I’m in the planning stages of a new build home. I’m loving SC 5.5 in my apartment and intend to use it as the central control with the new house.
Its been several years since my last install when I went down the Insteon/ISY route and I’m looking for guidance on what direction to go with the new place.
Its going to be a 4 bed home with switches, powered shades, ceiling fans, central HVAC and connected Audio.
I’m feeling pretty good about sticking to Sonos for the audio and using Ecobee 3’s as thermostats but I’m unsure on the rest.
My priority is seamless integration so I’m attracted to sticking with Homekit devices but I intend to use Alexa for voice control.
On switches I’d normally go Insteon, but I’m put off by the ISY not being Homekit friendly. I’m also not thrilled about using the Insteon hub as an alternative. Should I consider Lutron Caseta or even iDevices?
For the ceiling fans I love the Haiku range, but I’m assuming Simple Control isn’t going to be compatible with them anytime soon. Given that it looks like the Hunter Douglas Symphony may have to do.
Planning on a new build comes way before install, so recommendations now might be out of date then.
A key question is whether to wire for Lutron Homeworks QS. It is a question that must be dealt with up front because it affects virtually every electrical wire and where it goes. It would be my preferred choice for a new build. Going downscale from that would be Radio RA 2, not Caséta which is more of an apartment/small solution.
Insteon in my opinion would not be a common choice for a new build. That’s more of a retrofit solution. At this point all of my lighting suggestions would be different types of Lutron which are then controlled either directly and/or via the Lutron HomeKit bridge.
I can tell you from personal experience that Caseta works very well in a home that size (I have a 4 bedroom/4200sf home with over 80 caseta devices (including remotes). You will need 2 hubs, and everything is then controlled through homekit or simplecontrol. The system is very reliable, both hubs are in a central location where my router is and I have no issues with range.
Homeworks QS is a pretty amazing system, but when I was building the cost for the system was close to $40-50K…couldn’t justify that in the home I was building (ie. not a $1.5mil+ home).