Articles and whitepapers

29/8/2003

Building the Future into New Homes

By Jonathan Margolis

The demands of today's techno-savvy homeowner mean that an increasing number of newly built, modestly priced houses are coming fitted with whole house entertainment.

The UK's leading housing developers, such as Barratt, Octagon, Laing and The Berkley Group are turning to CEDIA (Custom Electronic Design and Installation) members to give their products the edge in a highly competitive market. The whole-house entertainment system has supplemented the luxury fitted kitchen and ensuite bathroom as the bait needed to lure new buyers.

prewired for home entertainment

And people you would not automatically connect with home automation are benefiting from it. For example, a pilot scheme for the disabled in York is already in operation in one intelligent home for a severely handicapped woman. With such conveniences as self-opening windows and electronically locking doors, the disabled will be among the biggest winners in the home automation revolution.

Many other social housing projects in the near future will have elements of intelligence built into them. In Berlin, a workers' housing project is having intelligent technology installed in a block of flats. With local government support, all 222 flats are being connected up to an interactive broadband cable network.

The environment will be another beneficiary. Energy efficiency and home automation go hand in hand. One of the things that strikes most visitors to intelligent homes is the high level of green awareness in the form of everything from insulation, to the heat exchanger in the loft that sucks out the residual warmth from stale air and feeds it back to the hot water tank, to ultra-thoughtful use of water, with such concepts as bathwater automatically being recycled for irrigation for the lawn.

Greenness is both the value-added ingredient of home intelligence and its new intellectual strength. The intelligent home has been recruited as part of the struggle to save the planet, and from that new moral high ground, has gone on to become an agent for social good. Energy conservation is an ethical duty for the rich, but also saves cash for the poor. If a house can be wired to motorise the chandeliers for cleaning, or provide hi-fi from hidden speakers in every room, the same wires can power aids for the disabled or the means for the family to keep an eye via a video link with a bedridden family member, or someone on kidney dialysis, upstairs.

One of the basic concepts of the intelligent home is that, once the all-important wiring is installed and the space is there for more in future years, the building is, to a large extent, effectively future-proofed. Whatever technology might emerge in the foreseeable future, it will need wiring of some kind. The wiring that was in a child's bedroom for its computer for example, can be used when a disabled grandparent moves in so that they can control the room temperature, see who is at the door or alter the angle of their bed. If all the necessary channels are embedded in the masonry and woodwork, the battle is won.

a future-proofed home with spare TV, data and infra-red cables

It is the question of future proofing that occurs early on to many homeowners when they think about preparing for the impending influx of digital entertainment and other services to the home. While retro-fitting (channelling wiring ducts and voids into an old building) can be expensive, messy and disruptive, putting wiring channels into a new-build property is relatively simple and inexpensive. A brief glance at recent The Alliance and Leicester 'Homeowner 2025' survey cites 'technology' as the key to a future house price boom, with installed home 'entertainment' regarded one of the most important future lifestyle trends. This, as well as the ease with which, in strictly building terms, a new house can be future-proofed, explains why developers are so keen to integrate whole-house entertainment systems into their properties.

The Berkeley Group, for example, is introducing multiroom audio in properties priced over £200,000 (50% of their new properties). Likewise, owners of Laing Homes valued over £250,000 (75% of their new properties) will be offered the installation.

As Bob Abraham, MD of CEDIA-member company QED Audio Products, says, 'Just about all of the major executive house builders recognise that this is a great way to enhance the desirability of their properties. In some areas, such as in and around London, pre-wiring for multiroom sound and vision has become a de facto requirement - anything less would be viewed as under specified. Already there are signs that developers are looking to raise the stakes again by building-in all the hardware as well, thus presenting the customer with a 'value-added' turnkey solution.'

What Abraham suggests is that, as well as wanting a high technology home, house buyers are looking to make an investment. In buying a pre-wired, hardware-equipped property; buyers can be confident that their home will resell at a substantial profit. Unlike fitted wardrobes or breakfast bars, high technology, or more accurately, the embedded potential for including high technology, is something that will stay fashionable forever.

These demands go a long way to explaining why developers are willing to fit systems as standard. Obviously these are not custom-built systems, but 'off-the-shelf solutions' that put them within the budget of a much wider audience. The manufacturers of more refined intelligent home components are rightly beginning to see these off-the-shelf options as a means to secure future sales from a captive audience.

As the UK market expands, the variety of multiroom systems is also growing. At one end are the simple, easy-to-fit, off-the-shelf solutions. At the other are high performance, bespoke systems. While whole-house entertainment is still far from achieving 'commodity' status, growing demand is leading to more manufacturers and installers 'doing the CEDIA knowledge' and addressing the desires of a growing number of potential clients.

Jonathan Margolis is a freelance journalist for national papers such as the FT, Mirror etc.

This article appears courtesy of CEDIA UK (Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association).

www.cedia.co.uk