Future-Proofing a Claremont Remodel for Technology

Almost everything expensive about home technology is expensive because a wall is closed. The cable itself costs very little. The labor to get it somewhere costs a great deal, and in an older house with plaster, blocking and limited attic access it can cost more than the device it was meant to serve.

Which means a remodel is not just a chance to improve a room. It is the only cheap window you will get for the infrastructure underneath it, and that window closes the day the drywall goes up. This article is a list of decisions worth making while the walls are open in a Claremont house, with the reasoning attached. It extends the smart-home guide.

The single most valuable thing: neutral wires at switch boxes

Most smart switches need a NEUTRAL conductor at the box to power themselves. A large share of older wiring did not run one to switch locations, because a simple switch does not need it.

The consequence is the most common wall someone hits in this entire category: the switch is bought, the box is opened, and there is no neutral. What follows is either a workaround, a different product, or an electrician pulling new cable through a finished wall.

While the wall is open, adding a neutral at every switch location is nearly free. It commits you to nothing -- a conventional switch works fine on that wiring -- and it removes the biggest single obstacle to lighting control forever. If you do exactly one thing from this article, do this one. It is also the constraint most often discovered in retrofitting a 1950s Claremont home, where the whole point is working around closed walls.

Pull cable to where the network will need to be

Wireless coverage in these houses fails for structural reasons -- plaster with wire lath, long floor plans, detached structures, mature trees between the house and anything outside. The fix is almost always a wired connection to a better-placed access point, and that means cable.

While the walls are open, run network cable to:

• A CENTRAL CEILING OR HIGH-WALL POINT on each floor or in each wing, because that is where an access point belongs rather than beside the incoming service.
• WHERE FIXED EQUIPMENT WILL LIVE -- a television location, a media rack, a work desk. Wired equipment is one fewer device competing for the air.
• THE GARAGE OR ANY DETACHED STRUCTURE, if a trench or path is available while other work is happening. Later, this becomes a whole project of its own.
• A SINGLE CENTRAL TERMINATION POINT where all of it lands, with power and ventilation. Cable that terminates nowhere in particular is barely better than no cable.

Run more than you think you need. The second cable to a location costs almost nothing when the first one is already being pulled, and the reasoning behind good placement is set out in mesh networks for larger lots.

Conduit is the real future-proofing

Cable standards change. Conduit does not care. A run of empty conduit from the termination point to the attic, to the crawl space, to an exterior wall, or out to the garage means the NEXT cable -- whatever it turns out to be -- is a pull rather than a demolition.

This is the item most often skipped because it protects against a need nobody can name yet, and it is the item people most regret skipping. Conduit sizing, routing and fill are code matters, so this belongs in the conversation with your electrician and with the City of Claremont building department rather than being improvised.

Electrical capacity, and the arithmetic that catches people

Loads are moving in one direction. Electric cooking, heat pumps for space and water heating, and vehicle charging all add draw to a service that was sized for a much lighter house.

While an electrician is already engaged and the walls are open, the questions worth answering are: what is the service capacity today, what would a realistic future set of loads require, is there physical space in the panel, and would it be materially cheaper to upgrade now than as a standalone project later. Running a dedicated circuit to a likely future charger location while the wall is open is far cheaper than the same run afterward, and the full version of that decision is in home EV charger installs.

All of this is permitted work. The City of Claremont building department is the authority on what your specific project requires, and permitted work with an inspection record is worth real money at resale in a way that unpermitted work is worth negative money.

The small things, easy now and painful later

• OUTLETS WHERE DEVICES ACTUALLY GO: beside the bed for a charger and a lamp, at the ceiling location where a projector or an access point might live, on the exterior wall where holiday lighting or a camera will need power, inside a cabinet where equipment will sit.
• A GARAGE OUTLET AT THE CEILING for the opener, and one at a workbench height.
• WATER SENSOR ACCESS at the water heater pan, behind the laundry, under sinks. This costs nothing but a moment of thought about how a sensor gets there.
• BLOCKING IN WALLS where a television, a panel or a mounted device will hang. A stud where you need one is trivial before drywall and irritating afterward.
• A LABELED PANEL AND A PHOTOGRAPH OF EVERY OPEN WALL before it closes. The photograph is free and it is worth more than any single device you install, because it tells the next tradesperson exactly where everything is.

What NOT to build in

The failure mode at the other end is a house so heavily wired to a particular product generation that removing it is a renovation. Keep the infrastructure GENERIC -- neutral wires, network cable, conduit, capacity, outlets -- and keep the products replaceable. Proprietary in-wall control panels, whole-house systems that only one dealer can service, and anything whose failure takes lighting or climate with it are exactly the burden described in the over-automated house.

The test is simple and worth applying to every in-wall decision: if this product line disappears in eight years, what does the house have. If the answer is wire, capacity and standard boxes, you built it right. If the answer is a wall of dead panels, you did not.

The short version

Neutral at every switch. Cable to where the network belongs. Empty conduit to the places that are hard to reach. Honest arithmetic on electrical capacity. Outlets and blocking where things will actually go. Permits pulled and photographs taken. Then buy the least proprietary devices you can find, because those are the part you will replace.

General information only; your electrician and the City of Claremont building department govern the specifics. Anthony Grynchal has been licensed in California since November 2009.