Dumb smart house

Our new rental house is lovely.  Its big.  It's in Aspen.  It has a great kitchen and amazing views.  Please come stay with us.

It also is new and has lots of the new bells and whistles that people think they want.  You don't want most of these bright shiney things.  Trust me.

Like what?  Well we have a wine cellar that is also hooked up to the cooling system for the AV.  Yes the AV requires AC (I've been dying to use that line).  Oh yea and our house on 3 floors has 16 different HVAC zones.  16.  And the lighting system is really cool.  Well actually I am sure it's kinda hot cause each light switch panel uses about 5 millivolts per day of electricity and there are about 70 switches.  There are 3 closets with master switches that look like this (all on you might note).



I can't figure out how to turn off half the lights half the time.  Sometimes lights go off on their own.  Other times they don't turn on.  And often certain lights won't turn off.  And anything with software needs both updates and reboots.  These lights seem to require a technician 3-4 times a year.  Please give me an old school light switch.  They never needed a software upgrade.

And about that AV system----do you know how fast technology is changing in AV.  The owners spent upwards of $200k on an AV, lighting, heating and security system that 8 years later that is way out of date and kinda sucks.  Everything is hardwired and slow.  Streaming TVs.  I think not.  Paying for 9 cable boxes is so 2000.  Its slow, hot, sounds like crap and is running technology that is screaming for an update but the owners don't want to spend 50-100k more to bring it up to date.

And I wouldn't want to spend that money either.  I have found that my old stereo blows away anything I have found in these fancy new homes AV systems.  Buy a TV that is easy to replace because in 4-5 years it's gonna look like its 100 years old. Don't get talked into spending a ton of money on AV.  Please.

If you are building a new home be smart about smart.   New technology can be great, but it can be expensive to buy, install, maintain, and run.  A mercury thermostat never fails.  It doesn't require electricity or batteries.  And has never ever needed a software update.   Our provider is control4 and all I can say is if you want to spend a ton of money this is the way to go.  I think my monthly electric bill will top 700 bucks and that is with pretty much no AC.  It might be a 'smart' home but it's dumb in a lot of ways and sure ain't green.