Smart Home, Generator Prep, EV Chargers: The Features You'll Be Glad You Planned For

There's a version of the custom home planning process where you focus on the things you can see — the tile, the countertops, the hardware, the paint. And those things matter enormously. They're the things you'll live with and touch and notice every day.

But some of the best decisions you'll make in the build process are for things that are invisible in the finished product — infrastructure decisions that determine how your home performs, adapts, and serves your family for the next twenty years. At RDG, we build these into our rough-in phase intentionally. Here's why they're worth thinking about early.

Smart home wiring

Wireless technology has come a long way, but structured wiring still provides the most reliable, high-performance foundation for a smart home. Running the right conduit and cabling during rough-in — before the walls close — makes everything from whole-home audio to security systems to lighting control infinitely more capable and cleanly installed in the finished product.

If you want a home that's truly integrated — where the systems communicate, the lighting scenes respond, the security is comprehensive — the time to plan for that is during rough-in. Retrofitting it later is possible, but it's expensive and messy. Doing it right the first time costs a fraction of what it would to add later.

Generator prep

Power outages are a fact of life in mountain communities. Whether it's a storm rolling through the gorge or a grid issue after a heavy winter, having a whole-home generator changes the experience of those moments entirely. A proper generator prep during construction — the transfer switch, the conduit, the proper utility coordination — means your generator installation later is clean, code-compliant, and ready to go. The cost to rough this in during the build is minimal compared to the cost of adding it after the fact.

EV charger prep

Electric vehicles are no longer a niche choice — they're fast becoming the standard. If you're building a home you plan to live in for the next decade or more, wiring for EV charging in the garage is a straightforward decision during construction and a genuinely complicated one after. A 240V circuit run during rough-in takes almost no additional time or cost. Running that circuit through finished walls, ceilings, and flooring later is a different story.

Fireplace

Included in our rough-in phase because the gas lines, framing, and venting decisions happen before the walls close. Where the fireplace sits, how it's framed, how it's vented — these decisions shape not just the fireplace itself but the rooms around it. The fireplace surround design can flex through the selections phase, but the structure behind it has to be set early.

The principle behind all of it

Building a custom home is one of the few opportunities in life to make a decision once and have it serve you for decades. The infrastructure decisions — the ones hidden in the walls and ceilings and floors — are where the wisdom of that principle is most practical.

We guide our clients through all of these conversations because we've seen what happens when they're left out. Not because anything went wrong — but because ten years later, someone wishes they'd run that conduit.

Plan it once. Build it right.