Modern electrics for your home

Four situations — pick yours

The physics never changes, but the point where you enter changes everything: what you can still decide, what it costs, and what's even worth asking about. Two things matter — what you're renovating (house or flat) and which stage you're at. Pick your situation with the switch at the top of the page; the guide will hide what doesn't apply to you.

House — new build

The best position there is: nothing is locked in yet. You decide the connection capacity, the number of phases, every point and every cable. Adding anything costs next to nothing. It's also the only scenario where you can permanently lose something — because the window closes.

House — renovation

What's already in the wall sets the rules, but you have the whole house and plot — so an EV charger, solar, a gate or CCTV are still on the table, unlike in a flat. We start by checking what's actually there: older wiring sometimes needs replacing before we add anything new to it.

Flat — shell condition

The most underrated moment. People think "the wiring's there, that box is ticked" — it isn't. The developer installed the legal minimum: usually few sockets, one light point per room, zero spare capacity. Until it's finished, a lot can still be added or fixed at normal cost. Once the tiles and floors are down, the same change costs several times more.

Flat — renovation

The most constraints, but also the most to gain. Older blocks often lack a separate protective conductor, sometimes have aluminium instead of copper, no RCD and a single phase for the whole flat. On top of that come the housing association and the riser you can't touch on your own. The order here isn't arbitrary: safety first, comfort second.

Timeline: what you decide, and when

The most expensive mistakes in electrics don't come from expensive gear — they come from decisions made too late. A cable hidden in the wall costs a few złoty; the same cable added after plastering and painting means chasing a channel, plaster, filler and repainting the whole room.

By convention, a build splits into four moments where the electrics look completely different:

The reserve principle — why "just in case" pays off

The house you build today will stand for 30–50 years. In that time everything changes: your car will go electric, the boiler will turn into a heat pump, solar panels will land on the roof, and the kids will want internet in every corner. Your wiring has to anticipate that, even if you're not buying it today.

• An empty conduit from the garage to the consumer unit — costs a few dozen złoty today, saves breaking up the floor when you buy an EV in 5 years.
• 20–30% spare capacity in the consumer unit — without it, adding one circuit means replacing the whole board.
• Structured cabling wherever you're sure "WiFi will be enough" — because it won't. A cable is cheaper than an argument about signal.
• A conduit from the consumer unit to the roof — for solar, even if PV is a "someday" plan.
• Control cabling for shutters and the gate — even if they start out manual.

Who's responsible for what

Four parties meet during a build, and it's easy for a competence gap to open up right where your comfort falls through:

• The grid operator (OSD, e.g. Tauron) — the connection, connection capacity, meter. The procedure takes weeks or months, so it starts earliest.
• The designer — the wiring design, if one is drawn up. It doesn't always anticipate real life in the house.
• The electrician (me) — first fix, consumer unit, installation, measurements, protocols, automation and network.
• You — decisions about how you want to live. No one else can make these, which is why this guide exists.

What's actually in the wall

Before we plan anything, I check the state of the existing wiring. That's the first visit and the first measurements — because they decide whether we're talking about smart lighting or about the wiring being dangerous.

Shell condition — the best moment nobody talks about

The developer installed wiring to what they had to, not to how you'll actually live. In practice that usually means: the minimum number of sockets, one light point in the middle of the room, shallow back boxes behind switches, zero spare capacity in the consumer unit, and no structured cabling.

The good news: as long as there are no tiles, floors or paint yet, adding to this costs normal money. A week later, the same change means breaking into fresh finishes.

Worth adding before the finishing trades move in

• Sockets — twice as many as the developer gave you. Especially in the kitchen (worktop, island), by the desk, on both sides of the bed, by the TV.
• A second and third light point per room — because one in the middle is only the first layer (see the lighting section).
• Deep back boxes (60 mm) behind switches with the full set of conductors — line, neutral, earth — cost pennies and open the door to automation later.
• Structured cabling — to the living room, the office, and a WiFi point in the hallway. The developer didn't give you this.
• Power for air conditioning and a route for the outdoor unit, if there's even a chance of it.
• A dedicated circuit for the kitchen and heavy appliances — if there isn't one already.
• A bigger consumer unit, with spare capacity and proper RCDs. Developer boards tend to be the bare minimum.

What you can do on your own, and what needs permission

• Inside the flat — everything from the meter/main consumer protection inward is yours. This is where you decide.
• The meter, the pre-meter protection, the supply riser — these are common property, the territory of the operator or the housing association. We don't touch these on our own initiative; a capacity change means an application.
• Increasing connection capacity — an application to the operator, and sometimes the association's consent too. Sometimes the riser simply can't take more — you need to know that before buying an induction hob and a charger.
• A charger in the underground garage — almost always needs the association's consent, plus working out where and by whom the electricity is metered. Start here, not with picking a charger.
• Air conditioning with an outdoor unit — association consent, sometimes with conditions on placement and appearance.
• A camera in common areas or aimed at the corridor — not your call, and it runs into neighbours' privacy.
• Chasing load-bearing walls and slabs — restricted. Routes are planned so as not to weaken them.

Changing the flat's layout? The wiring doesn't have to keep up

This is the most common situation where people spend several thousand złoty they didn't need to. You knock down a wall, join the kitchen to the living room, move the bedroom — and suddenly the wiring matches a flat that no longer exists. A switch hangs in the middle of an open space. A light shines over the sofa instead of the table. There's no way to turn off the light from the bed in the new bedroom.

The instinct is to chase it all open and rewire from scratch. Weeks of work, dust everywhere, rubble, and a bill like half a renovation. And very often it's unnecessary.

Example: my own flat

A ten-year-old resale flat with developer wiring. I knocked down a wall and merged the kitchen with the old bedroom into one open space, and turned the former living room into a bedroom with a walk-in wardrobe. The layout changed completely. The wiring stayed untouched.

What I actually did

• A track rail instead of chasing the ceiling. One existing light point feeds a rail carrying several fixtures — each aimed and assigned to a different job: over the table, over the worktop, over the seating area. Zero ceiling chasing, zero filler, zero repainting the whole flat.
• Relays in the existing boxes. The old switches stayed put, but got a new job. The one from the old bedroom now controls something else entirely, because the assignment lives in configuration.
• Wireless switches (Aqara) exactly where I needed them. By the bed in the new bedroom, at the entrance to the open space, by the sofa. Stuck to the wall — no box, no cable, no drilling.
• Sockets built into furniture. Instead of moving sockets in the walls, some of that function moved into the cabinetry — where I actually use it.
• LED strips as new lighting functions. In the bathroom and along the skirting — a night light that guides you through the flat without waking anyone. Nothing the developer wiring provided for or could have anticipated.
• A comfort layer with no extra cabling. Temperature sensors, air conditioning tied in, radiator controllers. Heating and cooling now run per room and on a schedule.

When this works for you

• The wiring underneath has to be sound — a protective conductor and an RCD in place. Developer flats from roughly the last 15 years usually have this. In a 1970s block, wiring comes first, smart second (see the section on what we find).
• Light points are roughly where they need to be — or can be "stretched" with a track rail. If the new bedroom has no ceiling point at all, smart alone won't fix that.
• You're not moving the kitchen or bathroom — heavy loads and waterproof circuits are a different league; there a cable genuinely has to be run.
• You can live with surface-mounted fittings — a wireless switch sticks to the wall. It looks like an ordinary switch today, but it's not recessed into the plaster.

What you can do without chasing walls

If the flat is finished and you're not planning a gut renovation, you're not stuck with what you have. A fair amount is possible in the existing boxes and wirelessly:

• A new consumer unit with RCDs — without touching wiring inside the walls. The biggest jump in safety for the least money.
• Surge protection — fitted in the consumer unit, protects all your electronics.
• Modules inside existing boxes (e.g. Shelly) — make an existing light, shutter or gate "smart" without swapping fittings and without chasing anything.
• Swapping fixtures and light sources — a good colour and high CRI change a room more than repainting it.
• Wireless switches and sensors — stick them anywhere, including where there's no box.
• Thermostats and radiator valves — a heating schedule per room, without touching the wiring.
• Network: access points, zone splitting, filtering — configuration, not building work.
• A leak sensor with a shut-off valve — one of the few things that can pay for itself in a single evening.

The connection, connection capacity, tariff

Connection capacity is the upper limit on how much power you can draw at once. You agree it with the grid operator at the start of the build, and changing it later is a separate procedure — sometimes several months and an extra fee.

A typical detached house gets a 3-phase connection at around 12–17 kW. But if you're planning a heat pump, an EV charger and an induction hob running together, that figure gets tight fast. So capacity is sized against the power balance (section 4), not "whatever the neighbour has".

One phase or three?

• 3 phases — the standard for a house. Lets you run an induction hob, a heat pump, an 11/22 kW charger, and spreads the load evenly. Practically always the recommendation for a new build.
• 1 phase — found in flats and small units. Caps capacity (typically around 6–8 kW) and rules out some appliances, e.g. an 11 kW charger.

Tariff — G11 or G12

• G11 — one price around the clock. Simple, good when consumption is even.
• G12 / G12w — cheaper nights (and weekends on G12w), pricier peak hours. Starts paying off once you have something to shift to night time: a heat pump, EV charging, a hot water tank, the washing machine.

Anatomy of a consumer unit

A consumer unit isn't just "a box of breakers" — it's an ordered chain of protection: from the main house protection, through surge protection, down to protection for individual circuits, and finally protection for your life.

The order isn't arbitrary. Every element does a different job, and none of them substitutes for the others — that's the most common misunderstanding I hear.

Wiring protection (protects the house)

This group looks after cables and appliances. Its job is to stop a cable overheating and starting a fire.

Miniature circuit breakers (MCBs)

These trip a circuit when too much current flows — on a short or an overload. They're sized to the cable's cross-section, not to guesswork: the breaker has to act before the cable gets hot.

Curve B or C

• B — trips faster. The standard for domestic circuits: sockets and lighting.
• C — tolerates a brief current spike at startup. For motorised loads or anything with high inrush current (heat pump, some air-con units, workshop machinery).

Selectivity — so the whole house doesn't go dark

A well-designed consumer unit trips only the circuit with the fault. If a short in a bedroom lamp cuts power to the whole house — fridge and server included — that's not a fault, it's a design flaw.

Life protection (protects you)

This is the part we never cut corners on. An MCB protects a cable — it does not protect a person. The current that kills is far too small for an MCB to notice.

RCD (residual current device)

An RCD compares current flowing in against current flowing out. If some of it "escapes" — say, through a person to earth — it trips the circuit in a fraction of a second. For protecting people, 30 mA sensitivity is used. For comparison: current dangerous to the heart starts at just a few dozen mA.

The RCD type has to match what is connected downstream of it. Modern electronics (inverters, chargers, drives) can effectively blind an older RCD type:

How many RCDs?

One RCD for the whole house is cheap and annoying: a fault in the kettle also kills the fridge, the alarm and the router. A sensible standard is several RCDs, one per group of circuits (e.g. bathroom, kitchen, room sockets and critical loads each on their own). Then a fault in one place doesn't take out the whole house.

Surge protection and earthing

A surge is a short, very high voltage spike — from a lightning strike (even hundreds of metres away) or switching events in the grid. It lasts microseconds and in that time can kill electronics all over the house: the solar inverter, the heat pump, the TV, the server, automation controllers.

• Type 1 — takes on a direct lightning strike's current. Required when the building has lightning protection.
• Type 2 — the base level of protection in the consumer unit. Essentially mandatory in a modern house.
• Type 3 — "fine" protection, fitted close to a sensitive device (e.g. by the home cinema, server, automation cabinet).

Good practice — how to spot a properly built consumer unit

• Labelled circuits — permanently, clearly, in plain language ("Sockets — kitchen", not "C7"). Ten years from now, mid-fault, at 11pm, that label is worth its weight in gold.
• 20–30% spare capacity — for solar, a charger, automation you don't have yet.
• Tidy wiring — supply combs instead of a tangle, cables cut to length. This isn't about looks: it's diagnosis time and fewer places for a mistake to hide.
• Documentation and test protocols — a wiring diagram inside the door, a measurement protocol in a folder. Needed at handover, when selling the house, and for insurance.
• An accessible location — garage, hallway or utility room. Not behind a wardrobe, not in a bedroom (relays clicking can wake people up).
• Spare physical room — an enclosure bigger than today's needs suggest. A "just right" box is, in practice, a too-small box.

Extras — what else a consumer unit can do

If you're building a consumer unit from scratch anyway, a few things are worth considering up front — adding them later means opening it up and rerouting cables all over again.

• Per-circuit energy metering — you know exactly what the heat pump, the charger and the house's standby load really eat. Without it, cutting your bills is guesswork.
• Lighting control from the consumer unit (relays, modules) — lets you build scenes and schedules without swapping fittings all over the house.
• Remote monitoring and alerts — your phone tells you the freezer breaker tripped in the garage. Before you come back from holiday to spoiled food.
• An isolator and protection prepared for PV/storage — space and cabling ready, even if solar arrives two years from now.
• A critical / backup circuit — router, alarm, boiler room, fridge on a dedicated group. Makes it much easier to add backup power later.

Three layers of light

Proper lighting isn't "a stronger bulb" — it's three independent layers you switch depending on the time of day and what you're doing. Missing any one of them is felt immediately, even if it's hard to say why.

• Ambient — spreads light evenly across the room. "Housekeeping light": tidying, finding something, mornings. Flat and dull on its own.
• Task — lights up wherever you're actually doing something: the worktop, the desk, the mirror, the reading chair. Needs to be bright and free of your own hand's shadow — so it goes under the cabinets, not behind your back.
• Accent (mood) — doesn't illuminate, it builds an impression: a lit niche, an LED profile in the ceiling, a wall light, a lamp over the table. This is the layer that makes a room look like it's from a catalogue in the evening.

Colour temperature and your body clock

Colour temperature is measured in kelvin (K). The lower the number, the warmer and more "old-bulb" it feels; the higher, the cooler and more "office". This isn't purely a matter of taste: cool, bluish light suppresses melatonin, the sleep hormone. In a bedroom in the evening, that's exactly the opposite of what you want.

Tunable white — light that changes through the day

Fixtures with adjustable colour temperature let you give a cool, alerting light in the morning and step down to warm in the evening. It's the closest thing to mimicking the sun you can build into a house — and it genuinely helps with sleep issues. It does, however, need the right cabling and control sorted before plastering.

Two figures salespeople don't mention

• CRI (Ra) — colour fidelity. Tells you how true colours look under that light. Below Ra 80, food looks unappetising and makeup and clothes "lie". At home you want Ra ≥ 90 in the kitchen, bathroom and dressing room.
• Flicker. Cheap LEDs pulse at a frequency you can't consciously see but that tires your eyes and triggers headaches. It shows up clearly on a phone camera — if the preview shows stripes, the light is flickering. Do this before buying 40 fixtures for the house, not after.

Fixture types — what, where and why

Control and dimming — what needs which cable

This is where lighting meets automation — and where the decision most often gets made a year too late. How you control it decides the cable, and the cable is inside the wall.

• Plain on/off — the simplest cable. Works, but closes the door to scenes and dimming without adding modules later.
• Dimming — needs dimmable fixtures and lamps (not every LED is!) and a matching dimmer. Buy 30 non-dimmable fixtures and later want dimming, and you're replacing all 30.
• Tunable white / RGB — needs extra conductors or a control bus to every fixture.
• Control from the consumer unit (relays) — cables from every light point run back to the board. More cable, but full freedom for automation later.
• A push-button instead of a switch — automated installations use momentary push-buttons, not classic switches. That's a fitting-level decision, but it changes the cabling.

Bathroom and outdoors — zones and IP rating

Water and electricity are governed by regulations, not taste. Bathrooms have defined zones that set what equipment can go where, and at what ingress protection (IP) rating.

• Zone 0 (inside the bath/shower tray) — only equipment on safe low voltage and the highest ingress rating. In practice: almost nothing.
• Zone 1 (above the bath/shower tray, up to roughly 2.25 m) — splash-resistant fixtures, properly rated.
• Zone 2 (a band roughly 60 cm wide around the fixtures) — splashproof fixtures. This is usually where mirror lighting goes.
• Outside the zones — ordinary fittings, but sockets still have to be on a 30 mA RCD.

Outdoors the same logic applies: garden fixtures and sockets need an ingress rating suited to rain and frost (typically IP44 and above, more if standing water is a risk), and the circuit must be RCD-protected. A socket run "just for now" out through a window is an invitation to a shock.

Cheat sheet: lighting room by room

A quick starting point for the conversation. The figures are indicative — the real choice depends on ceiling height, wall colours and how you live.

The power balance — the first decision

Before we talk about sockets, one question has to be answered: how much power will this house really draw, and what could switch on at the same time? That decides the connection capacity, cable cross-sections and the size of the consumer unit.

The core idea is that appliances rarely run at once — hence a diversity factor is applied. But some combinations are entirely realistic: a winter evening, the heat pump heating, the car charging, the hob on, the oven finishing up. That scenario is exactly what sizes the connection capacity.

EV charger (wallbox)

Even if you drive a petrol car today — prepare the spot. It's the cheapest insurance policy in the whole installation: an empty conduit from the consumer unit to the garage costs about as much as a dinner out, and not having it in five years means breaking up the floor.

What we settle before installing

• Route and distance from the consumer unit — the further away, the thicker the cable needs to be. The main cost driver.
• RCD protection — Type B, or Type A with a 6 mA DC module in the charger. Without it the install is simply unsafe (see section 2).
• Load balancing — the charger sees the house's consumption and slows itself down instead of tripping the main breaker. With a heat pump in the mix, this is practically a must.
• Working with solar PV — charging from the surplus instead of exporting it to the grid. Needs a charger that supports it, and a meter on the installation side.
• Location and cable reach — which side of the car the inlet is on, whether you drive in forward or reverse. Sounds trivial, but decides whether the cable actually reaches.

Solar PV

PV turns a one-way installation into a two-way one — power starts flowing out of the house too. That brings specific consequences in the consumer unit and paperwork with the operator.

• Inverter — converts DC from the panels into AC. Needs space, ventilation and a sensible spot (not the bedroom — it hums).
• DC- and AC-side protection plus surge protection on both sides. Rooftop panels are the most exposed element in the whole house.
• Type B RCD or a solution matching the inverter's requirements — same as with an EV charger.
• A two-way meter and notification to the operator — an installation isn't just "switched on quietly". It's a procedure.
• A conduit from the consumer unit to the roof — if PV is coming later, leave the route ready. Chasing it in afterwards is ugly and expensive.

Battery storage

A battery lets you use your own power when you need it, not just when the sun happens to shine. It's also the only sensible route to a house that keeps running during a power cut.

• Location and conditions — a battery is a heavy cabinet that needs the right temperature and ventilation. Garage or utility room, planned at design stage.
• Backup mode — if you want the house to keep running with no grid power, this has to be planned in the consumer unit: critical circuits split out (fridge, boiler room, router, alarm, a handful of sockets and lights). Bolting this on later means rebuilding the board.
• Cost awareness — a battery is expensive and pays back slowly. People buy one mainly for independence and peace of mind, less often for the pure arithmetic.

Heating: heat pump and air conditioning

A heat pump is usually the biggest continuous load in the house, and the appliance with the strongest effect on the power balance and on whether a night tariff pays off.

• A dedicated circuit sized to the manufacturer's spec — not "roughly". Often curve C because of inrush current.
• Inrush current and soft start — without it, the compressor starting up can dim lights across the whole house.
• Control and integration — a heat pump coordinated with automation and solar can heat when power is cheap or self-generated. Real money, every month.
• Air conditioning — the outdoor unit needs its own circuit and a properly planned route. Plan it before the facade goes up, with the cable and condensate drain run alongside the rest of the wiring, not after.

Three-phase loads and special sockets

Some appliances need their own dedicated circuit — there's no "just plug it into a kitchen socket" option.

• Induction hob — a dedicated circuit, usually 3-phase. Check the requirements of the specific model before the electrician runs the cable.
• Oven — its own circuit, even at 230 V. Sharing one with the hob is asking for trouble.
• An industrial socket in the garage/workshop — for a welder, compressor, machine tool. If there's even a chance you'll tinker, run it.
• Garden and terrace sockets — weatherproof (IP44+), on an RCD, in several spots. One socket for the whole garden guarantees extension leads across the lawn.
• Kitchen sockets — more than seems reasonable. Worktop, island, pantry, extractor hood, fridge, dishwasher. The kitchen is the hungriest room in the house.

Who it's for, and what it actually gives you

Let's cut through the marketing. Automation makes sense if any of these is a real problem for you:

• Convenience — one "leaving home" button turns everything off, closes the shutters and arms the alarm. Instead of a walk round the house.
• Safety — a leak sensor shuts off the water before it floods your neighbour. Presence simulation while you're away. A notification when something happens at home.
• Money — heating and EV charging timed to cheap or self-generated solar power. Heating room by room instead of the whole house.
• Accessibility — voice or phone control matters a great deal for older people and anyone with limited mobility.

When to decide

The most important subsection in this whole chapter. The answer: it depends on the variant, but earlier is always cheaper and better.

Wired, wireless, or hybrid

Wired (bus)

A separate control cable runs to every point. The most reliable and predictable option — it works independently of WiFi, the cloud or an internet outage. More expensive, and it demands a decision upfront. The right choice for a house build where automation is meant to be the backbone, not an add-on.

Wireless

Modules in boxes or ready-made fittings talk over radio (Zigbee, Z-Wave, WiFi, Matter). Installed with no chasing, often in a single day, in a finished flat. The trade-off: dependent on range, sensor batteries and, with some systems, the manufacturer's cloud.

Hybrid

The most common and most sensible choice in practice. A bus or control-from-the-board approach where reliability matters (lighting, shutters, gate, heating), and wireless for the rest (sensors, extra switches, small stuff). Reliability where it counts; flexibility where it's enough.

The hub — local or cloud-based

A hub (controller, server) is the system's brain: it runs automations and ties devices together. The key question is: where do decisions actually get made — in your house, or on the manufacturer's server?

Ecosystems — what is what

A short, honest overview. There's no single best system — there's a system that fits your stage, your budget and how much you want to tinker with it.

Tying ecosystems together: Home Assistant and Matter

A real house is rarely one brand: shutters from one company, sensors from another, a heat pump from a third, an inverter from a fourth. A separate app for each is a usability failure — and the most common reason people stop using their "smart home" at all.

• Home Assistant — open-source software that ties all of it into one system and one app, running locally in your house. It lets you build automations across different manufacturers' devices (e.g. "inverter is exporting surplus → turn on the water heater"), which no single manufacturer's app can do.
• Matter — a standard meant to let devices from different brands talk to each other without a translator. It's heading the right way, but it doesn't yet replace a hub with real logic.

What people most often automate

From things that just work and nobody ever turns off, to the more ambitious:

• Motion-activated lighting — hallway, stairs, garage, pantry, bathroom. The simplest automation, and the one people appreciate the fastest.
• Scenes — "movie", "dinner", "good morning". One button instead of five switches.
• "Leaving" / "Back home" — turns everything off, shutters, alarm, heating setback. The end of wondering "did I leave the iron on?"
• Shutters — on a schedule, by sunlight, by temperature. Closed from midday in summer means a cooler house with no air-con.
• Heating per room — a schedule instead of heating empty rooms.
• Flood and smoke — a sensor shuts off the water at the valve and sends an alert. One triggered automation can pay for the whole system.
• Energy — heating water and charging the car when power is cheap or self-generated from solar.
• Presence simulation — the house "lives" while you're on holiday.

Structured cabling — the foundation

Let's start with the sentence that saves the most nerves: WiFi doesn't replace a cable. WiFi is convenient for a phone or laptop, but it needs a cable itself to work well — an access point without a proper power and data feed is just a nicer-looking problem.

What to run at the shell stage

• Cat 6 / 6A cabling to every room — two runs minimum. More to the office and living room. The cable costs a few złoty a metre; not having it costs a renovation.
• Points for access points — in the hallway ceiling, one per floor. These are what give you real WiFi throughout the house.
• Structured cabling to every camera — PoE-powered cameras need no socket and never lose connection the way WiFi can.
• Structured cabling to the intercom, gate, alarm — even if you install simpler equipment at first.
• Space for a rack — more on this below, because it's the element most often forgotten.

Cabinet / central point

Every cable run has to converge somewhere. You need a planned spot for it: a utility room, garage, a cabinet in the hallway. It should have power, some ventilation and a bit of quiet (the gear hums). This is where the patch panel, PoE switch, router, camera recorder, alarm panel, NAS and a UPS all live.

WiFi done properly

Good WiFi at home isn't "a stronger router" — it's several cable-fed access points spread through the house, working as one network. Your phone hands off between them without you noticing.

• Access points, not repeaters — a repeater halves your speed and adds latency. A workaround, not a solution.
• Power over the cable (PoE) — an AP in the ceiling then needs no socket. One cable does both power and data.
• A separate guest network — so a friend's infected laptop isn't on the same network as your NAS and cameras.
• Sensible placement — hallway ceiling, centrally located. Not a corner, not behind a wardrobe, not inside a metal consumer unit.

CCTV

• PoE cameras, not WiFi — one cable carries both video and power, doesn't drop connection, and isn't as easy to jam.
• A local recorder — footage stays with you, not in a manufacturer's cloud subscription. Give it a spot in the cabinet/rack.
• Placement matters more than pixel count — entrance, driveway, side gate, garage, garden. A camera aimed at "everything" from above recognises nobody.
• Lighting is part of CCTV — a camera with no light just gets grey pixels. Worth linking to a motion sensor.
• Privacy and the law — cameras should look at your own property. Pointing one at a neighbour, the pavement or the street is a legal problem, not "a config detail".

Intrusion alarm

An alarm system is a panel, motion detectors, door/window contacts, a siren and a keypad. Sounds simple — the devil is in the placement and whether the cabling was planned for.

• Wired is more dependable — no batteries to change, harder to jam. Needs a cable, meaning a decision before plastering.
• Detectors where someone would actually enter — doors, ground-floor windows, terrace, garage. Not "one per room for symmetry".
• Battery backup and notifications — an alarm that stops working when the power's cut only stops amateurs.
• Integration with automation — the alarm can turn on lights and raise shutters when triggered. Far more effective than a siren alone.
• Pets at home? — say so upfront. It changes which detectors get used and how they're set (otherwise the dog arms the alarm every night).

Gate and pedestrian-gate automation

• Power to the gate and side gate — run at the fencing and driveway stage. After the paving goes down it's too late, or very expensive.
• Photocells and a safety edge — a gate weighs several hundred kilos and moves where kids run around. Not something to save money on.
• Control — remote, keypad, phone, and with good integration: opening on recognising you're on your way home. Worth planning structured cabling to the post.
• Integration with the intercom and camera — see who's buzzing and open it from your phone while at work.
• Manual release on power loss — make sure you know how to do it. A question to answer before the failure, not during it.

Intercoms and video intercoms

• Video instead of audio only — the price difference today is small, and the usefulness difference is huge.
• IP intercom (over structured cabling) — integrates with your phone, cameras and automation; you can answer from away too. Needs structured cabling out to the gate.
• An electric strike or lock — plan it together with the gate, not as an afterthought.
• Panel location — at face height, sheltered from rain and from sun shining straight into the camera.

Media and NAS (your own private cloud)

A NAS is a small server sitting in your cabinet: it holds photos, documents, backups and films. It replaces paid cloud services and — more importantly — stays with you.

• Automatic phone photo backup, with no subscription and no storage limits.
• Computer backups — the one thing that saves you after a drive failure or a ransomware attack.
• Media — films and music available on every TV in the house.
• Camera footage — instead of a manufacturer's cloud subscription.
• The 3-2-1 rule — three copies, on two media, one off-site. A NAS isn't itself a backup; a NAS can also fail or burn down.

Network security: segmentation, filtering, isolation

This is the section you won't find with most electricians — and it's what decides whether your "smart home" is actually secure or just convenient.

A typical setup looks like this: cameras, smart bulbs, the TV, a robot vacuum, a laptop with work documents, and a phone with your banking app — all on one network. It only takes one cheap device with a flaw (and IoT is notorious for skipping updates) for someone outside to get a foothold inside your network.

Splitting into zones (VLANs)

• Home zone — computers, phones, NAS. Your data.
• IoT zone — bulbs, sensors, "smart" gadgets. Isolated: it can't see your computers.
• Camera zone — CCTV, often cut off from the internet entirely. A camera has no reason to talk to a server on the other side of the world.
• Guest zone — internet, nothing else.

Filtering (AdGuard / Pi-hole)

Network-wide filtering blocks ads and tracking on every device at once — including the ones you can't install a blocker on: a TV, a games console, a kid's phone. As a side effect: less data leaking out of the house, faster page loads, and "smart" gear stops reporting your every move.

Checklist before we meet

You don't need to know the answer to everything — that's my job. But the more of this you've thought through, the more precise the quote will be, and the fewer changes mid-project.

Bring these, if you have them

• A floor plan of the house or flat (a phone photo is fine).
• The wiring design, if one exists.
• Connection conditions from the grid operator (if already issued).
• Spec sheets for the "heavy" appliances: hob, heat pump, sauna.
• Photos of the current consumer unit — if this is a renovation.

Think through

• An electric car — now, in 5 years, or never? (Decides the garage conduit and capacity.)
• Heating — heat pump, gas, something else? Air conditioning?
• Solar and storage — now, or in the future?
• How you actually live — who gets up first, where you read, where you work, where you eat. Sounds like small talk, but it drives half the decisions about lighting and sockets.
• Automation — is any of the problems from section 5 genuinely yours?
• Working from home — how many people, in which rooms? (Decides cabling and access points.)
• CCTV and alarm — needed? Pets at home?
• Kitchen furniture — is there a plan already? Without one, kitchen sockets are guesswork.
• Garden — watering, lighting, a socket, a gate. Any of it on the horizon?
• Budget and phasing — what happens now, and what just gets prepared for later.

The most common mistakes and their later cost

Glossary