Advice for newbie

["denaria_email" <denaria@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Copy of a posting I've made to uk.tech.home-automation - this place
looks more animated.....


We're (probably) going to buy a rather tired 1960's house and
refurbishment offers the opportunity to go into home
automation/networking in a big way.  I'm quite happy to run several
miles of Cat5e (or possibly Cat6 - is it significantly better?) round
the place but am somewhat mystified by X10.  Does it only work off
signals sent round on the mains wiring or can I control it via the
CatN?  I would much prefer the latter and, if it's possible, would be
grateful for software recommendations.

I'm not particularly concerned about mood lighting, distributing AV
etc, though I'll leave the wires in the right place for the family to
change my outlook ;-).  But I would love to have full control over
the CH which will be underfloor throughout with a motorised valve
for each room.  I am sure that it must be possible to control this
via a "diary" so that I can instruct it on a day by day, hour by
hour basis the temperatures I want for each room - some are only
used on alternate weekends, I don't like to get too cold at night,
and it would be great to program in a frost protecting 10 degrees C
for winter breaks at the time of booking.  Hooking it up to the PIRs
so that my occasionally insomniac husband needn't freeze in the wee
small hours seems like a good idea too.

Budget permitting I would like to get a hot tub - again it would be
fun to program it to heat up for winter weekends when we're expecting
guests.

I'm not expecting the group to solve all this (!) but would be
delighted to learn of any useful sources of information.  "Smart
Homes for Dummies" was fun but a bit too American.  It's been a LONG
time since Physics A level, and longer still since I last wielded a
soldering iron, so installation is going to be a job for the
professionals; if you know of any who are really good please don't
keep them to yourselves!

Penny





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