Home Technology: What, How & Why
Keith Davis, Residential Technologies, Inc.
 To the unitiated or those considering adding home technology features and options, home technology can seem rather daunting. But it need not be.
The following are five simple things remodelers should know about home technology to help ease them into this growing opportunity in housing:
- Remodelers should embrace home technology as the next big thing in the remodeling market. It is a highly-desired product and service in demand by tech-savvy home buyers and owners.
- Home technology can be a profit center for remodelers, but remodelers should price home technology options and features reasonably. Pricing them artificially high will drive the home owner to a retailer or electronics systems contractor (ESC and effectively cut the remodeler out of the picture entirely).
- Home technology requires a more professional sales and installation model than any other upgrade or product many remodelers currently have access to. Make sure the installer has the capability to install and service the technology to the customer’s satisfaction.
- Home technology is not rocket science and should never be presented as such to the builder or the home owner. Home technology is cool, unique, wonderful and fun, but it does not have to be difficult to explain. If the features and functions demonstrated are too difficult to understand, the remodeler should find another ESC who can make it simple for both the remodeler and home owner.
- Home technology can get wrapped up in jargon and “standards” that make no sense to the majority of remodelers and home owners. Look for an ESC who can speak in language that is easy to understand. Most likely, they will communicate with customers the same way.
The Home Technology Alliance is a partnership between NAHB and the Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association (CEDIA), an international trade association of companies that specialize in designing and installing electronic systems for the home, to meet the growing consumer demand for home technology — from home theaters and electronic gaming to home security and home health care.
The partnership taps CEDIA’s expertise in applications and NAHB members’ knowledge of the new-home and remodeling markets to offer consumers new choices in home automation that can improve their quality of life.
How to embrace home technology
Now that you have heard "why" to embrace home technology, let us give you some examples of "how" to incoorporate home technology into your next remodel.
Today's customers are demanding more technologies than ever! Utz Baldwin, vice president of the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association (CEDIA) discussed these and five other of the "Top 10 Must-Have Technology Trends for Homes" during the Custom Builder Symposium last fall.
The trends include:
- Home Theater/Media Systems - in a dedicated room with "smart" components and controls
- Home Healthcare Products and Installation - including patient monitoring systems, medication compliance tools (through the Web and TV) and telemedicine tools to monitor vital signs and communicate with health care professionals
- Media Center Edition (MCE) Computers - including surround-sound processing, one-touch recording of TV shows, Internet radio access, entertainment services, family movies and photos
- Microdisplay-Based Televisions - including liquid crystal display, digital light processing, liquid crystal on silicon and LCD-based rear-projection TVs
- Lighting and Automation - including universal powerline technology and wireless
- Security Systems - that record up to two weeks of activities
- Media Servers - to store thousands of hours of music that can be shared among devices
- iPod Revolution - including connectivity to distributed audio systems and competition among MP3 manufacturers
- Entertainment - including multi-zone and multi-room music systems with any source accessible from any room and multiple sources operating in multiple rooms simultaneously
- Gaming Rooms - for traditional play such as billiards, card games and pinball, along with ever-more-sophisticated electronic games and systems
For more information about this item and the Home Technology Alliance, please contact Germaine Palangdao at 800-368-5242 x0000 or via e-mail at gpalangdao@nahb.com.
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