ARE WE THERE YET?
Homeowners riding the wave of home automation, Rose Betit writes.
Imagine yourself on the métro, checking your notes on the way to a very important meeting when, suddenly, you’re hit by the dreaded question: “Did I turn off the stove top?”
Maybe you’d continue to your meeting, distracted by nagging worry. Or maybe you wouldn’t be able to help yourself and would rush home to check only to realize you had actually turned off the stove top. Of course you did.
Or maybe, you’re one of the people who are riding the wave of smart home devices, so you would simply check an app on your phone to determine whether or not you had left your home safe and sound. And you might even be able to tap an app to remotely control the stove top.
In a scenario like this, it’s easy to see the value of increasingly popular smart-home devices. The ability to control aspects of our home remotely is one of the smart home’s greatest appeals. Home automation, by definition, puts the power in the hands of the homeowner, whether from home or away.
HOW COMMON?
According to Rolland Dean Winters of Homesync, a company that specializes in integrating smart technology into homes, “Today, about 30 per cent of homes in North America have some kind of smart device installed.”
And, he adds, that percentage is expected to increase.
“By 2022, it should be over half of all households.”
A local home automation project is found in the Mount Royal home of Ghassan Cordahi and his family. The home is equipped with many of the bells and whistles smart-home living can offer, from the self-defrosting driveway to the remotecontrol shades throughout.
Upon entering the home, with its two storeys plus a finished basement, you can feel the warmth of the heated slate grey floors that run through the dining space that opens to a cosy seating area. Natural light pours in from generous windows, each custom fitted with shades that Cordahi is happy to demonstrate raising and lowering from a control screen on his Android phone.
“Everything is controllable from an app, be it on an iOS or Android,” he says and goes on to demonstrate the remote control of a large dual sided gas fireplace, that heats the dining room, as well as a seating area on the other side.
The second seating area is decorated with a long sectional sofa and a large television on the opposite wall. The homeowner’s daughter, Marguerite Cordahi, demonstrates the ease of using the home automation remote to control the television.
The tour continues to the basement, which houses the “piece de resistance”: the fully automated, high-tech home theatre room, boasting a giant screen that stretches the length of the wall. Facing the screen is another long sectional couch that’s big enough for the whole family (and some friends) to sink into on a cold winter evening to watch a movie or hockey game. The quality of the sound coming from behind the screen and surrounding walls might just be the next best thing to being there.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Smart-home technology is here to stay and will only grow more common over time.
On a frigid –15 C day in January, Winters shows off one of Homesync’s biggest endeavours, YUL. It’s an impressive two-tower condo and townhouse project in downtown Montreal. One tower is nearing completion and the other is underway. They will both have 38 floors, with 800 condo units all together, and 17 townhouses — all units offering integrated smarthome technology.
A model four-storey townhouse has a sleek layout of open-concept living, dining and cooking spaces dressed in muted earth tones with splashes of soft yellow. An abundance of natural light flows through a large ceiling-to-floor window and a door to a terrace. The window is custom fitted with automated shades that can be opened or closed at the tap of an icon, either on the control pad mounted on the wall or with an app on the homeowner’s phone.
The other three floors in the townhouse, accessible by stairs or private elevator, comprise the bedrooms equipped with more smart lighting and shades.
But light and shades are just part of the picture.
“Pretty much the sky is the limit,” Winters says. “Some people think about safety more, monitoring the home remotely, etc. And some people think of efficiency and time-saving.”
He explains how an integrated smart home system can save the homeowner on energy costs with smart thermostats that can regulate the temperature depending of whether people are home. It can regulate lighting usage by being programmed to turn off or on as a room is occupied or unoccupied.
Guido Caso, marketing and sales VP at Brivia Group, the real estate development company behind YUL, agrees that the energy efficiency is a big selling point.
“Besides,” he adds, “it’s becoming more standard practice” in new housing developments.