I will be moving halfway across country in the next 6-8 weeks and am looking for general advice or things that might bite me in the a$$ specifically related to tearing down my home automation system. I am taking everything with me except the Inovelli fan controllers. I don't feel like going thru the effort of climbing the ladder & removing them. Minus the Inovellis, I only have 35ish Zwave devices. Most of my plugs, buttons, remotes & sensors are all Zigbee so they should be easy to shut down.
Unfortunately, I will probably be moving into a rental home so I will have limited ability for home automation for following 12 months
Sounds like you’re not planning to include any “smart home” features in the listing when you sell your current place?
That, and how to successfully transfer ownership of hub or other accounts that devices might be tied to, are probably two of the biggest things to worry about. But probably not applicable in your case.
Since you’re removing devices, and that probably includes switches or other wired stuff, make sure when putting in the replacement dumb devices everything’s up to code? The eventual buyers will presumably have an inspector checking for stuff like that.
Do the innovelli fan modules function as a dumb device with wall switch when disconnected from a z-wave hub?
When I moved from Michigan to Florida, I also took everything except the devices in the fan cowls.
I labeled each device with what room it came out of when I took them out. I didn't exclude anything from the hub.
Six months later I put the devices in the rooms at the new house. I tried to put them in the same (or similar) rooms they came out of. The meshes recovered quickly and I had a working system right away.
This worked for me because both homes are quite small, around 1100 square feet, and similar in style. I would imagine a larger house, or completely different layouts, would prevent some issues with repeaters.
I can't say that I ran into any "gotchas". Full disclosure; I made the move when I was still using V1 SmartThings hub.
Oh my! Are these LZW36 fan controllers? Those are so nice, and you may never be able to get them again. I love the feature that lets you use the lights as home status.
I can't give advice about a rental, sorry. It's been 21 years since I rented. I would say that plug-in and battery devices are your friend here. Stacey Higginbotham has written some articles about setting up a smart home in a rental. She had the same situation as you are about to have.
I would take everything, including the Inovelli Fan controllers. Those Inovelli are hard to come by, and you might not be able to find an equivalent later on. Either that or you could sell them for probably close to what you paid for them.
On the Zwave side of things, I would be tempted to sell some of this especially if anything is 500 series or older. In a year, there should be much more 700 series or Zwave Long Range available and you likely will want to upgrade.
For Zigbee, I would keep most things unless you absolutely won't need it or it is very old (Iris V1 for example). Zigbee devices don't seem to become outdated quite as fast as some of the Zwave stuff.
I think labeling the devices by name/location is great advice. Especially with Zigbee, that will make things fall into place quite easily.
I would take the time to exclude/remove any device that you know you aren't using from the hub before moving. Maybe use placeholders for rules that you don't want to break where you remove those devices. Pause rules that you know you won't be using. Do a local backup before all this, do a good cleanup of the hub, and download another local backup (with good file names so you remember what you did!)
Moving sucks in general, and I can't imagine moving across the country and going from a house to an apartment. You will be busy for the next few months for sure.
And, if you are selling your home, do all of this before any showings or open houses. Once the house is "seen" with HA, it has to go with the house when sold. This is what our realtor told us when we sold our last house (north Texas, based on yiru avatar, i assume you are also currently in TX). The only things that I had to leave were the ecobee thermostats. Everything was battery, or swapped out the day we signed the listing contract.
You might have just convinced me to make the effort and bring them with me too. I have 5 of them.
The only "smart things" staying are the Ecobee and B-Hyve.
Yes, currently in Texas but moving to Maryland where my wife is from. She got a job offer from the premiere organization in her industry and couldn't say no. I am already planning to have everything "smart" that I am taking with me out when it goes on market.
Is that really the case in the USA?! How is HA any different than any other electrical items - TV, washing machine, dryer, etc? Surely you don't leave those too?
In Germany when you move house, its expected that people will take everything - bulbs out of light fittings, window dressings. Even the kitchen sink, literally...the entire kitchen...cupboards, appliances, absolutely everything! When we moved into our place, the kitchen was a tiled room with two pipes coming out of the wall. People are annoyed if you leave these, because they usually expect to bring their own kitchen with them and adapt it to the new house...
No on all of the above. Unless that mirror were inset into a wall, or had a permanent fastener (like in a bathroom maybe?), or as part of a bathroom medicine cabinet or similar built-in cabinetry.
I think the thought there is that especially with high-end homes, they are custom sized or only fit a particular window and it is part of the value of the home.
In lower end homes where the curtains are not custom, at the very least the curtain rods or other hanging hardware are part of the home and stay with the home. Blinds or shades are bolted to the home, so they go with the house. The actual draperies if store bought might be permanent or not, but it is customary to leave them for the most part unless you exclude them from the sale.
In either case, the old window coverings aren't going to fit your new home in either size or style, so why not leave them?
Count us in the US about that feeling in regards to how you guys do it over there. Blew my mind, I had no idea it was a field-strip-and-leave when you're moving out of a place in Germany.
It’s amazing how things are different from one place to another! In Canada, the moving rules are the same to the US’ from what I read here.
I can’t imagine having to take out our kitchen cabinets with us if we moved! The tile goes up to them, so that would require new owners to re-tile the floor!
Anything permanently attached or hard wired. So dishwashers, stoves ovens, window treatments, TV mounts (but not the TV). In some areas even the refrigerator, so hard wired HA would be included. You can specifically exclude it, but that would need to be done at the time of listing, or you could make it a negotiable item. Even within the US there is variation between states. Some more restrictive, some less.
