Hey everyone, I’m gonna be moving to a new house house in about 2-3 months and I’m wondering what people I’m the same position have done.
Should I remove everything from the hub in my current home and start from scratch in the new one?
Or should I just move things and then figure out where to put everything and modify?
Wondering which one would be easier. So far, it seems the start from scratch option is better.
Thanks in advance!
I think it really comes down to the size of your current place vs the size of the new one.
If they’re similar in size and design (number of rooms, number of bathrooms and bedrooms, etc) a lot of sensors can just be re-used without much re-working. If you’ve got motion sensors currently for weird blind corners and gap coverage that you won’t have at the new place, you could get away with removing them and re-adding those as needed once you find areas that need them.
Certain things would be universal wherever you are moving as long as they are compatible (locks, bulbs, garage door opener and tilt sensors, water valve shutoffs, etc).
Lightswitches may change depending on the lights they will support in different rooms (currently maybe you have fluorescent tubes in the kitchen and you’ll be moving somewhere with recessed ceiling lights so you can use dimmers instead of just toggles).
Whatever seems easier to you, but not having to exclude and repair each individual device is usually considered a strength of mesh networks. 
You just move everything to the new locations and then if it’s Zigbee, all the address tables will rebuild when you plug in the hub again (assuming you also took the batteries out of the hub when you moved). If it’s zwave, run The zwave repair utilities and you should be good to go.
Remember that it can take a while for all the address tables to get rebuilt. Typically we’d just recheck the next day. So don’t worry if initially some of the devices seem unavailable, it may just be they haven’t had their address tables rebuilt yet. It’s not the length of time it takes the hub to complete the utility, that’s just sending out the instruction to rebuild the address tables. There still additional time required for the tables to actually get rebuilt for each individual device.
The only issue will be if your new setup creates “orphans,” that is battery-powered devices that don’t have any mains-powered device of the same protocol close enough to bounce signals to them. Or mains powered devices that are out of range of any other mains powered device. so that’s just something to be aware of as you plan your new device locations.
I still don’t know the whole layout of the new house. Still looking. Most likely, the layout will be entirely different, but with a similar square footage in general. Right now I have many recessed lights and lots of light switches (including 3-ways), which may not be the case for the new place. Every house I go into, I am checking how many 3-way switches, ceiling lights, # of bulbs, pulling off the thermostat checking for a C wire, etc. I have no idea what the real estate guy might be thinking of me. 
This is true and why I am actually considering doing this. I think what I’m really trying to avoid is having a mess of a setup and having to go and edit every single device within the smartapps. Given the size of the place, I doubt I’ll end up getting orphan devices. What might be an issue, is transferring everything and then run out of light switches to hook up, and then end up having a paired device to my hub to which I can’t give power to remove it.
Once you know the layout of the house, make a list of which switches and outlets you’ll want to replace with smart ones. Then you should be able to figure out if you’ll have extras or need to buy more.
A quick 5-10 minute walkthrough just for that can determine your path forward