Smart homes have become increasingly popular, giving homeowners the delight and flexibility of having their tech already wired into their homes! A smart home will be filled with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or similarly connected devices that can be tailored to however much or little control you want over your home. Homeowners are also more willing to chip in extra money to their home purchase for the ease of controlling all areas of their home from wherever they are.
8 Construction Tips When Building a Smart Home
With these smart homes growing in popularity, being able to most effectively build a home that can work with the most wanted kind of tech is incredibly important.
Today, we’ll be going over 8 important construction tips to consider when you are building a new smart home. Let’s get going!
1. Consider incorporating a hub.
Setting up a Smart Home Hub is essentially setting up the brain of your smart home. Having a hub will allow you to control multiple smart devices from one spot and it allows all of these different devices to “talk” to each other, so this is an extra-great feature to incorporate when you plan on adding in a large number of smart home upgrades. Some of the more popular hubs are Icontrol Networks Piper, Quirky Wink, and SmartThings Hub.
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2. Decide what Smart Home assistant platform you will be setting up.
This kind of falls into the same vein as a hub but picking which smart assistant platform you will be using as your home’s base will help you find things that will work in your home. Smart home assistant platforms are things like Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple Homekit, etc. Once you know which platform you will be using, this helps you narrow down the devices you can place in the home as not all devices work on all platforms.
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3. Plan out what appliances and special tech you want to incorporate.
Once you have the above two items set up, you can start thinking about the basic tech and appliances you will be incorporating into the home. There is a HUGE list of items that can be selected, but the basics should be lights, locks, thermostats, and a video doorbell.
Smart switches and plugs can help save money on electricity bills, as they make it easy to control your lights and plugs from your phone. Smart outdoor lights use motion sensors to turn on your outdoor lights, which can help keep intruders (humans or furry creatures) at bay.
Smart thermostats can be adjusted from your phone and can monitor outdoor weather to adjust your thermostat, which will help with your bills. Locks that can be controlled from anywhere through your phone lend a new level of safety to your home, just like video doorbells give a sense of security.
There are also some more wild and big smart appliances, like smart roofs that monitor your roof, smart fridges that create your grocery list for you, water leak detectors, robot vacuums, smart showers, and so much more! Figure out what you want to include, and then find the appliances that will work with your smart platform.
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4. Partner with Smart Home suppliers.
As a constructor of homes and smart homes, it may be a good idea to form a working partnership with some of the smart home appliance providers in your area. This will benefit builders and suppliers alike, and they can even help each other keep up to date with the latest technology advances.
5. Pre-wire the Ethernet.
This is a big first step when starting to put the tech into place. When you are already laying in the AC wiring, the plumbing, and any other infrastructure bits it is the perfect time to get the Ethernet set up throughout the house. You’ll want to make sure that your network is strong throughout the house, so setting up solid connections all over the home with a mix of Ethernet and Wi-Fi will get you coverage everywhere.
6. Plan the infrastructures ahead of time.
This plays into the above tip, but you will want to plan out exactly where all of the smart appliances are going to be located so that you can make sure you have the Ethernet and wiring connections going to the right places. Use Ethernet as much as possible for stationary devices to make sure that your Wi-Fi power is prioritized for devices that move around more. Make sure that all of your A/V infrastructure gets where it needs to be and make it easy to hide by placing it inside the walls to give it a nice, clean look.
7. Follow your budget!
Whether you are building this smart home for yourself or for a buyer, there will be a budget that you need to follow. Smart homes can be expensive to build the more tech you incorporate, so you will need to plan and stick with a budget to keep you in line. Decide which appliances are necessities and work those in first, then you can add in the bonus features that are fun to have.
8. Make sure the foundation of the home is strong and steady.
Smart homes are not cheap to build, so you want to make sure that the foundation of your house itself is well-built. This will help make sure that the house stands for a long time, and this will also help keep your home safe from the elements. You may have to use a mini excavator to dig around your house’s foundation to check on it and make any necessary repairs.
Wrapping Up
Smart homes are the future, and we might as well embrace that! The key components to successfully creating an efficient and successful smart home are the things that we’ve covered in this article. The biggest thing to remember is that planning is your best friend during this process. We hope that this has been helpful and given you some inspiration and guidance, and we hope that you come back to our website with any other questions you may have!