Things to include in a new build house.

[JaxG]

We are about to start work on a new build (5 bed detached). Love to hear your tips on things you couldn't live without. (Anything from plug sockets, light fittings and switches to kitchen and bathroom advice). Thanks so much.

Concrete floors to all levels. No Juliette balconies with inward opening doors as difficult to fit curtains/ blinds.

Access to the garage from the house -

Blinds inside the glass of double glazing - they don't get dusty!

In/out drive

Thought given to external Christmas lighting - I'm sure you could put permanent lighting outside which you could switch in over Christmas - otherwise somewhere to hanger the lights without difficulty

Bikerack - inside or out - looking at you DS and friends

Ground floor wet room.

Wide staircase so easy to move things up and down (especially if it has turns). Can also be designed so that a lift can be installed at a later date if required.

We have a new build eco house, with triple glazing and an MHVR system, winter heating bills are much less than our old 1980s property.

*MVHR system.

More plug sockets than you think you need

Air conditioning if any roof rooms, or in master bedroom

MVHR

Decent levels of insulation

Towel rails in bathroom linked to hot water, not heating so they get warm in the summer as well

I'll be back when I think of more...

We are just about to exchange but agreed our purchase just before first fix. We purchased a very high spec house but added heavy duty automation

The whole house has been wired for Cat6 to every plug, lights, blinds, front door, alarm, TV points and speakers throughout.

It was an initial chunky bill but when you see it in action, it's nothing short of fab. I can literally lean out from my new bed and switch the house off. And that thing you do when you go on holiday and wonder if everythings switched off/left a door open/whatever - login to the house and switch it off.

No cables anywhere - DS's xbox is in a cupboard with a TV on a wall - all wired behind the scenes. Ditto throughout the house - wireless simplicity.

Totally ridiculous but a godsend - I can blast music through the house to wake up my teen DS who I spend my life being a human alarm to via my phone - no more attempting to call him 27 times from 60 miles away!

More wiring stuff - I made sure the oven and hob were Pyro and Induction respectively, there was wiring under the units for hot water tap and waste disposal unit.
Outside power - ours is right to the back of the garden for when we recover from mortgage shock so we have it all in place to light the garden. We also pre-laid a hose to water the garden.

Garage lit and electric door, powered and multiple sockets.

Can you tell we became very good friends with our electrician??

Oh the other thing we didn't spec but our fab builder installed and are awesome, we have tilt and turn sash windows so you can clean the outsides from the inside.

Our banisters were already oak and glass but I upgraded the treads and risers to oak (and they weren't that horrific) so I could have beautiful stairs and not have to fully cover them - though that's personal preference.

We put motion sensors in the bathrooms when we did up our last house. They were hooked up to LED strips which had been routed onto the bottom of shelves and came on whenever someone walked into the room and turned off a minute or so after they left. It saved you having to fumble for the light switch in the middle of the night and the LED light didn't blind you when you were all blurry eyed and not used to bright lights. Bloody amazing!

External electric shutters like in Spain. TOTAL blackout.

Wired in Ethernet because WiFi is still a long way off being infallible.

Additionally- foundations sitting on piles to bedrock. Steel frame construction (not a glass/steel finish because it looks too modern), then probably clad in bricks or stones after the fact but you have a house that will not move and the walls will never crack/sag.

Yes to PP who said a large cellar, although I would actually excavate a very large basement to make the bottom most floor a small apartment so parents have a place to live. Lots of light tubes to bring natural light in.

More bedrooms than you think you'll need. I would probably say 5 bedrooms at a minimum (excluding basement apartment)- then your beautiful house becomes the Christmas house (only to be pursued if you like hosting Christmas!)

End bearing piles on bedrock is a bit overkill - proper modern well designed foundations is all you need.

You can get USB port sockets to replace regular ones but you'd need an electrician and it's a bit of a faff ( thank god my dads a sparky :) )

Oh and big ass windows

FYI everyone who loves USB sockets: I'm pretty sure you can easily change your existing plug sockets for ones with USBs. A quick search of YouTube guides would seem to confirm it.

Agree on the foundations. Bedrock in the UK can be thirty metres down. But I'm liking the house wide tannoy. In fact some kind of switchboard where you can turn off electricity/internet to certain devices/bedrooms remotely would be useful for getting teenagers to come and have dinner.

We looked at a new build development recently and asked whether they included data/ethernet cabling - got blank looks "we can't do anything non standard like that".

You can cut off internet without having a physical switch- tell the router which mac addresses are to remain and then a script can tell the router to disconnect everyone else. When I get a google home I will investigate. I'm terrible at writing Linux scripts but my BIL is not :)

I know bedrock piles are overkill, but if I could include it I would. It would mean nothing short of an earthquake will move your house and they're not all THAT expensive: I believe they're about £7k per pile all told?

You can't estimate foundation costs without knowing the ground conditions. Piles of any type are unnecessary in the vast majority of cases for domestic builds.

Then grand designs has lead me astray :(