Hi from Stanmore, London – rebuilt a bungalow with smart home wired in from the start

[Sepehr]

Hi all, I'm Sepehr. Been lurking here for a while and finally signing up properly.

 

About 3 years ago we knocked down an old bungalow and rebuilt from the ground up. Being able to plan the wiring and infrastructure from scratch rather than retrofitting meant I could go a lot further with the smart home side than most people manage — cabling, sensors, lighting and heating control all designed in from first fix, running on Home Assistant.

 

The automation side turned into a proper hobby rather than a one-off job — it didn't stop once the build finished. I'm still tinkering: writing automations, adding presence detection, playing with dashboards, chasing down the odd flaky Zigbee device, that sort of thing. It's the kind of hobby where there's always one more sensor to add or one more automation to refine, and I've learned as much from breaking things and fixing them as from getting it right first time.

 

Learned a huge amount along the way about the building side too (a lot of it from lurking here, if I'm honest) — insulation, airtightness, first fix planning, all the stuff that isn't obvious until you're actually doing it.

 

Happy to chip in on the smart home / automation side where it's useful, and looking forward to learning more from everyone here on the building side.

[JohnMo]

Welcome.

 

Sorry I'm the polar opposite, had some home automation and basically stripped it all out, preferring simple light switches etc. use home assistant only to monitor stuff now, but generally it controls nothing that matters.

[saveasteading]

46 minutes ago, Sepehr said:

Been lurking here for a while

welcome to the daylight.