A Beginners Guide to Smart Home Construction

Constructing your own home, bespoke to your individual requirements and needs is the dream for many.

13:02 18 December 2019

A dream, which with more modern building techniques such as prefab homes, is becoming true more often.

With yours and your family’s lifestyle at the heart of any self-build, introducing ‘smart’ elements are a great way to automate and simplify the way that you live. With a huge range of smart possibilities and undoubtedly more to come in the near future, going smart at home has ever been more appealing.

In this article, we take a look at how the beginner can introduce smart technologies into their self-build property.

Design stage

Incorporating smart tech into your home needs to be considered right from the outset. This is to say that we must consider and introduce the requirements of our smart home during the design stage of the project.

Although some pieces of smart tech are small and are able to be put in place after construction, much of what you are hoping to do will need to be executed during the build itself.

For example, if you hope to use smart underfloor heating then it will save you a vast amount of time, money and effort to have this laid before your flooring is put down. Other pieces of tech will also need to be considered when it comes to wiring your home, this will limit expensive rework and ensure that your smart home is seamless without exposed wires.

The heart of the (smart) home

The first and arguably most important part of your smart home is the hub. This piece of tech is the heart of all your smart devices, your go-to place to control all of the various smart items you are installing.

The hub brings everything together by communicating with each individual device and letting you work them seamlessly. Take for example that you want your home to light up and warm up as soon as you get home. Instead of using the various applications to control your lighting and heating separately, the hub will talk to all devices and have them working harmoniously.

Smart tech

There is lots of smart technology that you can connect to your hub. Here is a quick overview of some of the most popular and life-changing devices and tools you can use in your home.

Security

 

Smart security is one of the most popular and media covered pieces of smart tech you can have in your home. With the likes of Google’s Nest providing you with everything you need to protect your home including smoke alarms, cameras, sensors and doorbells.

By connecting everything through the hub, you not only achieve seamless security and safety, but you can also monitor your home from your smartphone when you are out and about.

Lighting

Lighting is another smart device that we are seeing more and more in homes. Using smart lighting lets you quickly and easily change the lighting and therefore mood in your home.

There are a number of options when it comes to smart lighting. These include smart bulbs, smart plugs and smart switches. Which one you use depends more on your own preference than anything else.

Smart bulbs like Philips Hue can offer more flexibility in terms of brightness and colour. However, switches and plugs work well to turn your non-smart devices such as lamps into smart devices which can be switched on and off from your hub.

Heating

Smart heating is a popular addition to any smart home construction. By being able to control your heating from one central hub you can quickly and easily have your home warm and comfortable ready for your arrival.

Equally, you can be kind to the environment and time your heating to be off whilst you are not in the property, saving energy and money.

For an extra luxurious and low maintenance smart home you can use a combination of concrete, prefabricated reinforcement mesh and underflooring heating throughout the entire ground floor in your home.

Clearly there a huge number of options when it comes to building your smart home, which we have covered in some detail in this article. When planning its construction, it is important to pick the right team to help. A suitably qualified and experienced electrician is crucial to helping you make sure you have all your smart devices are installed and correct site safety is adhered to.