ᐅ Best Smart Home Upgrade for New Construction

I am currently implementing everything with KNX and would not choose to install switchable/measurable sockets again afterward. Building a house is already very exhausting, and electrical planning and coordination are by far the most demanding tasks at the moment. I am quite certain that a few switchable/measurable sockets will not significantly improve living comfort.

The major effort comes from being stuck between the general contractor electrician, general contractor heating installer, general contractor window installer, and the control cabinet planner and builder.

So, even though I previously thought it was a bad idea to hire a system integrator because I considered it an unnecessary expense, I would now either do exactly that or leave sockets out of the KNX setup. Otherwise, you suddenly start dealing with circuit breakers (LS), residual current devices (RCDs), RCBOs, the number of conductors, conductor thicknesses, cable routes, cable circuits, and so on, which you really don’t have time for during construction!

Good point! Ideally, you already have this knowledge beforehand – or a skilled electrician who doesn’t need to be guided through every single cable. However, they are as rare as gold dust or unicorns...

Yes, which homeowner really has full electrician and system integrator knowledge? Often, even professionals don’t have that themselves. ;-)

And even when there is a lot of knowledge and understanding, experience is often lacking. Plus, for each house you still have to reconsider which outlets should be switchable, measurable, and so on.

For lighting, I kept the planning simple and just ran everything with 5NYM cables, but it suddenly gets complicated again because suddenly a wall lamp needs to be added here and there, and there is no suitable conduit installed, so those have to be connected to the outlet circuits.

As I said, you have to deal with many trades during construction, and it gets really unpleasant if electrical work takes up every spare minute. I also haven’t had great experiences with KUF. They seem to have little interest in DIY. Often, the only advice is to find a professional or ask your electrician. Unfortunately, this is often out of touch with real construction realities, and system integrators rarely say what their services cost or whether the general contractor’s electrician will even be told what to do… I’m rather skeptical there. ;-)

So shutters/blinds, underfloor heating, heating, all good, lighting is still manageable if you just run 3/5NYM cables everywhere individually. Outlets are more of a pain. And that even though, in my opinion, they have the least benefit!

So, let’s put it this way: I cannot currently tell you for every power outlet whether it needs to be switchable or not, but I do know for sure that I can make any outlet switchable if needed. That’s enough for now. It will then be the electrician’s job to implement this requirement in a way that works well afterward. (If in doubt, I’ll also tell them how to do it if they can’t figure it out on their own.)

Otherwise, I would agree that not many outlets need to be made switchable. I see the real benefit more in being able to detect via power monitoring whether a device is currently operating, so that actions can be taken accordingly.

Okay, but at the moment I also think that not many outlets need to be switchable.

I believe I will leave them out and, if necessary, install an in-wall KNX RF actuator later.

That works too, as mentioned. Just make sure to install deep flush-mounted boxes.