With a shock i realised that I can not sell a house that’s running an instance of Home Assistant as I would need to sell endless support with it. I now need to make another trip to Phalaborwa to remove all the HA devices and replace it with normal timers ext. And then I need to move all those devices to the new home I have recently purchased in Pretoria.
New home came with the following.
1: 8kw Sunsynk used as a PV inverter as I bought in an area where the feeder that feeds my home,
also feeds a Military Base, Hospital and a water tower… (And a meter that can still spin)
2: Small pool with Heat pump.
3: 8 Camera Hikvision system.
4: Newer Version intergradable IDS alarm system.
5: 2 Automated Gates (Different entrances)
6: Automated garage doors.
7: 2 geysers.
8: Generator
Just to mention a few, but showing the endless automation/Integration options.
And we all know, its like Pringles, once you pop, you cant stop… $$$$
Cant wait to start.
First question. Is Sonoff still the option for Wifi Switching of devices or is there newer and maybe more affordable options out there that someone wants to recommend.
You pull it all out. That simple. I wouldn’t even put in timers, I would just make the house “stock”, however I found it when I bought it.
In my current house I have one light switch that is a touch panel and communicates with HA. But it works without HA too… like a normal switch. So with that one, I would decide whether it is worth the time/money to put back a normal switch, or just leave it there.
During my last move, I also had to decide about the DB split that was done. The new owner didn’t want the inverter/battery setup. I was willing to sell it as a separate deal, no point in paying transfer costs on that by including it, but since that was an extra 100k he declined. That left me with the question: Restore DB to previous state and take all my extra breakers and things with me, or not?
I opted to leave the DB there. I even left the Hager changeover there, and simply told the new owner: This house is already wired for a backup generator, just feed it in “over there”.
Then I pulled out the expensive transient-resistant RCD and the 300mA RCBO, and replaced it with good alternatives, pulled off the equipment, and left the rest as is. Including all the trunking.
They sold their house in Gauteng … followed the sales agent’s advice to fix things, fix the roof, and new tiles here and there. Cost them a pretty penny.
New owners bought the house. Before they moved in, they gutted the entire house. Like in just the walls where left … even a new roof design
You spend on i.e. Geyserwise/Tuya or whatever. The new owner comes in and rips it out for something else.
Yeah, back-to-stock standard, the best idea.
Ps. If I sell our house, won’t spend a cent on anything bar the bare-bone basics. Cause you fix this or that, the new lady of the house has a newer better idea … money wasted by the seller.
I decided from the start with my smart home setup that everything would be installed so that it could be easily removed and put back to how it was before it was smart.
I control practically everything in my house from alarm, aircon, doors, gates, geysers, inverter, irrigation, lighting, rain water tanks / pumps, pool pump / pool heating, surveillance etc… and apart from the fact that I’ve invested both a fair amount of cash and time in the system I’m not up to supporting an open source home automation system for the new owners and wouldn’t want the responsibility of being blamed for their garage doors opening at 3am etc…
I recon at most it would take me 4 hours to rip everything out and retro fit the old stuff.
Jaco, there are a lot of vendors out there now besides Sonoff and I’d say it comes down to what you need to do, for example I prefer Shelly for lighting / power control to Sonoff, prefer Aqara for motion / illuminance measuring, and ESPhome for things like climate management devices but started with Sonoff so still have a lot of their stuff in my setup and happy with it, at a guess I’ve got easily 15+ different manufacturers devices and barring 1 or 2 devices wouldn’t do it differently if I did it over.
This takes me back to 1994-95 ish… Worked with a guy in the railways who drank a lot, even at work. We were still working for the Railways and “Glen” had to do standby for the weekend. Glen also had quite a far right way of thinking and doing and on this specific Friday, driving out of the gates after having a couple of beers at the depot, he got pulled over by a traffic officer from another ethnical group…
Bad combination, halve drunk, far right and being pulled over by that specific officer, did not end well.
We got called to collect his vehicle and we had to find a replacement to do standby for the weekend because Glen had to spend the weekend behind bars. On investigation we found he was arrested for not using his indicators, we protested and said that’s no reason to arrest someone, and then the truth came out…
When the officer told him that he turned without using his indicator he calmly said "Listen @&#& open your eyes and look closely - then its on - then its off - then its on - then its off. Apparently the officer did not like his answer…
I pretty much realized that I’m going to have to rip out everything too should I move, although I’ll probably keep the cameras in there (since they should just be able to put in a DVR and go “stock”).
Depending on whether the new owner need the inverter, I may then leave the Geyser’s CBI, since you should be able to reset them (not customer firmware).
Still probably going to take a day or two to reset everything.
Still love Sonoff and have little problems with them. Shelly’s are nice but more expensive (and I would still flash them). I have a couple of Tuya switches but somehow not that trustworthy of them yet.
