You're driving home alter work on a dark,
freezing, snowy day. So you make a call to your house and tell it to turn on
the driveway defrosters and the outdoor lighting. You go to bed that night and
the house wakes you up in the morning with soft music, a hot shower waiting and
a carafe of steaming coffee in the breakfast room. If the scenario described
above is too rich for your blood, there's a level of sophistication that's just
right for your pocketbook
"Home automation is not a cookie cutter concept, said Jim
Bark, president of HiTech Homes in Cedarburg. "It's customized to every
homeowner's needs. And since everybody's needs are different, you have to see
the value in what you want. Bark pointed out that there are tremendous
differences in what homeowners can spend on home entertainment. A home theater,
also known as a media room, can start out at $10,000 and top out at well over
$100,000. "I had one client with a $750,000 house," Bark noted, "who sank an
additional $250,000 into his media room." The key to home automation is what
the experts call structured wiring. Simply put, this a wire run from a
distribution panel in the basement to everything in the house you want to
control: cable TV, telephones, lighting and computers in multiple rooms.
Structured wiring is typically installed in new construction.
"We call this future-proofing," said Tom Martin, president of the Freeman
Group, a Cedarburg home builder and realty company. "Each residence is wired
for up to four telephone lines, up to two video feeds and a computer network
"The system can grow with the individual homeowner," he continued. "you don't
have to rip walls apart or run wires through the attic or the outside of the
house because the wiring harness is already built into the house. This can save
hundreds to thousands of dollars over having to retrofit later. "We suggest you
wire for most of the options you'll want in the future," Martin added, "because
it's fairly cost-effective to pull up an extra wire when the walls arc open.
You don't have to install everything right up front."
Here are a few of the most frequently requested options in
today's high tech homes: "People are requesting a telephone in just about every
room in the house," said Bark. "We were one of the first companies to integrate
business-type phone systems into homes so the family could have an intercom
system. "The phones have microphones and speakers built into them, " he
continued, "so you can call individual rooms or page a family member. The
extensions are labeled. So if you want to call Johnny's bedroom, for instance,
you just press his extension button and talk hands-free."
Networking allows a family's home computers to share various
devices and hard drives. "We think the future," Bark said, "is going to be
where a home is set up for two, three or more computers. In addition, they will
have an RF gateway that enables a person to take a laptop computer into just
about any location in the house and be able to work on the internet or retrieve
and send e-mail without having to plug the computer in." Automation installers
don't do high voltage work but rather control all forms of lighting. Homeowners
can use keypads to provide a pathway of light from the garage to whatever part
of the house they want to enter. A lighting control system also enables the
homeowner to create various "scenes" with light. If you're having a party, for
example, you simply push the "party" button on your keypad and the lights dim
to the level you want in the room or rooms you're using.
"Some of our more sophisticated systems," Bark said, "have a
brain built into the computer that memorizes the last week or two of the
homeowners' lighting habits. If you go away on a trip, the lighting system
mimics what you've done before so it always looks as if someone is home." "If
we look ten years down the line," said Martin, "appliances will have a higher
level of built-in intelligence. The refrigerator, for example, may have a bar
code scanner in it that builds a database of items and prints out a shopping
list. "The home will have a lot more ability to regulate itself. Furnaces will
come on whenever they need to and automatic dampers will make the environment
more comfortable." "It used to be that we had to push home automation." said
Bark "But in the higher end homes now, automation is no longer an amenity. It's
a requirement."
