New build foreign holiday home - Wishlist!!!

AndyBoBandy

So it looks like we are getting ready to pull the trigger and buy a small holiday home in a seaside town in Lithuania. It's part of a new development of Scandinavian style cottages (semi-d) and houses (detached), with about 30 of each style being built. We are going to go for the house style, as we want something detached, and they come with a 3rd bedroom/office downstairs, and are a slightly bigger house overall than the cottage.

The development is being marketed as 'green' and as such, each dwelling comes with a 5kW Solar PV system.

Heating wise it's going to have electric radiators, but they do give the option to install air ducting for a heat pump (air to air I presume) as well as air conditioning, so I'm seriously considering taking that option, and if not for hot air, certainly for AC as it can get fairly hot there in summers. Probably wouldn't have the funds to stretch now to a hot/cold air heat pump/ac, but if I could get the ducting in for a reasonable price now, I think we should do it.

I'd probably like/want a battery too, though not sure yet what sort of inverter will be going in, but at least in Lithuania they have a good system for feeding in, in that what you feed into the grid, you can either use elsewhere (her parents house), or at different times i.e. you can use it later when there's no pv generation, so that kind of makes the case for a battery not really worthwhile... also if only using the house for a few months of the year, mainly summer, a battery would probably never pay for itself...

The question is, what else should/could I be doing now to future proof for anything I might want to add in the future? especially as the house is in construction/unfinished.

the_amazing_raisin

Maybe look at a heat recovery system if you go the ventilation route? It should keep a supply of warm fresh air going into the house when it's unoccupied so you don't end up with mould or stale air

If the grid export is good it might be worthwhile increasing the solar PV if you have space, so you can make as much from export as possible

I agree a big battery doesn't make sense unless you can have time of use rates on export. Maybe a small one to power the house appliances when it's empty

I'd also maybe look at some home automation around heating, water and energy monitoring. It could be very handy to set the heating to come on before you arrive. And being able to keep an eye on water and energy usage will tell you if there's a leaking pipe or if something got left on

Also, get wired up for CCTV, nice to be able to check in on the house remotely

Oh, and an EV charger of course 😁