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How do you move out of a smarthome?

shkspr.mobi

21–30 of 203 posts

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#23

I recently moved and took everything with me. This included replacing z-wave light switches and outlets with normal ones. I swapped everything out before we listed the house. The reality is that most people will just be confused by this sort of stuff and you aren’t going to get any extra money when you sell your house. It’s a pain, but assuming you don’t move very often it’s worth it. Now I have all the things in my…

I would consider it to devalue the home. I don't ever want that kind of thing in my house but, even if I did, I'm not going to trust anyone to properly transfer whatever cloud access they have to things in my home, so it will all have to be removed anyway.

Who said anything about the cloud? I know what you mean though; if I had to use a cloud service, I definitely wouldn't want it in my house. In my experience it's easier to set this stuff up without the crummy proprietary cloud services anyway.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#24

I recently moved and took everything with me. This included replacing z-wave light switches and outlets with normal ones. I swapped everything out before we listed the house. The reality is that most people will just be confused by this sort of stuff and you aren’t going to get any extra money when you sell your house. It’s a pain, but assuming you don’t move very often it’s worth it. Now I have all the things in my…

I would consider it to devalue the home. I don't ever want that kind of thing in my house but, even if I did, I'm not going to trust anyone to properly transfer whatever cloud access they have to things in my home, so it will all have to be removed anyway.

If your house uses good standard local communication protocols, like Z-Wave, ZigBee, or Insteon, you can take your cloud devices, and a new owner can just buy a new hub device with their own cloud account and connect the devices to it. Doesn't matter what the other person has in their account at that juncture.

That being said, if I was ever to leave home automation hardware behind, it'd be a "if you want to pay x on top of the already agreed upon price for the property, I'll leave it", where x is the cost for me to just buy new modules for my new place.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would consider it to devalue the home. I don't ever want that kind of thing in my house but, even if I did, I'm not going to trust anyone to properly transfer whatever cloud access they have to things in my home, so it will all have to be removed anyway.

Who said anything about the cloud? I know what you mean though; if I had to use a cloud service, I definitely wouldn't want it in my house. In my experience it's easier to set this stuff up without the crummy proprietary cloud services anyway.

But even if you do set it up without the cloud services, can you prove that to a buyer who isn't experienced with the technology?

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#27
post #5

This is why I set a few "ground rules" before I started adding home automation stuff to my house. 1. Everything must be reversible, preferably within a short period of time. If I replace the doorbell or locks with smart ones, I keep the old ones in storage. If I replace light switches, I make sure to document the way the wiring worked before I touched it, and keep everything so I can put it back if/when I move. I had…

This is pretty much my hard requirements as well. It's why I have smart light switches instead of smart bulbs, for example. The controls are intelligent, but they also work the way even I use them most of the time: Hitting the switch as I enter or exit a room.

The requirement I add to yours is that none of my devices are permitted to talk to the Internet except my PC. That means no Wi-Fi devices, for the most part. (I do have some IP cameras, but my network disables their ability to talk externally.) Any communication between my house and the outside world goes through a single network device which I can depend on to implement reasonable security practices.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#28
Some property disclosure forms are now requiring that these items are documented. Example:

http://transitionrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/RE-Pr...

Line 183-184 "Are there any items or systems on the property connected or controlled wirelessly, via internet protocol (“IP”), to a router or gateway or directly to the cloud?"

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#29

I recently moved and took everything with me. This included replacing z-wave light switches and outlets with normal ones. I swapped everything out before we listed the house. The reality is that most people will just be confused by this sort of stuff and you aren’t going to get any extra money when you sell your house. It’s a pain, but assuming you don’t move very often it’s worth it. Now I have all the things in my…

We may be listing ours soon, and if we do I'm even swapping the LED bulbs for whatever's cheapest at the store. They're only about a year old and the house will sell for zero more dollars if I leave them up.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#30
I have IKEA Trådfri (which is ZigBee-based). While the hub does connect to the internet for software updates (using ethernet - no WiFi, and no WiFi password to update), there's no "cloud" component. You can't create an "IKEA account", even if you wanted. If IKEA went out of business tomorrow, my switches and bulbs would keep working. I like that approach a lot.

It would be perfectly feasible to leave the IKEA hardware in the house if we were to move.

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