The Big Regression

#1

Post by FireBy2024 » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 1:27 AM UTC

Re: The Big Regression

#2

Post by theamk » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 3:11 AM UTC

> It’s new construction. No one has lived in it yet.

That here is the problem. A house not built for specific buyer will always be terrible - people are surprisingly irrational when buying houses. Very few people ask: "hey, will I be able to change the temperature easily"; but a lot more say, "this has SMART THERMOSTAT with AI. Sounds cool!".

Re: The Big Regression

#3

Post by fallingfrog » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 4:50 AM UTC

The thermostats in my house date to 1920 when the house was new, and they work just fine. Doesn't sound like the ones in this house will last that long.

(Of course mine each have little glass bulb half full of mercury in them, but that's a separate issue).

Edit: now that I look at them they might not be quite that old, but several decades anyway. Still theyre delightfully simple, there is a single wheel that you rotate clockwise or counter clockwise and that's it. Not a single button on them.

Re: The Big Regression

#4

Post by indemnity » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 6:51 AM UTC

When we built our 2015 house our requirements were simple: well insulated, whole-house ducted heating/cooling, and CAT6 to every room. Everything that has an Ethernet port gets wired. Our front door still requires physical keys. Our TV is dumb. Dishwasher has no screen just knobs, likewise the oven and fridge. Heating has one panel to control everything, buttons not touch screen. Comfortable house, all my tech works and basically never dies. Not reliant on some buggy software that never gets updated from company thats out of business for my lights or heating or dishwasher or fridge to work.

Lost my uptime today due to a power outage, first one in years. The house in the OPs article sounds like absolute hell.

Re: The Big Regression

#5

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 4:25 PM UTC

indemnity wrote: post #4

When we built our 2015 house our requirements were simple: well insulated, whole-house ducted heating/cooling, and CAT6 to every room. Everything that has an Ethernet port gets wired. Our front door still requires physical keys. Our TV is dumb. Dishwasher has no screen just knobs, likewise the oven and fridge. Heating has one panel to control everything, buttons not touch screen. Comfortable house, all my tech works…

This is the way. May you enjoy your home.

Re: The Big Regression

#6

Post by pavel_lishin » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

theamk wrote: post #2

> It’s new construction. No one has lived in it yet. That here is the problem. A house not built for specific buyer will always be terrible - people are surprisingly irrational when buying houses. Very few people ask: "hey, will I be able to change the temperature easily"; but a lot more say, "this has SMART THERMOSTAT with AI. Sounds cool!".

> A house not built for specific buyer will always be terrible

This is wildly true. When we were house hunting, we saw a flip house, and I immediately spotted two problems:

- the kitchen drawers were meant to be opened via a recessed "grabber" type thing; you pull the actual drawer with your fingers, not a specific handle. But the drawers were set so closely together that not even our five year old could get their fingers in there to open them. They installed the drawers, and either never tested to see if they could be opened, or just fully didn't give a shit that they were un-usable.

- I ran the faucet in the ground floor bathroom, and was greeted by hissing and spurting and some brown water. They had never turned the faucet on after installing it, or some other downstream pipes. They skipped the "integration testing" step.

Between those two things, we realized the house probably had other horrifying surprises in store for us that were hidden in the walls, or elsewhere that would be difficult to even diagnose, and moved on with our lives.