In the fall of 2007,  I took the plunge and installed a home automation, or “smart home,” system.

It will take several posts to explain all of the things  that a home automation system can do (and I’m still discovering new ways all the time).  But the basic idea is that a home automation system enables you to control systems in your home or business (e.g., lighting, heating and air conditioning temperature, smoke and burglar alarms, even your pool temperature and irrigation sprinklers) automatically and even intelligently.  It can also enable you to control them remotely over the internet or even a via cell phone.

Many of us are already using rudimentary forms of home automation such as automatic setback thermostats (although how many of these are actually programmed to work is another story altogether), and time-clocks or motion sensors to keep our outdoor lights from burning all night.     In just a few years, however, we will all have some form of more advanced “smart home” technology in our homes and businesses.

In fact, your home will need some form of “smart home” technology to connect with the “Smart Grid” that you keep hearing about.  The term “Smart Grid” encompasses a broad array of technologies and investments, but Google , GE , Cisco and IBM are all at work on that facet of the “Smart Grid” movement that will link home and business owners to the electric grid, enabling them not only to better manage their energy consumption and reduce costs, but even earn revenue by exporting electricity (from solar panels, or the electricity stored in plug-in vehicles in their garages) to the grid at peak times.  In fact, chances are if you bought a dishwasher recently, you’ve already taken a step toward automating your home without even realizing it.  Some dishwashers are already being shipped with chips that will enable them to communicate one day with “Smart Grid” compatible home automation systems that will delay their operation until the evening when power rates are lower.  These kinds of “Smart Grid” applications, however, will depend upon a new kind of electrical metering, and some form of real-time pricing, which will be another topic for another day.

But even now, while we wait for Smart Grid-compatible technologies to roll out, existing “Smart Home” systems can still save money and energy, and make life much easier in the bargain.

I’ve been reading for years about “smart home” systems and the “Smart Grid,” but the practical benefits always seemed pretty far off to me.  That began to change, however, in January of 2007 when Kathy and I bought a small co-op apartment in New York City.  Before we’d leave for a winter weekend in the city, I would (at least on those occasions when I didn’t forget), go through the house and lower our thermostats.  (And because we live in an old three-story Victorian with 5 (now 6) heating zones, that took longer than you might think).  And naturally, I would have to repeat the process when we returned, and we then would then have to wait hours for the house to warm up.  And in true No-Good-Deed-Goes-Unpunished fashion, the more energy I tried to save by dialing down thermostats, the longer the wait for the house to get warm again when we returned home.    As you can imagine, each time we went through that drill I thought about how great it would be if I could turn all the thermostats back automatically (or at least from one location in the house), and then somehow remotely turn the heat up from wherever we were so the house would be toasty when we got home from a vacation or weekend away.  By the way, these inconvenience factors — while admittedly petty — are what keep people from saving more energy than we do.  The good news is that by eliminating these conveniences, smart home systems can make it easy to save energy (like dishwashers that automatically wait until energy prices go down before they turn on). It’s why these systems hold so much promise for helping us realize significant reductions in our energy consumption and carbon emissions.

But, oddly, the event that brought the home automation issue to a head for me was the morning Kathy and I returned from a weekend in the city to find that the 20-year-0ld boiler that fired our baseboard hot water heating system had broken down, and the temperature in our house was in the 30s.  If we had stayed away even a few more hours in that 20-degree weather, much less an entire weekend, the results could have been disastrous.

It only took me a few minutes online to discover there was a burgeoning smart home technology industry ready to help solve these issues (including systems that can call or text message your cell phone when the temperature drops below a certain level).

Deciding to do something was the easy part; not so easy was deciding when and where to start, and of course, which system to buy.   The when and where part fell into place pretty quickly in the fall of 2007, when Kathy and I were in the depths of a kitchen renovation project (which quickly morphed into the replacement of our heating and electrical systems, and the introduction of central air conditioning into our 110 year-old home).  Because Kathy was going to be away for 8 weeks to attend the AMP program at the Harvard Business School,  I was able to rationalize that this project would be the perfect way to while away the lonely hours without her and keep myself busy.

I’ve always been a do-it-your-selfer, thanks to having a dad who was an  electrical contractor (and my boss every summer from the time I was 12 until I moved away to start law school in August of 1979).  After a couple of weeks of downloading as much information as I could find on-line,  I settled on the OmniPro II system from HAI , one of the leading manufacturers of home automation systems.

I chose the OmniPro II system because it provided the maximum amount of flexibility over the long term, and would enable me ultimately to control remotely not only my lighting , but also those 6 thermostats, as well as an alarm system and even a video surveillance system.  The system can also be controlled remotely via the internet, or even by cell phone.  What finally sold me on the OmniPro II, though, is that it would link with a Nuvo Technologies whole house audio system that I decided to install at the same time.  (In for a penny, in for a pound, I always say).

The OmniProII controller itself is not particularly difficult to install.  In fact, it comes with a plug, so it doesn’t even need to be hard-wired.   That said, I should note that HAI does not cater to the do-it-yourself market, and assumes that their devices will be installed by trained technicians.   To make matters worse, the OmniPro II controller is basically a souped-up alarm system controller, and the Installation Manual clearly assumes a level of familiarity with alarm systems that the average homeowner (even sons of electrical contractors) aren’t likely to have.

Once I installed the controller, I went right to work connecting my thermostats to the home automation system.  At the time I installed my system, HAI only offered hard-wired thermostats, which meant running individual 5-conductor low voltage cable to each of my thermostat locations.  HAI now offers wireless thermostats, which I’m sure makes installation infinitely easier.  HAI also now offers a solution for isolating the relays on HVAC systems that are equipped with their own relays.  I had to rely on my brother, Chris Pringle, an electrical contractor himself, to find me the right size relays to use.

But even hard-wiring the thermostats was relatively easy for most of my locations, and is still the approach of choice for new construction.   Because of our kitchen renovation project, the back half of the first floor of our home was completely gutted when I started the project, enabling me to easily run low voltaage cable to the thermostats in the kitchen and even in the master bedroom, which is above the kitchen.  (HAI thermostats require more conductors than typical thermostats, which necessitates the recabling.)  The other first floor thermostats were pretty easy to recable too,  although it required spending some quality time with my crawlspace.   The third floor and second floor/front thermostats presented a bigger challenge, but figuring out how to snake wires into hard-to-get-to-places was always a point of pride for my brothers and me when we worked for our dad.  (And they have better tools for that kind of thing today).    On a nostalgic note, my dad — who passed away a couple of months after I finished installing the system - checked in on me often while I worked on this project.  He enjoyed watching me figure it out, and I enjoyed showing him I could still snake a wire three stories without leaving any tell-tale signs of how I did it.  It’s funny how good it still feels, even at age 50, when you make your father proud of you.  My memories of those hours together with my dad are a great source of consolation for me.

So after all of that, let me explain a little bit about what my OmniPro II smart home automation system can do:

Thermostats — I can check — and change — the temperature and thermostat settings throughought the house from a single location.  I can also do it from any phone in the house (when you lift any handset in the house and press # a voice menu system is activated), or from my cell phone.   I can also download elaborate instructions from my computer.  For example, the thermostats in the house are all set to lower the temperatures in varying amounts (e.g., our master bedroom zone is not set back as far as other zones), late night, and to begin rewarming the house around 6 a.m.   The zones for my college-aged daughter’s room is set back all the time when she is as school.  Similarly, the thermostat in our third-floor guest apartment is set back all the time when the apartment is not being used.  The HAI interface has a “button” feature that allows you to program one-touch changes to the system.  So, I have programmed buttons that say “Kids Home” and “Kids Away” or “3rd Floor Guest” and “3rd Floor Empty,” so that with one touch I can quickly  change the thermostat setback routines.  This button feature is especially handy when someone visits unexpectedly, and I can simply call the system and either warm the apartment up, or cool it down, depending upon the season.

We use the same approach when we go away.  For example, when we set the security settings to “Vacation” or “Away,” the system automatically sets back the thermostats (and turn off a number of other appliances, including TVs and set-top boxes).  I can then call ahead several hours before we return home, and everything is back to normal by the time we arrive.   The system is also programmed at all times to call my cell phone when the temperature in the house drops below a certain level.

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