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.

[SteamyTea]

Welcome.

 

Is your home all electric or do you also have gas?

What are you doing for energy and water monitoring?

[Sepehr]

 

I have gas as well. Will be trying to switch to full electric soon with a use of a heatpump. 

Been a bit nervous about if a heat pump could provide enough heating/hot water for the whole house  at the same time or if during peak use it would struggle. 

 

I'm having solar installed over the next few weeks which is making me want to switch to at least try it out. It's a bit annoying because there's a big grant in the UK for switching to heat pumps right now but it has to be a full replacement can't be a hybrid solution where you can fall back onto to gas if your heat pump struggles. I've not done deep research into it yet but will do once i got the solar up and running and seeing how it goes.

 

For the monitoring stuff I'm with octopus energy so they provide me with a octopus mini https://octopus.energy/blog/octopus-home-mini/ which gives you near real time monitoring.

 

Water i've not managed to tackle yet. My water meter is in an awkward poisition. I've heard how water companies read the meters is that they drive by and pick up RF signals that the smart meters give out. It's possible for you to read those as well but i've not been successful in doing it.

 

 

 

 

[JohnMo]

46 minutes ago, Sepehr said:

there's a big grant in the UK for switching to heat pumps right now

But would say big grant, but you pay big admin fees to get grant and installer adds a premium - or it's a rip-off 

48 minutes ago, Sepehr said:

hybrid solution

You pay 2x standing charge, been there son went direct heat pump.

49 minutes ago, Sepehr said:

once i got the solar up and running

Solar is great in summer a d rubbish in winter

0

51 minutes ago, Sepehr said:

provide enough heating/hot water for the whole house  at the same time or if during peak use it would struggle. 

That's why you do full heat loss calculations, so you know they can. I just heat our DHW via immersion, that leaves the heat pump to do what it wants to keep house warm. Current only pay 10p per kWh off peak, by the time you factor in all the inefficiency of gas it not far off the same price in real terms, maybe cheaper if you factored in standing charge in the summer months.

[nobody]

On 07/08/2026 at 19:26, Sepehr said:

Happy to chip in on the smart home / automation side where it's useful,

Welcome, I'm new too, and your experience with HA is very interesting to me as that's a new thing I've been getting into along with the whole HomeLab thing (as I'm already a techy who hasn't enough time to program since I bought this shell of a house :-D).

 

Mine is very old, bloody old, and old depending on where you are standing. It has no heating and needs complete renovation. So I also have an opportunity to go full home automation.

 

So far I have a couple of mini PCs (Proxmox nodes: VE + PBS) with remote access to HA via Pangolin on a cheap VPS (over mobile broadband which costs £8/m for 50GB if you know how to get the offer and is plenty as we're not living there yet). I'll be adding another node or two at some point and services in Docker, VMs or containers as and when. Although I'm new to this I know tech so happy to explain that gobbledegook and answer questions on this side where I can if anyone is interested. The HA forum is gold btw, as is Mastodon (social media without the torture and manipulation).

 

So far I've just got HAOS with Smart Meter integrated and power monitoring plugs,  a few add-ons, plus a dozen ZigBee Temp and Humidity monitors calibrated and ready to go into every room because damp is rife in this property and it will help to monitor this before and during each improvement.

 

Renovation: we'll well be replastering/insulating throughout, considering Heat Pump / AC options, solar with batteries (if you only do one I hear batteries is best but just do both and get as many panels as you can fit on the roof. I have panels and lithium batteries on my boat and they run everything for more than half the year. You'll get all year round benefits from batteries in a house using off-peak tariffs. Forget FIT I'm told.

 

Back to HA. I'd love to hear what you have done so far and what you plan. I'm wondering what wiring to do when we get to that point. I will want full fall back to manual in anything we have, but keen to have monitoring and remote control, some automation etc around all things. 

 

We're off the gas grid BTW, and having lived in a boat (12 years and counting) I do like being as off grid as possible.

Edited 2 hours ago by nobody
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