One of the toughest parts about turning your ordinary house into a smart house is gleaning an understanding all of the many options available. There are technologies that can automate the lights, manage the thermostats, pump music to all corners of your house, watch for water leaks, and push a notification to your cellphone whenever someone steps onto the front porch. These features are just skimming the surface of what’s possible, but any one of them could be the impetus of your smart home endeavor.
When deciding what types of technologies you should incorporate into your home, it helps to see what other homeowners have done. You can tour model homes, ask a home systems integrator to take you to one of his projects, or surf the Internet for inspiration. What you might miss from these avenues of inspiration, however, are the stories behind the decisions, the challenges, and the steps involved. Hearing about how and why homeowners went through the process of adding smart technologies to their homes is just as inspirational as seeing the end results—and it’s highly educational.
Inspiration, advice, guidance, and relatable stories are all reasons that our 11th Annual Homes of the Year issue is so useful to anyone interested in smart home technology—whether they’re building a home now, renovating, adding on, or are planning to do so in the future. The nine award-winning projects featured in the issue represent some of the smartest homes on the planet, where technology and design collide to create spectacular living environments where families enjoy greater convenience, comfort, and togetherness—yes, you’ll see how smart home systems are actually making family members feel more connected to each other than ever before.
In our first series of Homes of the Year issues, we salute the Gold winning projects. These smart homes are recognized as being the top in terms of high-tech innovation and ingenuity, and for providing their owners with many valuable, practical benefits. Thanks the handiwork of home systems designers and integrators, you’ll see that the technologies blend in seamlessly with each home’s unique architecture and décor, and are so intuitive to use, that it’s hard to believe that these homes are about as tricked out as they come.
You can gather gobs of inspiration, ideas, and a good-old-fashioned reality check by perusing the Gold winner of our Homes of the Year contest by accessing our free download. Inside this insightful issue you’ll tour winning homes of the following categories; included are snippets for a sneak peek of what you’ll see:
Smart Home of the Year – over $150,000
Warm to the Touch
Automated fireplaces, snow melting system, and 96 window shades prep 8,000-square-foot mountain home for fabulous family retreats — with a touch of a button.
Tucked within a grove of evergreen trees stands a home so smart, the family that visits there occasionally for long ski weekends barely needs to lift a finger to ready their mountainside dwelling for their arrival. Well, maybe they lift a finger, pressing it to the screen of their smartphone — but that’s about as difficult as it gets.
Smart Home of the Year – under $150,000
Sarasota Stunner
Magnificent views and a super-smart shading system help this Intracoastal home keep its cool.
When your home is planted on a prime piece of property that overlooks the Intracoastal Waterway in sunny southwest Florida, huge, scaling, floor-to-ceiling windows are an absolute must for a new custom-built home. They deliver phenomenal views, but also excessive heat from the sun, so the builder of our award-winning smart home makes sure to outfit every home he builds with Lutron motorized shading.
Home Theater — $25,000-$75,000
Coal Miner’s Masterpiece
Homeowner pays homage to his industrial roots by adding a “mine shaft” theater to his basement.
Home theaters offer a unique opportunity to create a space that reflects a passion, hobby, or, in this case, a family’s long history in the coal mining business. Explains home systems integrator Matt Montgomery from TYM Homes, of Sandy, Utah: “This homeowner’s father was once a coal miner, and so he grew up with an appreciation and fondness for mining. The father had incorporated materials and accouterments reminiscent of coal mining into his own home, so his son — the owner of this award-winning project — decided to honor his family’s lineage by making his home theater resemble a mine shaft.”
Home Theater $75,000-$150,000
100-year-old Mansion Delivers Modern Media
As the last phase of an extensive renovation, a high-end home theater lands on a third-floor office space.
Blessed with 14,000-square-feet of living space, the owners of this St. Paul, Minn., mansion had plenty of room for entertaining family and friends—spacious family room and kitchen, luxuriously appointed patio, a grand foyer. The only thing missing, it seemed, was a sensational home theater. Remarkably, the one of the biggest challenges was finding a good spot for one. The crawlspace-like basement of this 1906 was a no-go …
Home Theater $150,000 +
Unleashing the A/V Power
Turbo-charged home theater delivers big, bold entertainment best-in-class projector, screen, and Dolby Auro-3D speakers.
David Kepke, president of Multimedia Resource Group Inc., of Chappaqua, N.Y., believes that there are three pillars for any successful high-performance media room or home theater: room structure, equipment, and power. Sadly, homeowners often see power as a low priority when it comes to their wish list, he says. It’s one of the most misunderstood components that all too often requires a “sell” to the homeowner or gets cut when budgets are squeezed.
Multipurpose Room
Kid-Tested, Mom (and Dad) Approved
Family-friendly home entertainment system tailored to handle the wear and tear from active lifestyle.
Kids can be hard on furniture, clothing, toys, pets … basically almost anything that crosses their path. Rather than risk damage to an expensive home theater system planned for the lower level of their new 10,000-square-foot home, the owners contacted home systems integrator Bryant Moore of Moore Audio Design, of Matthews, N.C., for his advice how to have a stellar, high-performance entertainment setup in an area where their kids would likely be kicking around a ball or having pillow fights without worrying about someone breaking a piece of valuable A/V gear.
Outdoor Space
Putting the AMP in Amphitheater
Twenty speakers and 220-inch disappearing screen set the stage for big-time backyard entertainment.
When most homeowners add a full entertainment system to an outdoor space, they stick with a modest-size weather-hardy TV and surround-sound system. This type of setup is nothing to sneeze at, but this owner took the idea several steps further by turning an unruly, unusable hillside into an honest-to-goodness amphitheater, complete with beefy, professional-grade loudspeakers; a stealth, motorized 220-inch projection screen; full-featured, live-performance stage with connections for musical instruments and microphones; and a slew of automated lighting effects.
Unique Space
A Modern-Day Barn Raising
A barn from the 1800s morphs into a high-tech residence that manages an eco-friendly existence.
More than 100 years ago, the barn that now occupies a pristine piece of property in New York’s Catskill Mountains functioned as all barns do, by housing livestock, feed and farm implements. But that was then, and this is now, and based on the level of technology recently incorporated into the relocated and refurbished building, you’d never guess that its roots date back to before Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.
Before & After
Cracking the Code
Overcoming strict building restrictions transforms a modest condo into a high-tech luxury residence.
What started out as a fairly ordinary condominium unit has morphed into a twice-the-size luxury vacation home for a pair of professionals who knew that the secret to easy, carefree getaways would require the addition of a solid, distributed audio/video setup and a professionally configured automation system to boot. They also knew that to get the job done right, they’d need to hire a home systems integration firm as the renovation on the condo was taking place—a project that would involve knocking down walls to connect two adjoining units to form a more spacious 2,800-square residence.
Go here to download the free Gold Winning Homes of the Year issue:
http://www.electronichouse.com/daily/going-for-the-gold/
The post 9 of the Smartest Homes on the Planet appeared first on EH Network.
from
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.electronichouse.com%2Fdaily%2F9-of-the-smartest-homes-on-the-planet%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3D9-of-the-smartest-homes-on-the-planet&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8
No comments:
Post a Comment