Build a single-family house suitable for absence - what should be considered?

Good day to everyone!

What do you actually have to pay attention to when planning and building a single-family house, if you know you will often not be there? So everything should work and there should be a solution for all expected events that fits independently of whether you are there or not. Realistically, I would assume a maximum absence of four weeks.

I’ll start a list here and look forward to additions:

- Complete alarm system with exterior protection, smoke, water, and gas detectors
- Outdoor area fully video-monitored with motion analysis
- Connection to a security control center
- also notification there in case of power failure or heating failure
- possibility for the control center to remotely open the courtyard gate and the front door
- possibility for the control center to make announcements around the house via loudspeaker
- no roller shutters (not even with automatic control)
- roof drainage purely passive without the need to pump out any soakaway shafts during heavy rain
- automate garden irrigation
- garden design without large lawns, possibly a robotic mower
- garbage bin must be able to be taken from outside by the waste disposer

Then only the requirement remains that someone must regularly collect the mail. Did I forget anything else?

Matthias

Airbnb.... Then you don’t have to spend money but instead receive some

You should actually understand that you don’t let strangers into the house when you’re already building a high-security unit. There must be a reason for that.

Matthias

Time switches, so that there is always light on occasionally even during absence
No high privacy fences

In principle, I would also be in favor of not hiding a house too much to allow a certain degree of social control by neighbors. However, if I actually realize the project I currently have in mind, we have a different situation there: There are anyway no possibilities for neighbors or from the street to look in. It is simply too far back. The situation there is rather that the property is mostly surrounded by a public green space. In this special case, I therefore consider a different strategy to be better: Replace the existing 1.60 m high double rod mat fence with a 2.00 m high front grid fence, which is even harder to climb over. Then ensure through generous plant growth that there is no view into the property, for example, to avoid attracting graffiti artists. These can also be thorny plants facing the fence. And then implement seamless automatic surveillance of the building surroundings through technical means, where the security center can respond remotely. For example, by addressing intruders or alerting the police.

Ultimately, neighbors are sometimes away as well. Therefore, I prefer solutions that always work and not ones that rely on coincidences.

Matthias

Good insight is discouraging.

Try to create the impression that someone is there with KNX or something similar. Lights, loud music, the TV is running, the shutters are open and closed at different times.

I am glad to live where the fox and the hare say good night and everyone knows everyone.