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Writing documentation for your house

luke.hsiao.dev

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Re: Writing documentation for your house

#161

Post by splitbrain »

As a first time home owner I fully agree. I set up a wiki and document everything.

It's roughly organized by room. General Utilities have their own pages. Drawings, Photos, Invoices all get uploaded there. My wife writes down where which plants got planted in the garden and how they need to maintained.

My hope is that this not only helps us when trying to remember where we put those cables or when an inspection is due but will also make selling in the far future a bit easier. And of course future owners will hopefully thank us.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#162

Post by mrmlz »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #47

I think it is a great startup to provide a repository that pulls from public records as well as any private details you provide and centralizes this information. For example, your HVAC, water heater, central circuitboard, and central air system can have maintenance schedules and technical info, but that can be hard to know, because all you usually have is a model number. Likewise with the coming home solar revolution…

https://www.homer.co/

Pulls data from Swedish public records - not sure how it handles other countries.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#163

Post by subpixel »

ozim wrote: post #149
efitz wrote: post #17

For my last house, I had spent years on smart home automation, I had a binder that contained clear instructions I wrote for everything, and receipts for every upgrade I ever made on the home, warranty docs, QR codes to download smart home apps to control the devices, plot maps, floor plans, a 1-page list of repairmen for everything- you name it. I made short YouTube videos for everything like turning the water on/off…

Home automation is for me exactly the same as designer kitchen or designer day room. Yeah it was great for the previous owner but it sucks for me as I have different tastes and needs. I am going to rip it all off and do what I want. But in reality I just don’t buy anything that is advertised “one of a kind” because I know it will be more of a hassle to deal with it even if it looks cool. For me cool looking fancy stu…

Home automation is a mystery to me. I have a coffee maker I can program to turn on in the morning, some ring cams for deterrence, and an automatic thermostat. I feel like everything else is overkill.

Also starting and maintaining a fire in the wood stove is something I enjoy.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#164

Post by RasmusMerirand »

Our startup https://dobu.me is solving just this problem. We are testing our product for free and currently you can upload your home documentation - with AI we will create products out of them and if something needs regular maintenance we automatically remind you. Plus we have an AI chat so you can "talk" with your home.

We based in Estonia and soon new real estate developments here will come with our platform instead of the paper documentation. We are currently looking into the US market and if you have any ideas or feedback, email me at: rasmus@dobu.ee

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#165

Post by jakupovic »

j45 wrote: post #102
Gigachad wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I bought a house that had a bunch of IoT junk, my first step would be to rip it all out.

Agreed. At the same time any home automation needs to be able to be cloud and vendor independent. It begins with registering the property an independent email address for any accounts used during setups before taking them offline. Easy to manage for future tenant or sale. Gear is more able to be cloud independent or be made cloud independent, leaving a greater chance to leave at most a local wifi network and local ap…

You have a wishlist not something that you can buy. What's available now is a mix of random open and closed source hardware and software that requires a lot of time and HA to tie it all together

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#166

Post by 392 »

RasmusMerirand wrote: post #164

Our startup https://dobu.me is solving just this problem. We are testing our product for free and currently you can upload your home documentation - with AI we will create products out of them and if something needs regular maintenance we automatically remind you. Plus we have an AI chat so you can "talk" with your home. We based in Estonia and soon new real estate developments here will come with our platform instea…

https://dobu.ee

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#167

Post by Cthulhu_ »

20after4 wrote: post #54
c22 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I bought a house I paid about $600 for a pre-purchase inspection and the inspector basically prepared such a binder for me. A few hundred pages of photos and suggested fixes for not only all the defects she found, but also suggested ongoing maintenance schedules and routines for all the systems of the house, photos of the water shutoff, etc. and even a thumb drive with a few videos she shot and a sewer…

That sounds like $600 well spent. My pre-purchase inspection didn't even uncover some fairly obvious unsafe wiring.

Mine was a fifteen minute jobby where the guy glanced down the crawlspace and took a picture of the (flat) roof with a selfie stick. Basically a box ticking exercise for getting a mortgage. That said, it was a fairly new house (late 2000's) and not lived in much due to the owner finding a new partner pretty quickly and living there mosts of the time.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#169

Post by RasmusMerirand »

avikalp wrote: post #77

Wow, I had been thinking about this for so long! I have had the same problems and was thinking of solutions on the same line. Although, even as a developer, I am not a big fan of how much time and energy we need to spend maintaining documentation. So while I build something to work towards automating documentation in software (with my effort at vibinex.com), I have also been thinking about home documentation automati…

What thoughts have you had?

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#170

Post by philjohn »

subpixel wrote: post #163
ozim wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home automation is for me exactly the same as designer kitchen or designer day room. Yeah it was great for the previous owner but it sucks for me as I have different tastes and needs. I am going to rip it all off and do what I want. But in reality I just don’t buy anything that is advertised “one of a kind” because I know it will be more of a hassle to deal with it even if it looks cool. For me cool looking fancy stu…

Home automation is a mystery to me. I have a coffee maker I can program to turn on in the morning, some ring cams for deterrence, and an automatic thermostat. I feel like everything else is overkill. Also starting and maintaining a fire in the wood stove is something I enjoy.

It is and it isn't. It's definitely on the "you don't need it" side of the scale, but if done thoughtfully it can make everyday life just a bit easier.

Some of my favourite automations:

1. Whenever someone arrives home and it's started to get dark outside, automatically turn the hallway lights on if they're off 2. When turning off the TV in the lounge, and it's dark outside, and the lights are dimmed, bring them up to 100% warm white so you can see where you're going 3. Motion sensors in the hallway and landing to turn the lights on when they detect motion at night.

Do I NEED any of these? Of course not. But I like having them.

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