Today's Hebel: My Dessin's Outlet Plan - 'Where and how many 4,000 yen outlets should we install?'

Today's Hebel.

In custom home meetings, the item that reaches the lowest priority as you approach the final stages when fatigue peaks is the 'outlet plan'.

Even with the highly constrained My Dessin, you can install as many outlets as you want, wherever you want. It's exactly the same as a custom-built home.

I've heard the warnings on home-building YouTube channels so many times that I'm sick of them: 'You'll regret it if you underestimate outlets' and 'When in doubt, add more'.

I swallow the words that are about to come out: 'Just handle those minor details nicely.'

Adding just one outlet costs several thousand yen (about 3,000 to 5,000 yen) in optional fees.

It's only a few thousand yen, but it's still a few thousand yen. That's the price of one decent lunch.

How you perceive this depends on the person. Compared to the total cost of a house worth tens of millions of yen, it's essentially a 'rounding error,' and even if you added 10 (about 40,000 yen worth), it would only increase your monthly repayment by about 110 yen on a 35-year loan.

And our loan is for 50 years.

It's truly in the realm of a rounding error.

No matter how you look at it, 'when in doubt, add a few more' is the absolute correct answer for a custom home.

But we are a family that doesn't want to spend money on unnecessary things.

Here, our 'frugality spirit' kicked in, and we steered toward a policy of minimizing outlets to the absolute limit.
I know it's definitely a bad move, but for some reason, I just want to cut whatever I can.

To begin with, there are several types of outlets.
・Standard 2-prong outlets
・'Grounded' outlets used for things like microwaves
・Outlets with telephone jacks or TV terminals
・'Information outlets' with wired LAN ports
・Cool, stylish design outlets with a thin, matte texture (like Panasonic's Advance series)

The first topic of debate is the 'information outlet'.

With the recent spread of telework and the need to prevent lag in online gaming, it seems the current trend in custom homes is to install information outlets so that wired LAN can be run to every room. It's about paying for communication stability.

However, we cut them from every room except where the Wi-Fi router (repeater) is placed.

Our stance is firm: 'Use Wi-Fi in the rooms, or accept the lag.'

Of course, we don't have a landline, so we cut the phone line too.

We only kept one TV jack in the living room.
We abolished them everywhere else with the intention of never making a habit of watching TV in each room.

We also kept the outlet layout in each room to a minimum, placing only standard 2-prong outlets in three of the four corners.

By the way, you can also set the height of the outlets to your preferred position in centimeter increments.

Looking at social media, many people do precise calculations like 'XX cm for the Roomba base' or 'XX cm for smartphone charging,' but we basically set everything to the standard floor level.

It's not that I'm too lazy to think about it... but if I set them too high, the outlet positions might become an eyesore or restrict furniture placement if we rearrange the room in the future.
There's no end to it, and if they're low, they won't be in my line of sight.

However, the kitchen is the exception.

We simulated the size and placement of appliances we might buy in the future (coffee makers, toasters, ovens, etc.) in minute detail and installed just enough outlets at the 'perfect height' where the cords would be hidden behind the appliances.

Furthermore, we spent extra on stylish design outlets in visible areas so as not to ruin the aesthetics.

This is what you call 'selection and concentration'.

As a result, by cutting out unnecessary outlets from the initial proposal, we succeeded in reducing the cost by about 20,000 yen.

This might not be so bad after all.

I just pray that the day won't come when I end up having to buy extension cords for octopus wiring, which would hurt both my eyes and my wallet.
……I want to say that, but a famous scene from One Piece flashes through my mind.
'I will never pray to God in my life.'

A cost-cutting measure I decided on myself.
Rather than fearing and praying for future extension cords, I will believe in my own 'selection and concentration' and stick with it, inconveniences and all.

Thus, our home's outlet plan came to a close.

To be continued.

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