I’m toying with the idea of putting together a sensor network in my house, and wondered if people had any plans or suggestions about what they would monitor.

I’m in part motivated by the Arduino-based version of the DZ DIY zoning project (see http://diy-zoning.blogspot.com/ ) where sensors like temperature and moisture are linked up to give a dashboard view of the house (Austin, TX, Zone 2).

I’m under no illusion that this is economically effective or anything other than a hobby, but hey, I have a solder iron and like pretty graphs. There are lots of project support forums for the actual implementation (perhaps even some options making this all wireless), but I wondered what building experts would actually think monitoring would be interesting.

So far I’ve thought of:
– internal temperature sensors (give room by room picture of HVAC performance, maybe set high/low combinations to look for stratification)
– external temperature sensors (give some idea over time of solar patterns, real world heat gain), put on walls/roof/attic.
– temperature/moisture sensor under slab (might have to dig down there in near future for new shower drain, data relevant to slab insulation, watch for bulk water leaks under there.)
– moisture sensors on ducting (to see if concerns about condensation on buried ducting in humid attic)
– moisture sensor in rain screen gap (watch for water penetration/drying speed).
– pressure sensors (to watch for negative pressure for backdrafting etc, perhaps somehow spot changes in air-change rates, not sure if that’s possible without blower door)

I imagine that this has been done in some research projects; perhaps pointers to descriptions of those setups would help?

Thanks,
James