Get Smart - technical upgrade housing

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, Jan, 2000 by Elizabeth Razzi, Kimberly Lankford

HOMES | An explosion in NEW TECHNOLOGY will transform your home (and what goes in it).

HOME technology's awkward adolescent phase is nearing an end. The new home tech doesn't ask us to become the systems engineers of our domiciles. Microchips do the work, and soon we will have a hard time remembering what life was like without them. If you've got the money, a home-automation contractor can put together a formidable whole-house system and keep it running smoothly. Families building a new home ought to keep an eye on what such contractors are doing--and build in a little bit of that electronic backbone.

Meanwhile, the people who make new appliances and gadgets are stretching the technology to make handy little refinements in products we already use. And some of them are inventing wild, new things we never guessed we'd love.

State-of-the-art smart

EVEN IN A NEW house packed with the latest automation systems, someone still needs to walk the dog when nature calls in the middle of the night.

So when his yellow Lab, Bob, scratches at the master bedroom door, Lynn Mangum throws off the bedcovers, find his shoes and presses the "Bob" button on his bedside touch screen. Then his home automation system lights the route from the master bedroom to the door, bypasses the home security system, and puts it all back as it was after Bob is ready to settle down for the night.

The home automation system that Lynn and Betty Mangum incorporated into the new oceanfront house they built in Mantaloking, N.J., is packed with grown-up toys. It's connected to their home theater, which includes a screen that descends automatically from the ceiling, an HDTV projector, satellite TV, VCR, DVD player, audio CD player and tape deck, and lots of speakers. If they're viewing something in daytime, the system automatically draws the storm shutters and interior shades in the media room until the show is over.

All the systems run according to a computer program that knows what day it is, when the sun will set, how bright the Mangums like their lights and how loud they like their music. When they hit the "vacation" button, the house prepares to take care of itself. The elevator automatically rests at the upstairs level, in case of flooding. Storm shutters close to guard against hurricanes and burglars. The security system arms itself. All the audio-video gear turns off. The temperature adjusts to a less-comfortable maintenance level. And an irrigation system keeps the plants watered until they get back.

The electronic guts of this $90,000 system occupy half of an 8-foot by 6-foot utility room. The Mangums make adjustments through one of the keypads or touch screens in the house. Steven Becker, the partner at DDS Electronic Architects in Manville, N.J., who designed the system, can make more major adjustments by modem from his office. Becker says the high-capacity wiring throughout the house will allow the Mangums to plug in practically any new technology that comes along.

Getting up to speed

FOR MANY homeowners, installing a whole-house security system is the first step to home automation. Link a few motion detectors or glass-break sensors on your windows to a phone that calls a central monitoring station and you're on the way.

There are already systems that allow you to phone in orders to the thermostat so you can spend the first few hours back from vacation in comfort. In the not-very-distant future we will be able to program our homes to search for the cheapest source of electricity or to run appliances when energy costs less.

Even if you never take the plunge on a whole-house automation system, you will find more appliances making more of the little decisions that used to be ours, says Teri Spalding, who researches building technologies for State Farm Insurance. Some such gizmos are on display now in a house in Deerfield Beach, Fla., that State Farm designed to demonstrate building techniques that could minimize insurance losses. The home has water sensors that can detect a slow leak in an appliance, such as a dishwasher, that you might not otherwise discover until the floor was damaged. A range hood in the kitchen can automatically extinguish a stove-top tire.

Researchers are even coming up with sensors for appliances, such as the central air-conditioner, that will alert you when they're not operating correctly. Eventually, you may even be able to dispense with shades: Window films that turn from clear to opaque at the flick of a switch--or automatically as the sun sets--are coming to market.

Upgraded wiring and plentiful outlets are relatively cheap to add before the drywall is installed. But don't expect builders to offer it on their own. Square footage is what sells new houses, and that's what they offer.

The Home Automation Association is leading a coalition of technology companies, including IBM and Intel, which is urging new-home builders to include special cable for video, upgraded wiring for telephone and data transmissions, plentiful outlets in each room and even an empty two-inch-diameter PVC pipe to accommodate future wiring. Such "future-proofing" usually adds $750 to $2,000 to the cost of building the home, says Charles McGrath, executive director of the association.