NEWS (Read about these items and more by visiting our News page on our website.) 

Be smart when building a Smart Home?

I recently overheard a conversation at a meeting in which a client had told their builder that they wanted their house to be at least as sophisticated as their car.  In many ways, it is ironic that our cars are "smarter" than our houses.  After all, they are a depreciating asset and our homes are the largest investment that we make.  But does the phrase "Manufacturer Recall" mean anything to you?
We have to understand that we live in the technological age in which everything gets smarter so we don't have to work as hard.  No one appreciates that more than I do as it frees me up to do other things.  I like to recommend to my clients to consider at least doing the basics in wiring a home for "Smart Technology" including speakers, alarm system and basic automated lighting.  But after that it can get really complicated really quick.
On family vacation for Spring Break, we visited the Dominican Republic. We took a tour called the "Dominican Experience" where we got to visit a local farm which produced and processed coffee and cocoa beans.  The family had three independent buildings:  the main house (2 bedrooms and a dining room), a kitchen, and an outhouse. The total size of all the buildings was about the size of my two car garage.  The main house was the only one that had power and it was run off a 12 volt car battery that gave enough power to run for 2 hours a night.  During the day, the owner had to travel to town to charge the battery for that evenings use.  As primitive as it sounds, this family had a well run farm business and never knew anything less.
In Bill Forschtens book "One Second After", the scenario of an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) attack takes place and all electrical power is lost.  All electronics are rendered useless.  We go back to the dark age of pumping and filtering water, hunting for food, and hand washing our clothes.  While I pray that this disaster never happens, it did make us evaluate some things this winter as we lost power a number of times.  I do recommend that everyone have a generator, mine was most useful this last Christmas morning when the power went out at 4am.  A generator can be sized and wired to take care of all of your "Smart" features, but in a long term scenario, probably won't be much help.
In the end, I like to think that building a "Smart" house is more about function than electronics.  Is your home designed to be passive solar?  Is it energy efficient?  Do you have a source for back-up heat?  Do you have convenient storage for dry goods?  One of the most important things that I learned in college was the "Kiss Principle"; keep it simple stupid.   Let us not get so sophisticated that we forget about the basics.  Keeping it simple could be the new meaning of "Smart".