind of acoustically transparent
cloth that'll also act as a passive intake i'm gonna have cooling fans
probably like four or 140 millimeters over here and then anything that
requires cooling like game console or pc
or whatever else is going to go in here just rip out these drawers what i want
to do this is my perfect world and hopefully the modifications can be made
is just rip out all of these shelves and
put probably a 77 inch tv in here and
then so that we can hopefully mostly reuse this structure i'll just do some
kind of wall mount that has an ARM coming off of it and then maybe some
bias lighting behind the tv so that it doesn't look like it's sitting in a
cavern for no apparent reason one cool thing is that four rooms in the house
are already wired up for in-ceiling or in-wall speakers so i'm definitely going
to want to reuse that and i'm just going to use the same sonos connect amps that i do at my current house plug these in
and then i'll probably run a few more of these to the upstairs so the kids can
have music in their bedrooms and stuff like that then obviously another high
priority for me was a computer room slash office for me and my wife that's
gonna be here for a couple of reasons with the biggest one probably being that
we are directly above the mechanical room that's where my server rack is
gonna go so i think probably in this corner over here we're gonna run a
conduit so that i can have a similar setup to what i have now with fiber
optic cabling running between my actual desk and monitor and peripherals and the
computer which is in a separate room for complete silence and to keep
temperatures in this room under control so you don't have the computer out
putting heat in here in the summer when you're gaming or whatever the case may
be one kind of controversial change is as beautiful
and ornate as it is i think we're going to rip out this built-in desk slash
storage unit here not because it's not
really high quality but it's just really not us now let's head down to the
basement we can have a look at that mechanical room that's actually where i
think you guys are going to be able to help me and talk about some of the cool
tech that's going to go down there oh shoot
there's no stairs here yet for whatever reason the previous owners decided not
to put these stairs in so we're going to have to go use the other ones smartifying the built-in heating and
cooling systems in this house is going to be a huge challenge so heating is
handled in floor with radiant water tubes
that's super cool and actually there's no reason from like uh
an efficiency standpoint to have fine granular control over something
like this on your smartphone it's basically set a temperature with it and
forget about it the problem is that this
heating system is the only thing that has thermostats
positioned around the house there are 10 zones for it two in the basement three
on the main floor and five on the upper floor each with their own thermostat
which would be great because i could just swap all these out with smart
thermostats then i could get some uh
some dampers and then some smart actuators for the built-in ac which is
forced air and then i could have those those smart thermostats communicate to
both the heating and the cooling except
these are pretty much 1950s technology
they have only two wires running to them and they use an actual mechanical
mercury switch in order to turn them on
and off to my knowledge there's no smart thermostat that will run on two wires
one idea i had was taking all these brown guys here so these wires are the
ones that run to the thermostats with their two conductors and just putting a
simple 24 volt power supply right on the wall here and actually only
powering those thermostats and then doing all the communication with them
via z-wave or zigbee and then having
maybe home assistant tie the whole thing together i'd have to get smart valves
for all of the different zones here's the last two
and i'd have to find a thermostat that is willing to run with just power and
only smart communication with the ac and with the
boiler but if you guys have any suggestions
man please leave a comment because i am uh i
mean i love technology and everything but home automation is something that i
haven't touched and can be very overwhelming coming in with no
experience whatsoever we are probably going to replace this furnace with a
high efficiency boiler system not because the furnace isn't working and
won't continue to work but because it could actually end up saving us money so
this vent right here is what takes the hot exhaust from both the furnace and
the water boilers and just kicks it out of the roof of the house well um because
we're going to be putting solar panels on the roof we actually need a nice
thick conduit going all the way from here in the mechanical room up to the
roof as part of that project if we switch to a high efficiency boiler
system we're only going to need about this much for the boiler which would
free up the rest of that for the wiring that we need for solar panels on the
roof so in the longer term i think that's going
to work out really well for us the other thing it'll do is it'll allow me to
uh run some kind of like cooling system for this room because i
think the server rack's going to go in this corner and i'm going to want a
couple of things one is you can actually see the water pipe for the irrigation
system over here i'm going to want to triple that so i'm going to want to have
two more pipes running through the walls one inlet and one outlet so that i can
actually water cool some of the stuff in the server rack and then exchange the
heat outside that's right ladies and gentlemen whole
home water cooling it's coming
get subscribed
terrible this is another room that i'm gonna want your guys advice on i mean i
know what i like in terms of watching movies and playing games but what i
don't know is some of the best practices for building a theater room and this is
going to be it i'm going to have conduit running along the bottom to a small stage here
that is going to have like cable management holes coming up through it so
that uh you know tv if a friend brings
over a game console or something you'll be able to plug in here and then all of
the av equipment is going to be over in the mechanical room which is on the
other side of this wall i'm going to have power on the wall in case we want
to wall mount a tv power down there
obviously we're going to want to run speaker wire for dolby atmos and all
that kind of cool stuff since the i mean it's an unfinished basement so we have a
perfect opportunity to do that but guys if there's any sort of
guides on you know what to know before
you do a a home theater room i'm obviously more than open to it from the
theater room this wall is going to be closed in and then there's going to be a double door and that will take us into
the land center the idea here is that whether it's my
kids and their friends or whether it's our whole family we can all sit and play
a game together my kids really want me to try minecraft with them and right now
as crazy as it sounds we don't have enough computers in the house to all
play together so they use mine and my wife's and then the one that we built
into that desk and in my kids room so we're gonna do three desks along here
one two three two more along here and then i think
we're gonna wire in one more power in Ethernet right here this is going to be kind of
like a short wall like a half wall kind of like that and then if you know
someone brought over a laptop or something we could have a total of six people playing in here all at the same
time i'd love to hear suggestions for cool like if we should do some power in
the wall and do like cool like led lighting on the wall or like art or i
don't know i want this to be kind of cool and land cavey but the main purpose
is a couple of things one having everyone in kind of one place when
they're using computers and number two having the stairs come down right behind
with all the screens visible so that i can see what's on the screens when i
walk downstairs without any notice you know parent things all this house
touring is making me thirsty i'm just gonna pop in here and get a drink
if only i brought a water bottle lttstore.com and finally this is where
my vr gaming setup is gonna go we're gonna do yet another console we'll
probably put like a pretty modest tv here and then there'll be couches that
are like way the crap out here
weigh the crap out here because i want a vr gaming space that's about as big as
what i have in my living room now for playing games like gorn having the
couches in the tv is for a game called takeling's house party it's super fun
and then this wall is actually gonna see you later wall and we're gonna open
this up so this is gonna be like a games table uh we'll have game storage
in that closet that's behind andy and then this is going to be relocated
against this wall which actually i think starts here so it's going to be rotated
90 degrees and you know that'll be where kids can
get their snacks or whatever so it'll be right between the lan center and the
games table and the vr space wireless access points so
ruckus generously offered to consult with me on the best place to put them i
drafted some in like five or something like that to make sure
i've got coverage when i'm working on a project in the garage i want coverage
outside so if we're on the patio and all that kind of stuff i think one of them
is going to go in this hallway anyway what's also in this hallway is the
single control for the air conditioner so we've got humidity
as well as temperature control and this is something that i've gotten very used
to at our current place with our mini splits being able to control the ac room
by room because a it's a comfort thing not everyone
likes the temperature the same and b it's a huge efficiency thing if the kids
are away at their grandparents i can turn off the air conditioning in their
room close the door and save a ton of money so i want to figure out what we
can do in terms of altering the ducting with dampers to um get room by room
control and then i want to replace these there's a ge switch that actually this
was really generous the hookup you guys can check out his channel here he's
helped me with some stuff already super nice guy uh test it out for me it's got
a motion sensor and a switch built into it and apparently they report
independently to home assistant which is super cool because it means that i can
do things like presence detection so if nobody's in the basement according to
the motion sensors that are on all of my light switches i could just
turn off the ac
another thing that's going to be really expensive is installing electric car
chargers in the garage so we want to have a two head one just in case we
change the minivan out for something electric in the future and that's going
to go in here so that big old thick cable instead of running
from my electrical panel in my garage which is where it was in the old house
to the garage is going to have to run from the mechanical room which is way over on
the other side to the garage
fortunately we've got all the charging we need for these electric cars already
see you later thanks to megapro for sponsoring this video they just
announced their new 24 in one precision screwdriver which is designed
specifically for people working with electronics technology security jewelry
or any other repair it comes with 24 of the most popular precision bit tips all
conveniently stored in the mega pro patented retractable bit cartridge its
palm saver cap allows for fluid rotation of the end allowing you to seamlessly
tighten and loosen screws with a single hand and it's got raised rubber grips to
provide even further control and comfort maximizing speed and efficiency on any
project pre-orders are open now so click the link below and grab your precision
screwdriver today
oh god i hit the stairs