Introduction

This series of blog posts is my laboratory notebook as I try, and hopefully succeed, in upgrading a 15 year old Central European house into a smart home.

Construction materials

The house is 15 years old. It is a well built central european house, with a two-shell external walls made from reinforced concrete and bricks, internal walls made from brick or reinforced concrete and ceilings made exclusively from reinforced concrete. This is great for security. The house, and especially the basement, can survive most natural disasters likely to hit this area.

However, the extremely sturdy construction complicates wiring quite a bit. Cutting new channels in the brick is a serious construction project, and the concrete blocks wireless signals very well.

Electricity

Standard 230V/50Hz electrical wiring is pulled through the house. Most rooms have decent number of sockets available.

The house had a 25A three-phase connection, but I had that upgraded to 40A.

Communication

Ethernet is partially pulled through. Rooms above ground do have Cat 5 ethernet ports, but only one port each. There is no ethernet in the basement. However, there is an old ISDN cable going from the basement to the ground floor.

The house is connected to the local cable network and the copper phone lines, but fiber-optic is not available at this time. Two 5G towers are visible from the roof.