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LEED, and I say this as a legacy LEED AP, is a gigantic crock of sht.

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Another LEED AP here. This is the truth.

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The "to island" or "not to island" discussion has come up as well. We have one now and it does get cramped when cooking on the range in the island and two of the kids need in the silverware drawer and fridge.

I have become fascinated with the wiring and outlet discussion. I love the tubes in the walls idea and central box. I have started to wonder about wireless in a two story house and the reception strength upstairs.

Thanks to all and please keep them coming. We're still a few weeks away from sitting down with the builder / architect.

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A "small" kitchen should not have an island. It just shrinks the entire area.

One way to get your A/V wiring done at less $$ is to pay them to run the wire, but not terminate it at the wall plates. They subcontract this work to an A/V guy - who charges a ton for it because it is trendy. The labor of attaching connectors and wall plates is high compared to pulling it through the framing. Wifi in a two story works well if your wireless hardware is somewhat central on one floor. But wired connections are always best for equipment that doesn't move around.

Don't plant St. Augustine, no matter where in Texas you live. Water will be more scarce in the future. Plant the minimum turf you need.

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One way to get your A/V wiring done at less $$ is to pay them to run the wire, but not terminate it at the wall plates.

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Yep, did this when building my house. Saved several hundred bucks and the subcontractor ended up doing it anyway.

Get a safe installed to the foundation.

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Get a safe installed to the foundation.

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Pre-installing your gun safe is a great idea... my only concern is the number of people on-site who would know you'd have one, and where it is.

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Get a safe installed to the foundation.

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Pre-installing your gun safe is a great idea... my only concern is the number of people on-site who would know you'd have one, and where it is.

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I would just say you want a dimension of X by Y. They can think it is a safe, but could be for a non-gun safe (shocking that someone in Tx wouldn't own guns!)



Few more ideas:

Small AC for your master bed/bath area. When I originally bought the house, it was just my wife and I. We used the living room/kitchen and our bedroom. Small AC for us would have been great, since we like it a little cooler in our room at night. Don't have to heat/cool the whole house (or the upstairs) if no one is there.

Higher than normal garage. My garage has a little over 9 foot ceilings (finished, as it is attached to the house). Allows for shelving on the walls and nice storage.


Glass/screen door on the front and back door. Going to install one soon for the front door, but one that will have a removable section to put a screen in. For those 5 days during the year in TX the weather is nice.

If you have a over the entryway area, a small door to get to said area to clean/decorate. My folks (and about 1/2 the houses being built in my neighborhood) have a landing/area above the front door, but no means to get there. So all bugs die up there and eventually after about 5 years, you pull out the ladder and string an extension cord to run the vacuum to clean up there.


One major thing (regardless) INTERIOR BREAKER PANEL. A lot of houses being built around me have exterior panels on >$250k homes. So, if the breaker pops in the morning, before you get dressed, you get to trudge around the yard to get to the panel, rather than going to the garage like me, still in your boxers.


Another idea, if you are concerned, is lay concrete and a nat gas line for a backup generator. Don't have to install it when you build, but putting it for the future (could be tied with a patio line as well) would save time/money. If my folks wanted to do it, they would have to have about 150' of pipe buried to get to their panel. Do it when the yard is already torn up.

Potentially look into solar power. Setting up the house, or at least looking into it, now would mean less headaches later. BTW, for a house in Houston, I could get about a 10 year payback now with Solar, providing most of the daytime power. If you are planning on being at the house for a while, would make sense.


~egon

Tile or Hardwoods... One or two extra boxes of every size and color. Store the hardwoods in a climate controlled guest closet. Spare tiles get put in the attic. Save your paint swatches!

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LEED, and I say this as a legacy LEED AP, is a gigantic crock of sht.

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Another LEED AP here. This is the truth.

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Another here. Worthless s***.

Oh, another wish list item: Truck sized garage.

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Oh, another wish list item: Truck sized garage.

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Now you're just talking crazy... why not ask for some unicorn ivory countertops as well?

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Oh, another wish list item: Truck sized garage.

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Great point.

I have a 3 car garage, but the guy that built my house before me didn't build it deep enough. I have an extended cab (not even a 4 door) truck that can't fit int he garage. Odds are it would never go there anyway, but still....a garage should be big enough to put your vehicle in, and walk all the way around it without having to squeeze by any wall or door.

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also...if you have dogs, pre plan for a doggy door. We have an 8 foot glass door going to the backyard that I didn't want to change to 1/2
glass to allow for a doggy door, so I bought one that goes through the
entire wall and brick/stone. It's 10" deep. I put it in myself in a
location I didn't think would have electrical, plumbing, structural
issues, etc... One thing I didn't think about was the "tubes in the
wall" that our builder put in for pest control. I cut right through
that sucker. I guess this one little area at the back of my house won't
have the tubes for them to pump the pesticide through now.

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Solid idea. My house too was not conducive to putting a dog door in. About the only place I could make it work without major modifications was in a corner in my living room, which is not ideal. I wanted it in the kitchen so i could close off the rest of the house during the day.

Dog door - your builder will probably install it for you. Check with them.

My builder just told me to drop the dog door off and they'd install it wherever we wanted. Of course they cut through the bug spray lines, but since it was the builder that did it they fixed it.

TVs - anywhere you think you'll want to mount a tv add a power outlet at TV height. Also run conduit from there down to the ground with another power outlet at the ground.

If you think you'll want gas lanterns on your front porch, run the gas lines now.

I would check the costs on dimmer switches for lights. Those are a very simple DIY upgrade.

Run cable and speaker wire to your patio. Have the speaker wire terminate in your living area where you'll have your a/v equipment.

Run cat6 anywhere you think you'll ever need network access, then run a few more. Have all network cables terminate in a single location in a closet.

Pour as much driveway as you can. You don't want to have to do a 25 point turn every time you enter/exit your driveway.

Regarding the number of outlets for electronics. We have been using power surges and battery backups for the tvs and computers. We live in an area that has unpredictable power flickers . How would these work with the above suggestions? Do I still need them?

Another thing that is infinitely easier to install if you pre-wire is a video surveillance system. If you think you ever might want to put up some cameras on your driveway, doors, etc., run power and Cat 5e to those locations now. Since most of the time the cameras will be installed on eves or other overhangs, the area will be almost impossible to access to run these cables after construction. They make battery powered and wireless cameras, but my understanding is that the video quality is not as good and you've now added another device that will need new batteries every so often.

I think of it like fish tank equipment (which I have).

There are a lot of little things you need to plug in. All together, they don't take much power. But at the end of the day, you need, no joke, like 12 plugs/outlets. Daisy-chaining strip/surge protectors is a no-no, so how to do you get the power?

For my modest TV set up, I have the TV, DVD player, subwoofer, WD TV box, Wii and wii-mote charging station. That is 6 plugs.

~egon

Use a 18 ft garage door instead of 16ft and make the garage 24 ft finished depth inside.
Pour the driveway 2 ft wider than the garage door on each side. Prevents bare spots in the grass from constant foot traffic.

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I think of it like fish tank equipment (which I have).

There are a lot of little things you need to plug in. All together, they don't take much power. But at the end of the day, you need, no joke, like 12 plugs/outlets. Daisy-chaining strip/surge protectors is a no-no, so how to do you get the power?

For my modest TV set up, I have the TV, DVD player, subwoofer, WD TV box, Wii and wii-mote charging station. That is 6 plugs.

~egon

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There never seem to be enough outlets where your equipment is.

But I think no one should plug it all into wall outlets that don't have surge protection. I use a Monster power center unit that has power on sequencing in addition to surge and noise filtering. Uses one wall outlet. It is the size of a medium receiver and sits in my cabinet on the bottom shelf.

I also live in a neighborhood with no street lights. Our last house had a dusk to dawn censor for the circuit the coach lights were on. It was a neighborhood requirement were we used to live but it is not a requirement here where I am at now. I wish it was though. It is very dark when there are no street lights and everyones lights on the houses are off. They were still switch controlled in case you did want to turn them off, but when the switch was on, the lights would automatically go off during the day to save energy.

Use the same silestone on kitchen window sill.
Put in an outlet with USB slot where you will charge your phones at night.
Dimmers on all lights and fans in living areas.
Remotes on fans in BR so you can adjust fan in bed.

Batt insulation in bathroom and bedroom walls. Helps keep sounds where they should be.

On your walk in closets, put the light switch inside the closet and put it on an occupancy sensor. You will never have to turn the switch on or off
Use an occ sensors in the garage, pantry, and laundry room

Check out a brand called intermatic they have an in wall time clock. Use this for all of the switches that control your outdoor lighting. This will turn them off and on at whatever time you program them to

On your back porch, I would put as many fans that will fit.

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Use the same silestone on kitchen window sill.
Put in an outlet with USB slot where you will charge your phones at night.
Dimmers on all lights and fans in living areas.
Remotes on fans in BR so you can adjust fan in bed.

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Underated! I forsee USB power becoming ubiquitous for all kinds of gadgets. Put dual or triple USB outlets in each room, including kitchen & garage. They will be used.

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Batt insulation in bathroom and bedroom walls. Helps keep sounds where they should be.

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Nope. Waste of money. Fiberglass has almost no acoustic value for the sound of a flushing toilet, running water, etc. If you want to prevent sound like that, you need more rigid and heavier walls.

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On your back porch, I would put as many fans that will fit.

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Good idea - but not if you are in an area subject to high winds. Then those fans will have a short life.

Good stuff so far.

I like my circulating hot water, instant hot water when I want it. I have two large hot water heaters. Obviously, not energy efficient.

my bil has a water "circuit breaker"; one project made me REALLY wish I had one.

i wish all my outside lights had a master switch, my parents 1974 house had one (in addition to individual light switches in the regular places). A timer would make even more sense

I too wish we had a third ac unit for the master suite

i wish we had a storm room, my buddy is building a huge safe that will double as a storm room. He got an old bank safe door. Not sure how the heck he got that

i love our game room/media room. So many houses we looked at had more centrally located ones. Ours is upstairs, off by itself with just one standard door leading to it. I darn near bought the house just for that reason.

Sorry, I know, TLDNR.... My partial list...

Safe room for intruders, storms, tornados, etc. good place for gun safe or wifes jewelry safe.possibly hidden safe room?

Extra large ceiling fans in two most used rooms. Den has remote ceiling fan & light combo. remote is installed next to MY recliner. My Bedroom ceiling fan and light combo, remote sits on my nightstand.

Consider a whole home vacuum system.

Four-way switch turns on a lamp from every doorway into den. When entering home in the dark, we turn on lights to enter room, cross the room, then turn off when leaving Room, say to go to bed.

Cool ply plywood or radiant barrier for shingles/roof decking.

Window screens on west side are tinted, reduces radiant heat gain through window.

Extra wide attic folding stairs.

Media filter on Air/heat unit & possibly a Fresh air intake(?)

install a float / kill switch on drip pan under condenser unit. When your drain plugs and overflows into the drip pan, a kill switch will shutoff the A/c unit rather than f/u your ceiling with water. Install blowout spout on a/c drain line to run chlorox or air to unplug line.

Media filter at unit.Small Fresh air intake line (?maybe).

Continuous soffit vents & ridge vents

House is built with garage to west side. Forms a slight barrier to evening sun, easier to keep sun off living areas.

Gas everything!

Consider installing backup generator & transfer switch. If on nat gas, hookup to generator.

Have masons install anchors when bricking, for hurricane plywood unless plylox will work for all windows.

If you have a camper install 30/50 amp service to outlet on driveway or wherever camper is stored.

Exterior lighting, landscape lights, lamp post on street has one timer built in to switch at front door. Switch will work manually light standard switch or automatically on timer.

Privacy fence has sacrifice board (true 1X6 board) at bottom, keeps cedar or treated fence from rotting as fast, keeps from tearing up fence boards with weed eater.

Consider skin venting. Exterior walls
The concept of skin venting (passive convective cooling) is to vent the hot, moist attic air out through ridge vents at the top of the roof and replace it with dryer outside air from the outside of the home.. To do this you need an unobstructed path for the air to travel up the exterior wall to the attic and out the ridge vent. This movement of air will occur naturally. {{my note here... A small vent is used about a foot off the ground, it is the exact same size as a brick and replaces a brick every few feet around the entire perimeter of the home. }}

Creation of the air gap in brick installations is easy because the brick doesn't rest directly onto the wall. There's a space between the brick and the wall. We just need to ensure the brick gap is exposed to the crawl space usually where the vents are. There are even weep holes at the bottom of the wall to allow a place for water to drain out that collects on the back side of the brick. This installation process has been the same for a very long time.

Once the air gap behind the brick is tied into the open space of the attic eve the air will flow freely from the bottom or underside of the house up the exterior wall and into the attic and out the ridge vent. Creation of the air gap in siding installation requires the use of furring strips to pull the siding away from the wall so there is an air gap. When combined with proper eve and ridge venting this skin venting process can have the same effect of sitting under a fan on a hot summer day.]

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Batt insulation in bathroom and bedroom walls. Helps keep sounds where they should be.

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Nope. Waste of money. Fiberglass has almost no acoustic value for the sound of a flushing toilet, running water, etc. If you want to prevent sound like that, you need more rigid and heavier walls.

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Adding Absorptive Material in the Partition
Sound absorptive material can be installed inside of a partition's air space to further increase its STC rating. Installing insulation within a wall or floor/ceiling cavity will improve the STC rating by about 4-6 dB, which is clearly noticeable. It is important to note that often times, specialty insulations do not perform any better than standard batt insulation.

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Insulation will noticeably improve the STC rating of an assembly.

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http://www.stcratings.com/assemblies.html#01

Are you getting studio quality results? No. But take the average home builder crapper with tile floors and plain gyp walls and fart really, really loudly. Your dinner guests on the other side in the living room with the hand scraped hardwood floors will be able to tell what you ate just from the sound.

But since we're spending the OP's money, make all the walls type X, double it, stagger the studs, and then wrap it with QuietRock. Tell the builder you want it done like a SCIF.

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But since we're spending the OP's money,

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Then we'll need more cowbell!

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Batt insulation in bathroom and bedroom walls. Helps keep sounds where they should be.

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Nope. Waste of money. Fiberglass has almost no acoustic value for the sound of a flushing toilet, running water, etc. If you want to prevent sound like that, you need more rigid and heavier walls.

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You can use blown in cellulose insulation. It costs practically nothing and makes an extremely noticeable improvement in sound transmission through walls.

You aren't looking for a sound proof music studio - you don't need more rigid and heavier walls to keep the sound of yesterday's chili hitting the crapper from bleeding through a couple of 2x4 interior walls into the living room while your dinner guests sit in awe and horror.

Or you could get some fiberglass sound attenuating batts:

Sound Insulation Here

I'd second the timer/motion sensor switches on closets and the garage - especially if you have kids. Our pantry light would be on all the time if we hadn't added.

If you're looking at a 3-car garage get a tandem one - ours is one car deep on one side and two cars deep on the other. We fit a Buick Enclave and a Nissan Altima in ours because we can stagger them some.

With a two story - get two AC's no matter what and two thermostats. The upstairs and down stairs are always different temps.

Gutters all around the house.

If you're having your house wired for an alarm system, get them to wire the windows with breakage sensors too - especially the big one in the master bath. People break those because they aren't wired (since they don't open). Also, put a second arming/monitoring box in your bedroom - it's easier to monitor and hear if someone opens a door or window (think kids) at night.

Get good appliances - don't go cheap/builder grade. You'll regret it almost immediately.

Make sure outdoor fans are outdoor fans, in SE Texas, the humidity will cause the blades to wilt otherwise.

Our builder ran an empty flexible tube from the side of the house to the attic for future lines.

Even if you aren't putting cameras at the doors, have your builder wire for them. That's actually required in our neighborhood by the developer.

Outlets in the bathroom - don't put them behind the hand towel rack - you can't plug in something like a scentsy.

Consider this instead of a closet in one room



Build this and I will come live with you....

Two things I haven't seen so far is extra decking in attic for storage and a heated bathroom floor.
My Mom loves her heated bathroom floor.

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Consider a whole home vacuum system.

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Do NOT under ANY circumstances EVER build a new home (or renovate an old one) without adding this!!!! The only thing you'll ever move from room to room is the hose. No more tripping over or vacuuming over the power cord. The hose comes with a t-shirt material sleeve that protects flooring, furniture, and baseboards. You plug the hose into a wall outlet and you're ready to go. The handle has a power switch for turning the system on and off. The wand has quickly changeable heads for hard surfaces and carpets. For heavily traffic areas you can install trap doors in the baseboard so you sweep the dirt to the trap door, kick it open, and poof it's gone. The motor and dust/dirt collection tank is in the garage (if attached) or other out of the way room and the air is discharged outside through a muffler. So any dust that gets through the motors filter goes outside and not back into your home. It's also quiet! Messes can be cleaned up without distracting everyone else in the home. No more being interrupted during a TV show, the game, or a phone call because someone else is doing housework. Or if you have kids, no worries about waking the baby.

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No more tripping over or vacuuming over the power cord.

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I've never had this problem.

A few air conditioning tips:
-Do not let the a/c guys run the line set through the ceiling or wall near a bedroom. You can potentially get a lot of noise.
-If bathroom fans aren't code, get them installed.
-Ensure adequate clearance for your outside unit(s).
-Ductless mini split systems are the bomb, but are not popular in the US. No ductwork and you only cool the rooms that are needed. Plus, they are truly variable speed rather than multi-speed so they're very efficient.
-Look into long life air filters like a trion air bear. UV lights in the systems will help with mold / nasties.
- Have float switches installed on the a/c and water heater (if you don't have tankless)
- Depending on where you live, a whole house dehumidifier might be a good idea.
- make sure your kitchen vent actually vents outside rather than re-circulating air in the kitchen

Other suggestions:
-Get your house set up for a home automation system.
-Run cat5/6 for net access and security. Now you can cameras that are PoE (powered over Ethernet).
+ 2 for having the house pre-wired and a slab pre-poured for a genset. If you want to get REAL fancy, put in an automatic transfer switch.