Casa Demby — Build-out Plan

Two runs per location, not one. The second costs almost nothing while the walls are open and saves a future pull.

The pool speaker runs in particular are effectively impossible to add later without trenching the landscaping twice.

Empty conduit to the pool equipment pad, the gate, and the far end of the yard. Cheap now, and it makes every later addition a pull instead of a dig.

Pick where the rack lives — network, HA host, UPS, PoE switch. Needs power, ventilation, and Ethernet home-runs. A closet that bakes in a Texas summer will shorten the life of everything in it.

UniFi matters beyond Wi-Fi here: it is the same ecosystem as UniFi Protect cameras and the G4/G5 doorbell, which have a first-class local Home Assistant integration. Choosing it now keeps that door open.

Separate VLAN for devices, with mDNS reflection so HomeKit and Sonos still discover. Most smart-home devices are appliances that receive firmware updates on someone else's schedule — they should not sit on the same network as your laptop.

Powers APs, cameras, and the doorbell over the same cable that carries data. Size it for double the current port count.

A brownout that corrupts the HA database costs a rebuild. A network-monitored UPS also becomes an HA sensor and tells you the power dropped.

On a USB extension cable, away from the USB-3 ports — USB 3 interference is the single most common cause of flaky Zigbee.

Your Apple TV already is one. Matter-over-Thread devices need it, which is worth knowing before choosing locks and sensors.

Automated backups off the HA host itself. The one time you need it, the host is what failed.

Avoid Wi-Fi-only locks. A lock is the one device where the cloud being down should never matter — pick Z-Wave, Thread, or Matter so it works locally.

Ring is cloud-first by design. Home Assistant can only reach it through Ring's cloud API, so it never gets true local control — which contradicts the local-first architecture the rest of this build assumes. If you already own the Ring, keep it as the cloud path; just don't make it the new purchase. A PoE doorbell also rides the Ethernet you're pulling in Phase 0.

If the new house has a legacy wired alarm system, every door and window already has a sensor in it. A Konnected board brings the whole loop into HA for far less than 20 individual wireless sensors, with no batteries to replace. Worth ten minutes with a screwdriver on the old alarm panel before ordering anything.

Not on your list, and it should be. This is the one category where a notification while you are away changes an outcome that cannot be undone. Networked detectors that report to HA, or a Konnected-style tie-in to existing interconnected 120V detectors.

PoE, on the runs from Phase 0. Wireless cameras are a battery-and-bandwidth tax you pay forever.

Straight relocation. Re-assign areas as you go — see the naming note below.

Confirm the mount and a weather-protected position first.

Shade-rated at best. Watch the temperature and direct-sun exposure; a standard panel in a Texas summer will not last in full sun.

Buy after a season of watching how much sun that wall actually gets.

Doubles as a Thread border router.

webOS integration in HA gives power, source, and volume control.

Best-supported HA integration in this category. Pair it with a rain/freeze skip and, ideally, a local weather source rather than a regional forecast.

myQ blocks third-party access and Chamberlain has publicly confirmed it intends to keep doing so, so the built-in app is a dead end for HA. ratgdo and Konnected blaQ both solve it locally for Chamberlain/LiftMaster/Craftsman openers from 2005 on. The catch: openers shipping since late 2025 run Security+ 3.0, which blocks third-party controllers at the protocol layer. Find the opener's model and date code before you buy a controller — and if the new house needs a new opener anyway, that decision is now coupled to this one.

If there's a gate, it wants a controller and a position sensor — 'is the gate open' is more useful than 'the gate moved'.

Controller on the same circuit plan as the outdoor speakers; sunset-relative schedules, not clock times.

Ask for a circuit sized above today's need. Upgrading the wire later costs far more than oversizing it now.

CT clamps around individual branch circuits — no rewiring, and the electrician is already in the panel. Roughly $100 monitor-only up to ~$200 for 16 circuit sensors, with a community HA integration. Worth knowing: IotaWatt, long the HA community favourite, ended production in April 2025, and Sense now points its own customers at Emporia. A full panel replacement like SPAN is the alternative, at an order of magnitude more cost — justified only if you also want per-circuit load shedding.

Plan these into the same visit.

Panel-mounted. Cheap insurance for a house that is about to be full of electronics.

Texas grid. Even just the transfer switch and conduit now makes a later generator or battery a much smaller job.

This is the device you were thinking of: it replaces the skimmer lid with the sensor hanging into the basket, so nothing floats in the pool. The S3 is solar-powered — about an hour of direct sun a day — and reads free chlorine, pH, alkalinity, cyanuric acid, and calcium hardness, with no subscription. A community Home Assistant integration exists. Important: Sutro, its main competitor and the other name in this category, ceased operations in late 2025 and its app stopped working, so devices in the field are bricked — do not buy one second-hand.

Depends entirely on the equipment the house came with — Pentair IntelliCenter and Hayward Omni both have HA paths; older gear may need a relay.

A slow leak is otherwise invisible until the water bill arrives.

A contact sensor on the pool gate is the cheapest safety device on this entire page.

LG ThinQ integration gives cycle-complete notifications — the most-used automation in most houses.

Not on your list, and it is the single largest controllable load in a Texas house. Remote sensors matter more than the thermostat itself if any room runs hot.

Under every sink, the water heater, both laundry connections, the fridge line, and any second-floor bathroom.

Leak sensors tell you about the leak. This one stops it. Pairs with the sensors above and is what turns a flood into a notification.

Temperature sensors on the attic runs, the garage, and any exterior wall plumbing. Fort Worth's 2021 freeze is the specific scenario — a $20 sensor and an alert is the whole mitigation.

PIR detects motion and then decides the room is empty when you sit still. mmWave detects presence, which is what the automation actually wants.

UPS, network gear, anything drawing power continuously — worth metering rather than guessing.

Not on your list. In a Texas summer this is one of the few automations with a measurable energy return rather than a convenience one.

Cheaper than replacing fans, and covers the ones already installed.

Landscape satellites plus the buried subwoofer. Confirm the amp's channel count against the speaker layout before buying.

Local rain and wind beat a regional forecast for irrigation skip decisions, and give the pool and freeze automations real data.

PM2.5 and CO₂. CO₂ in a closed bedroom overnight is usually the surprise.

Cheap ESP32 boards that turn phone/watch proximity into room-level presence.

A freezer that fails silently in a Texas garage is a known, expensive story.