The Benefits of Converting Your House Into a Smart Home
Real Estate
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The Benefits of Converting Your House Into a Smart Home
Have you ever considered that smart homes can help you be more sustainable? At first blush, the opposite might come to mind, as since your home is operating intelligent technology, you might by default think that it’s consuming more energy than it’s saving by powering those extra devices that make your home “smart.”
In reality, however, new technology installed in our homes can allow us to monitor and adjust our energy consumption for the better so that we’re not consuming more energy than what’s necessary.
Let’s explore some of the best benefits afforded to smart home technology in modern homes.
Ideal Improvements to Implement First
Part of paving the path toward an energy-efficient smart home is shoring up any underperforming utilities around the household.
Ensuring that your HVAC is being annually inspected and that all of your plumbing and electrical apparatuses are in strong working order is important in optimizing your home.
What you don’t want is one of your internal home utility systems breaking down, bursting, or leaking after you’ve installed new gadgets that will help you.
With that out of the way, we can begin to assess different categories of benefits you can incorporate into your home. Making it a superior, intelligent structure that’s working for you.
Here are some of the key elements that can go toward making your home smarter:
- Remote security, monitoring, and motion capture – installing remote security cameras and remote-activated security systems house-wide are some of the best measures you can take to support your home’s defenses. Make sure when you’re looking into security cameras to entertain the option of recorded footage cameras that can alert your mobile devices when it detects motion.
- Remote control of appliances and lighting – Sometimes, we accidentally leave a light or two when we leave the house.
Being able to remotely access certain tools and light sources in the home can prevent needless electricity consumption when the owner is away from the house.
- Solar panels – the soaring popularity and accessibility of solar panels have made energy acquisition much cleaner to obtain.
- Two-way communication doorbells with a camera – Investing in a smart doorbell unit that can see outside your home can help you identify who your visitors are as well as give you the option to speak with them through a microphone.
- Flood sensors – Many households that have sump pumps can incorporate an alarm that will sound whenever the water levels are too high or the sump pump itself fails. Coupled with that, floor sensors can be installed to alert the homeowner if there is leakage or flooding, typically in basement areas of the home.
- Utility management systems – With the proper installation, many newer HVAC and electrical systems can be connected to software that can help the consumer understand the energy utilization of the household each day.
Making Your Smart Home More Sustainable
Alright, so we’ve addressed some common additions to the house to rev it up to modern smart home standards, but how is that helping to minimize a given home’s carbon footprint?
For one, routine upkeep with utility maintenance can anticipate potential problems. Which, if properly addressed, can reduce the risk that the utility unit fails. As a result, meaning that one fewer unit of its kind becoming sent to a landfill. Not only does it save you, the user, and money in preventative maintenance, but it lessens the environmental impact of overworked, underattended utility systems.
Now, we just mentioned that household software can help consumers understand the levels at which they are consuming certain energies. This can be helpful in knowing how much fuel emissions are coming out of one’s home, informing them of helpful data which they can act on.
Fighting Climate Change
Everyone wants to help fight back against climate change. The way we can do our part in correcting climate change starts in the home with how we control our fossil fuel consumption.
One simple way we can minimize climate change is by running the heat and air conditioning less often. The way we can do this is by feeding it less, which we can achieve by installing a sufficient amount of insulation in the home.
Proper home insulation is key to minimizing heating and air expenditures. Not only will it save you hundreds of dollars in energy costs, but it will reduce the number of fuel emissions escaping into the air.
And before you say, “Wait, the walls in my home already are insulated.”
We mean insulating as much as you can within reason. For example, most attics may have a layer of insulation, but applying a second layer of insulation can make a substantial difference in keeping the home cool or warm when you need it to be.
Make Your Home Work Smarter, Not Harder
There’s a variety of methods you can implement into your house that can make it both more functional and more sustainable. It will require some planning with professionals to ensure that your home is adaptable to certain devices.
In the end, the goal should be transforming your home into a more functional living space that works for you. While also minimizing the negative environmental impact created by your home!
