ᐅ New Construction – Which Smart Home System?

Notstrom schrieb:

Do you have any examples?

@matte1987: Thanks for the detailed explanation. I think we’ll go through it again tomorrow. The building automation (BA) switches were mostly the result of conventional thinking or “not letting go.”
How do I turn off the light when I/the kids are in bed? How is that controlled via the occupancy sensor?

I don’t have children yet, but in our bedroom it works like this:
Each of us has a button in the bathroom/at the bedside table where we set our status to “sleeping/awake.” If either of us is set to sleeping, the occupancy sensor in the bedroom is disabled and the light is turned off. In other words, the occupancy sensor is deactivated.
Under the bed there is another occupancy sensor that is enabled instead.
If it detects movement, it only turns on a dimmed LED strip under the bed – a kind of night light. Because of its position under the bed, it only reacts when you put your foot on the floor. It does not respond to any movements in bed.

That’s more or less how I have planned it for the kids' rooms as well. At the same time, with the sleep button you can also set that the blinds do not respond to the central open command in the morning, so the roller or venetian blinds really stay closed.

As I said, there are few limits. One is money. The other is the lack of sensors in the most important locations.
If I were you, I would focus on that.
Whether the 46 switches come in the end (say, in a year or so) doesn’t matter at the moment as long as the wall boxes are planned.

ivenh0 schrieb:

Heating and shading 11k?
A few channels of heating actuators, blind actuators, a weather station, and glass push buttons aren't usually that expensive

I take back my statement and claim the opposite

matte1987 schrieb:

that this has little to do with smart home and was only thought of conventionally in KNX.
On the other hand, you have only planned 2 motion detectors in the whole house.

That’s what I thought too. The offer reads more like the electrician and client basically don’t really understand KNX and its possibilities, but the client wants KNX anyway. So the electrician just uses KNX components and does the rest as usual. As others have said, this is a shame, because it ends up being much more expensive and hardly adds any convenience. You just have KNX in the house. When done properly, the number of control points is drastically reduced while the number of sensors increases significantly. With underfloor heating, no one needs to adjust the temperature in every room. At most, you would boost it in the bathroom; everyone else can go to the wall display twice a year.

A quick note:

If you plan to install boxes for presence detectors (PM) in the concrete ceiling, specifically those with mineral fiber covers, the electrician should not just leave the cable ends exposed inside.

Either they form a loop with the cable or connect the two ends using the KNX terminals. The green cable contains four conductors, arranged as two pairs: red+black and yellow+white. They should do the same with the yellow+white pair. This way, everything stays connected, and you avoid unpleasant surprises where another box later on has no power.

If the presence detector is not installed immediately, you won’t be able to access that point later without cutting open the mineral fiber cover.

The safest approach is for the electrician to simply loop the cable inside the box and move on to the next location.

Notstrom schrieb:

The basement ceiling will be installed tomorrow, and starting next Monday the cables will be laid in the ceiling. I don’t think we have much time left...

You can also save some money on the satellite system. An original Gibertini with 125cm (50 inches) costs a maximum of 250 euros. You’re being offered a Televes for over 400 euros plus VAT. Which satellite is that for?

The continuous regulators are probably for the towel radiators in the bathrooms. Remove those completely and let the radiators run electrically. That way you get more functionality and only need one actuator channel and one heating element per radiator.

I would also replace the ABB heating actuators with those from MDT (if the electrician agrees). They definitely offer a better price/performance ratio.

The room actuator switches have already been discussed. I wouldn’t know what to do with them. I don’t have a single single or double switch in the house. Where only lighting is needed, there is simply a motion sensor/light sensor, and where blinds (shading) or similar are present, you just use a room controller and still have one or two rocker switches/buttons free for the future. Ideally, shading should run completely autonomously, which also generally works very well.

Missing window contacts and motion sensors have been mentioned several times. If you install too few sensors, you deprive the house of its eyes and ears. (Don’t worry, with KNX all data stays within the system and nothing is reported externally.) And without eyes and ears, a house can only perform very limited automated actions. So in that case, it remains more or less a standard electrical installation with fancy switches but little intelligence for an expensive price.

The quote sounds like a fear of the unknown: don’t give up too much control, I want to control everything in detail and not leave anything to automation. In a “real” smart home, on the other hand, you rarely need to press any buttons.

What else I noticed is that far too little 5x1.5 mm² NYM cable is installed, whereas there is a lot of 3x1.5 mm². Two more conductors won’t really make a major difference here, and I would at least wire all socket circuits with 5x1.5 mm².

Otherwise, as Matte1987 already said, be sure to provide empty conduit boxes (flush-mounted boxes) for presence detectors. Just pull the bus cable in and cover it with filler. Better to have them in a less ideal location than not at all, especially since everything is already quite advanced. And yes, Kaiser boxes would be ideal, but before having nothing at all, a simple one is better.

Networking is also definitely not to be underestimated.

matte1987 schrieb:

It’s best to just loop the cable in the box and run to the next point; that’s the safest way.

If the electrician has worked with KNX before, then he knows this. It’s actually the usual practice. Saves time and headaches.

Notstrom schrieb:

Individual outlets are placed centrally on the ground floor and first floor for an access point, but not on the ceiling—instead, rather near the floor with a cabinet or something similar placed in front of it. - not yet included in the offer.

All empty conduits can be found under point 2) Cable routing systems and 3) Flush-mounted wiring installation.

How do you come to “300€ per double socket”?

Access points positioned near the floor and inside or behind furniture are suboptimal. These devices should be mounted high and unobstructed to ensure the best possible Wi-Fi coverage.

3600€ - ~600€ (network cabinet and power strip) = approximately 3000€, distributed over 10 double sockets. I assumed that the full 500m (1640 feet) of cable would be used.

Thank you very much for the detailed information. I have an appointment tomorrow and am confident that we will make progress.