Expert advice - smart homes

Share


Facebook


Twitter


Pinterest


WhatsApp


Email


Copy Link

A home renovation is the perfect time to install smart technology in your home, making your living environment more efficient, comfortable and entertaining. We catch up with Noah Derrington, Director at Halo Haus to find out some more about what makes a smart home and the range of products and opportunities in your home.


Love Renovate: What is a ‘Smart Home’? 

Noah: A Smart Home is a home that uses technology to improve the comfort and efficiency of our living environments. A Smart Home lives and breathes around the people who live within. It is designed to respond to how people live and help ensure their spaces are always as beautiful and comfortable as possible.

A Smart Home automates everyday tasks and takes care of things like energy efficiency and security for its owners. A Smart Home controls the things in your home that we already use everyday to change our living conditions: lighting, heating, shading, security, communications and audio visual entertainment. A Smart Home uses these things we already have in our homes but when they are linked and coordinated, incredible things can happen.

smart home

Smart technology feature lighting. Image source Halo Haus.


Love Renovate: What are the range of smart technology products that I can use in the home? 

Noah: Most Smart Home projects focus on smart lighting, heating and security. Many other things can be made smarter from automated shading to automated irrigation of the garden. The possibilities are endless and normally the only limitation is the budget. Every person's home is individual and people have very different priorities but there are many great products to enhance almost every aspect of a home.

Some products are designed for someone to simply buy online and fit themselves. Some of these DIY smart home products are fantastic but they are not without their limitations. Almost always the best way to have a seamless, reliable and simple to use solution is to speak to a specialist who can advise or design a system to suit your individual needs.

Controls for s smart home

Controls for smart technology. Image source Halo Haus.


Love Renovate: What are the benefits of using smart technology in my home? 

Noah: Smart Home technology can be used to control everything around you in your home. The benefits come when we consider how convenient and efficient controlling our living environment can become when it's possible to coordinate these otherwise disconnected systems.

We all have lighting in our homes but smart lighting changes everything. First, you can group lights in your rooms and create dynamic lighting ‘scenes’. These scenes can bring on a range of lighting to create the perfect lighting conditions for relaxing in the evening, dining together with your family or watching TV for example. The same lighting can then also be used for bright task lighting needed for cooking or working. Remember that we can also have a feature based on motion to have lights turn off automatically if we are not in a room for a while or turn all the lights off in the house when we leave and set the alarm.

We all have heating in our homes but most of our heating systems are extremely inefficient. As heating accounts for around 60% of average domestic energy consumption in the UK, it's an obvious place to start when it comes to improving our energy efficiency. With smart heating we can heat each room individually and the systems learn how to maintain different sized rooms in the most efficient way. A smart heating system will allow different rooms to be heated at different times of day so they are comfortable and heated when you need them. Again, when we leave the house alarmed and unoccupied, the heating system automatically transitions to a lower energy state.

These are just some simple examples of how Smart Home technology makes our homes more comfortable, beautiful and energy efficient at the same time.

Lighting plan controlled by Smart Technology.

Smart technology feature lighting and AV system. Image source Halo Haus.


Love Renovate: Do I need any existing infrastructure and how is the new technology installed? 

Noah: By far the best time to think about Smart Home technology is when building a new home or doing a major renovation. This gives you the opportunity to very cost effectively create a beautiful lighting design, plan the ergonomics and design the wiring in for the systems to manage your lighting, heating, shading, access and security from the beginning. Every new home should be a Smart Home; it's better in every way - it has become ‘the new normal’ for new builds.

If you are not building a new home or doing any renovations but want to add smart home technology to your existing wiring and systems, that's also entirely possible. Most smart home products can work wirelessly and although there are some limitations, everyone can benefit from this new technology even with basic exiting wiring.

Either way, it's not completely straightforward and to avoid costly mistakes or frustration, you really need to speak to a specialist who can help you put together a package of different parts that will work in your home and be reliable and simple to use.

smart home

Smart technology feature lighting and AV system. Image source Halo Haus.


Love Renovate: How do you control your technology both remotely and when you are in your home? 

Noah: The first way a well designed Smart Home works is that it automates certain tasks for you. When you walk in to a hallway for example, the sensors pick up your motion and look at how much natural light is coming through the windows and if it's not bright enough, it brings on some appropriate lighting for you. When you have left the hallway, it fades down the lighting after you have gone to save energy. If it's late at night, the system will only bring on some very low night lighting in the hall instead to light your way safely but without dazzling you. This is an example of automation - all you had to do was walk through the hallway and the Smart Home system did the rest for you based on context.

The second way to interact with the system is using very simple switchgear just like a normal light switch. You can manually bring on the lights, change the lighting scene or even raise or lower the shades at the touch of a simple switch. It isn't complicated, in fact it's very easy to use. This is direct control - you use these switches to control only the basic things you use everyday like lighting, shades or changing the music for example.

The third way to control your home is from a smart phone or tablet. This is not something you would need to use everyday but it is useful for adjusting the lighting scenes or setting up heating schedules for example. This is what we call ‘granular control’ and you have lots of options to make things just how you like them or access more specific functions if you need to occasionally.

You can also use your smart phone to access and control the whole house remotely. Your phone allows you to see who is at the door or allows you to be alerted if there is a security breach.

smart home

Smart technology switches. Image source Halo Haus.


Love Renovate: Is is possible to link different brands around the home? 

Noah: Simple answer is yes, but this is not without complication. Some devices play nicely together but others don't at all. There are few universal standards and it's a minefield of confusion as the big companies like Apple, Google and Amazon fall over themselves to get you to adopt their vision for a Smart Home.

For new builds and renovation projects it's not a bad idea to use a specific solution that can take care of everything. These one-stop solutions like Loxone are far more robust as they work independently and don't rely on different companies to maintain software that continues to work together. It's also worth noting that a professionally designed and installed holistic solution works reliably even if there is no internet connection for example. Either way, get some proper advice and don't assume things will work together before buying.


Love Renovate: How do you ensure that the technology is future proof? 

Noah: The best way to future proof and have a solution that works reliably is to get the design and product choices right at the start. A lot of people grab a few bits of kit along the way and after a while find they have invested in a specific brand or way of doing things. It then can be frustrating if it turns out that wasn't the best choice or the kit doesn’t work together well.

One thing that can make all the difference to the stability and reliability of your Smart Home technology is to ensure that you have invested in fast, reliable WiFi throughout your home. There are a few good ways of doing this and every building has different requirements. This is especially important for large or new buildings as wireless signals don't penetrate through buildings very far. By far the best way to ensure you have reliable WiFi is to have a wired data network throughout (normally using Cat6 cable) so the WiFi can be distributed by multiple nodes in larger buildings but with the speed and reliability of a cable to link them back to the router.

Especially if you are building or renovating a home, get some advice early before you do or buy anything.

smart home

Smart technology feature lighting. Image source Halo Haus.


Love Renovate: What would be your must have piece of technology in the home? 

Noah: We have worked with pretty much every type of Smart Home system over the last 15 years and have seen the good, the bad and frankly terrible! We design and build Smart Homes for people every day and keep on top of the latest developments in the industry.

Our top tip is Loxone - it's a fantastic one-stop solution from Austria that is ideal for most people's needs. The system allows us to deliver really smart lighting and heating controls, shading, access, security and much more from one reliable system. It's not a DIY product but it does do everything you need for your Smart Home with a great range of products to meet every challenge. Another advantage is having one easy to use app for your smart phone that has everything in one place at your fingertips.

Loxone is also our favourite as it's really cost effective compared to other professionally installed systems and arguably much more sophisticated too. It is ideal to design Loxone for new builds of any size, renovation projects or even retrofit projects using their awesome Air wireless products. The wireless system will work in pretty much any normal home and bring all the advantages of a proper professional Smart Home to anyone, even on a tight budget.

Smart Home. Image source Halo Haus.

Smart Home. Image source Halo Haus.


Love Renovate: What are the exciting new products that are emerging and what is currently very popular? 

Noah: Depending on what you prefer, Apple or Android, Amazon’s Alexa or Apple's Siri for example will dictate which products are going to inspire you. The one that has taken the market by storm recently is Amazon's Echo voice-controlled assistant powered by ‘Alexa’. It's good fun and can be helpful but time will tell if its seen as a gimmick or is here to stay. Google Home or Apple HomeKit may still win out as the solution of choice but for now there is no clear winner.

Other cool products like the Ring doorbell, Nest Thermostat, Harmony TV remote control and Sonos multi room audio are all great products and remain ever popular.


Love Renovate: Anything else I need to know? 

Noah: Anyone interested in Smart Home technology should be encouraged to get involved - anything that makes our homes smarter, more energy efficient and comfortable is going to be a good thing.

The best advice is to get some advice from an experienced home technology specialist with the knowledge and experience to guide you towards the best options to meet your budget and exceed your expectations.

Published: May 14, 2018


Join thousands of renovators getting great advice and inspiration right to their inbox

Sign Up

minimum password length is 6 characters
I have read the terms of use along with the privacy and cookies policies.

Sign up with Facebook Sign up with Google

Are you a business? Learn more

Already have a Love Renovate account?

Log In

Are you a registered business with us? Sign in here


Sign in with Facebook Sign in with Google

Don't have an account?

Reset Your Password