Any thoughts on whole home filtration or whole home water softeners?

We toured a house that had this and I thought it was pretty neat. Being from Houston, I've never really been too keen on soft water, but does it make as big a difference as people claim or is it mostly snake oil?

South Texas (RGV) has very hard water.

We had whole house Culligan softener and R/O for kitchen and bar. Both ice makers. It was practically mandatory

In CStat only had the R/O and we're fine

Civilized are you building at the lake? We still need to get together and the catfish are starting to bite good again!

I have some new in the box 4x2 HEPA filters from a semiconductor fab I plan on using. I figured I could run some ducts and an air handler. I would probably never have to change that filter for at least 10 yrs.

KnightAg said:

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Civilized are you building at the lake? We still need to get together and the catfish are starting to bite good again!

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Nah, not at the lake. Looking at building closer to where we are now.

We're actually headed up to the lake this afternoon and will be around all weekend. I'll shoot you an email.

A walk-in pantry. Or two (one for food and one for cooking utensils).

Instead of built-in shelves in the walk-in pantry, use wire shelves on rollers. The wire shelves to make it harder for mice to hide and that can be pulled out to clean beneath and behind them.

For the kitchen cabinets, have glass windows on the doors and internal lights that can be turned on to make it easier to find things. Also lights underneath the shelves. Have a separate switch at the door to turn on the shelf lights.

With enough pantry space, you could even eliminate your cabinets and have wrap around windows:

I redid the under and over cabinet lighting in our current house, switching from fluorescent to LEDs.
I also put them on dimmer switches. I'd highly recommend that. Makes for a very soft dim light at night when most have gone to bed.

A water closet for the crapper. Either as a separate room off of the master bedroom or as an enclosed (or semi-enclosed) partition in the master bathroom.

BO297 said:

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Speaking of metal roofs. My wife wants to eventually replace our roof with a metal one.

The long established roofer I use recommended against them because they have had complaints of cell signals going down. Does anyone with a metal roof have any complaints about your cell service?

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i had a metal roof on my last home. i never had a cell problem. i wish i had a metal roof on my new home.

My in-laws had one of these installed in a bathroom in the center of the house, worked great.

http://www.solatube.com

I was just going to say a safe room for guns and IT equipment but you guys have some good ideas. Not sure why someone wouldn't go for bed/bath parity if they are designing a house from scratch though.

Walk in in steam shower. You don't think you want a steam shower but you do.

We had the cabinet makers install a blow dryer drawer and it has been awesome. My wife just puts the stuff in there in the morning and doesn't have to mess with cords everyday



Outlets in the eaves for christmas lights

At least run water and gas to the back porch for an outdoor kitchen later

If you are a hunter/own guns, think about where you will put your safe because most basic floorplans don't have a good place for 1. Same thing for a wine fridge if you are a wine drinker

Not sure if mentioned and too lazy to check but I'd put a central vac in the house

Bought an older home (1 story) home and we've been making some of the changes suggested. Had to have the house replumbed so we added extra hose bibs and I installed a 3 basin stainless commercial sink in the garage. Expanded the main electrical box and added new circuits for a future outdoor kitchen (with water/sewer), added a dedicated circuit for entertainment and ran Cat cable everywhere. Plan is to add a Murphy door to our Hall closet, possibly put a gun safe in there.

Future plans for the kitchen involve a mixer lift, my wife loves to bake and her big ass mixer eats up too much counter space. Then install bottom mount slides for all the kitchen lower cabinets. This will allow full storage access to the rear of all the cabinets. We have a tiny crappy pantry so going to build a door the utilizes more interior space for spices on the inside rear of the door. A hollow core door can't bear the weight. Think of putting g heavy items such as sugar and flour on shelves hung on the door.

Longer term is rebuilding all the upper cabinets and removing the useless bulkhead. This will allow for taller cabinets. We converted our dining room to a library/office. Need to install floor to ceiling wine racks in 1 corner too.

My closet is very large...about 12x13' and I really like that. I have 10' ceilings in every closet and that makes a big difference.

The entry is in the center with bifold doors. On the back side of the entry I have 1' open shelving on each side up to the ceiling and across.

The top of the "T" has open shelving on the middle third all the way to the back wall with a long rack below.

I've got a lot of stuff in it.

We built our second house, moved in late March. A few of our additions / add ons:
2x6 construction everywhere for insulation and added strength purposes. Third garage - oversized on all three. Larger covered patio with fireplace and built in big screen TV.
Water softener system. We live in West Texas
More kitchen cabinets that you can count - many of them to the ceiling.
Mud room with storage separating garage from house. Big closets with custom designed racks and storage to 11 feet.
Water well that is plumbed for all out door watering hose bibs, irrigation, etc.
extra large laundry room with sink and more storage - made it into our storm shelter with special concrete, reinforcement, and iron door with bad ass deadbolts.
I'm not one for the techie stuff - but yes our cables are up in one closet. Last thing was continuos hot water - can't remember what it's called - but turn on hot water anywhere - it comes out damn hot immediately. Have fun.

re:
PFG
4:00p, 11/28/17
H

Hire an architect. Enjoy the process. Design if from scratch.

Agree, wholeheartedly
this, the shortcut
and saves time/money

I just finished building. Some of my favorite things...

I have a stackable laundry in my master closet. Walk in safe room with a bank vault door (easier to do because I have a basement - not actually all that expensive, my safe door was about $3K and the room is huge - same price as a big stand alone gun safe). Huge garage with one tall door for RV or other toy. No touch faucet in kitchen - Super nice when your hands are dirty to not have to touch faucet.

I spent way too much money on my place and I could go on and on, just thinking of some things that didn't add a lot of extra expense that I like.

Those of you with outdoor kitchens - did you end up using them enough to justify expense and have you had to replace components and was that easy to do? I'm afraid of building it and not using it, or using it and then finding out that the grill/griddle/fridge was custom fitted.