We’re no longer in the land of hope or hype with smart homes. They’re big business and disrupting every part of the home construction market, from builders, cablers & yep, even plumbers.
Sadly a lot of companies and tradies are still stuck in the past, not recognising the upheaval going on at home. A couple of facts make that crystal clear.
The global smart home market is growing about 15% a year & on track to be worth$53.45B in 2022. The Aussie market’s just as buoyant. Thought to be worth$5B by 2021 when the average Aussie home will have roughly over 30 web connected gadgets.
A lot of this smart home frenzy is through the back door though. People are putting in a lot of devices like talking AI speakers or smart thermostats with only minimal links or integration. In other words they’re doing smart bits, nota whole intelligent house network.
Its also being done in a lot of cases over wifi with the barest broadband backbone. Which is when all the hassles with performance kick in of course.
Some on the ball builders in the U.S. and here have picked up on this already and are offering customers homes that have the home tech built in, with all the speed cables and connections done right.
That also means robust wifi meshes too for whole house coverage, but backed with wiring that makes routers work seamlessly and efficiently.
Its early days, but you can expect this to become standard. This is probably something of a challenge for a lot of building companies, but it’s where the consumer is heading.
For plumbers this looks like being even more of a hurdle given how traditional their training still is. In most cases new plumbers-who are probably all over technology in their personal lives-have had very little exposure to home technology or digital business or how it might be affecting plumbing in homes.
For a glimpse of how, take a look at a company called Flo Technologies in the States. The company says its smart water monitoring system uses artificial intelligence to not only sense water pressure, flow rate and temperature in every nook and cranny-and behind walls-but can predict problems while learning a homeowner’s usage patterns as well.
And you’ll get all that information on your phone in real time.
Building these smarter plumbing systems in when the house or apartment is going up just makes sense and saves a hell of a lot of money down the track. And you can expect builders to being doing just that very soon.
Whether the plumber or electrician that turns up to fix a problem or do maintenance will know what to make of it is another question altogether.