KNX is a system that allows a smart home to be more than just smart…it can be truly intelligent. Here are the main benefits of a KNX smart home.

1. Proprietary limitations of other smart home systems

Most smart home installs are built using a proprietary system, that is comprised of a single brand of products, behind the scenes and on your wall. On the surface, this might seem like a good idea – a way to keep things ‘simple’ with one cohesive aesthetic, however, not only does it limit your options, but it can also impact the features, functionality and cost. A straightforward way to understand the practicality of this is to imagine only ever being able to wear one brand of clothing – it’s incredibly limiting and not always appropriate for every occasion.

2. Speaking the universal language of smart home

One key advantage of KNX is that it is an open, worldwide standard, which means that no singular brand of switches, sockets, or system components dominates. KNX isn’t defined as any one type of system, it is in fact a communication protocol or language that allows all the components in your smart home to talk to each other and work together. There are 500+ manufacturers worldwide that make KNX-compatible products, which means you have plenty of choices when it comes to design options for sockets and switches and some flexibility on price too.

3. KNX is robust

Having a KNX smart home system means that if one component fails, the rest of your system still functions and doesn’t grind annoyingly to a halt. You can continue to go about life, safe in the knowledge that your smart home isn’t going to hold you hostage due to one small blip. KNX devices are individually intelligent, which means your home stays ‘online,’ whilst also making it an easy fix for your KNX integrator to simply swap out the faulty item with a reprogrammed replacement.

4. Variety is the spice of smart home life

At the risk of sounding repetitive, the real beauty of KNX is the vast quantity of choice when it comes to front and back-end products. From durable plastic to beautifully bespoke metal, you have an almost unlimited menu of choices when it comes to choosing switches and sockets.

5. Infinitely customisable

Whether you like to renovate every few years or make longer-term adaptations to your home, a KNX smart home can handle change. If you live in or dream of a period property, then you are in luck as it is possible to retrofit KNX into a property. If you’re considering a smart home, make sure you discuss the potential for future additions or changes to the system with your smart home installer. Forward planning on the initial install means future addons or customisations are easy, making your smart home even smarter.

6. KNX is keen on being green

If you’re an energy-conscious homeowner (let’s face it, who isn’t these days) a KNX smart home isn’t just clever. Because KNX devices can all communicate with each other, it’s possible for installers to create an intelligent green smart home that is an investment in the future. KNX sensors can perform operations based on many variables such as outside temperature, time of day (or night), the position of the sun, and presence and motion detection. With everything connected and communicating intelligently, you can automatically water the grass in the summer after sunset, turn on outside lights to welcome you home after dark, or lower the blinds as the sun changes position throughout the day to reduce glare and overheating. These automated actions can conserve resources and reduce unnecessary overspending on utility bills over time – all without lifting a finger!

7. As safe as smart houses

Our homes are our sanctuary, and a smart home can help you to feel even more in control of your safe space. A KNX smart home gives you the ability to remotely check and lock doors and windows, get instant notifications of any security alerts, and even mimic occupancy whilst spending time away from home. From a little extra peace of mind to state-of-the-art biometric access control, a KNX home can look after itself, and those who live in it. And finally, if you run your life from your phone, you can control your KNX smart home from it too!

KNX offers intelligent control of a home’s lighting, heating, shading, multimedia AV, security, and energy management. So, do you want a smart home or an intelligent one?

Click here for more on why we prefer KNX or contact us for more information.

The post 7 key benefits of using KNX to make your home more intelligent first appeared on Ivory Egg.

It is inevitable that governments will increasingly legislate to improve building practices and reduce energy wastage. Still, new homes being constructed today can get well ahead of the curve by being built with energy efficiency as the top priority.

In developed countries, the energy used in homes is relatively evenly spread across these main categories:

• Space heating 33-47%
• Water heating 19-32%
• Lighting 3-8%
• Refrigeration 3-10%
• All other 13-26%

While there are obvious regional variations depending on the climate and social norms of a country, for example on a cold day, New Zealanders are more likely to put on a jersey while Americans would turn up the furnace, these are useful categories to examine for energy saving efficiencies.

US Residential Energy Consumption Survey Data – 2015.  Source: US Energy Information Administration

HOW CAN ADDING INTELLIGENCE TO YOUR HOME IMPROVE YOUR ENERGY FOOTPRINT?

The Pareto principle or the 80:20 rule definitely applies to energy savings when it comes to building a smart home today – 80% of your energy savings can be made with a 20% effort! But here’s the caveat … as a new home builder, you need to be thinking about what you want your energy footprint to look like right from the outset to ensure you get the biggest wins.

The three biggest energy-saving wins for any home

Here’s what you need to consider to really influence the net energy footprint of your new home.

• The Building Fabric – This is where you should start with your energy optimisation plan as there are huge wins to be had from insulation, window systems and the placement and orientation of the building just to get started. Your architect or designer is best placed to advise you on these options.
• Energy Sources – Where will the energy for your new home come from? There are now many domestic solar and wind generation options that enable you to freely generate your own energy to offset your consumption. These can also be intelligently monitored and controlled with building smarts to make sure you are always optimising your energy usage.
• The Building’s Systems – Here’s where building intelligence really comes into play and can make a significant difference to your energy footprint. Actively monitoring your energy usage and looking for ways to reduce energy waste is a constant process that can be automated for optimal efficiency.

As with all major projects, there are always trade-offs – if you don’t get the most energy-efficient building fabric or heating system, there are still ways to better monitor and manage the energy used in your new home.

Controlling your Energy Usage Intelligently

Left to its own devices a building will naturally ‘leak’ energy from every opening and will continue to use power when it’s not needed.  For the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that your new home has the regulated amount of insulation and embedded energy efficiency for your location. What you should now consider is how you can manage the amounts of energy used and wasted from a building systems point of view.

With a building control system like KNX, you can implement and automate a range of mechanisms that will provide you with the best energy usage for your home without having to think about it once it is set up. Some of the building management tools at your disposal for energy management include:

• Predictive Timing Control of heating and cooling based on weather and planned occupancy. By setting parameters within your Building Management System (BMS), you can set the conditioning of spaces based on outside factors (wind, rain, temperature, sunshine hours etc) as well as the number of people typically occupying a space at certain times of the day to ensure that each room is optimised for those times. Every person emits roughly 100-150W of power just going about their daily business and most of this energy leaves us as heat, which then either adds to the heat in the building or needs to be removed. A building management system enables you to control heating and cooling to intelligently respond to these variables and makes a considerable difference to the energy used when compared to a home that has just an on/off type of climate control.
• Absence Control is as simple as turning down, or off, the heating or cooling in a space if there is no one in it for a time, which can make for quick and appreciable savings. Lighting energy is not wasted when someone turns the lights on, but causes considerable energy waste when they are not turned off.  Reacting to the absence of people in space can have a much more significant effect than you might think on your energy bill. For example, a bathroom underfloor heating of 500W for a 4m² bathroom costs roughly $0.15 per hour to run, so, $3.60 per day. By reducing the temperature by 1°C you can save approximately 10% of the required energy input. Or you could reduce the setpoint temperature by 5°C for 2/3 of the day when it is not in use and save about $1.20 per day. These small changes can make significant differences to your energy footprint and they can all be managed automatically by your BMS.
• Controlling your Energy Sources is another way to make the best use of the energy generated by a sustainable energy source you may have, such as solar or wind power generators. Installing a BMS to manage the use and storage of any energy generated on your property ensures that your home is optimised to use the energy when the biggest loads from hot water, swimming pools, and underfloor heating are drawing the most and only shedding any excess back to the grid (where it will generally attract low value) when it must.
• Remote Control of your home from an app or website enables you to keep tabs on your building’s energy usage and emissions and to adapt the settings as the building’s use changes.  AI will play a part in this in the future and adapt buildings from learnt trends and behaviour, so putting an intelligent building infrastructure like KNX into a home as it is built, and then applying the latest control methods to it during its lifetime means you can get the most from the initial capital installation, as well as take advantage of new techniques and technology advancements as time goes on.

Ignoring for a moment the energy efficiencies that could be achieved in the building fabric, and with micro-generation, by implementing a BMS in your new home or retro-fitting your existing home, you will be able to sit back and let the system take control of the majority of the work needed to manage your home’s energy usage/wastage and improve your personal carbon footprint.

Ivory Egg Comment

Being able to reduce a building’s energy waste is a great reason for adding intelligence to your home. Whether looked at from an environmental or fiscal angle the benefits are clear, and no modern building feels right if it’s not being designed and built to be the best it can be.  A large part of that is being careful with the energy the building needs to operate, while also ensuring it is looking after the people who use it.

Environmentally friendly buildings are better for your energy costs, better for you and your family, and better for the planet.

If you’d like to discuss how you might add intelligence to your new or existing home, contact us here, we’re more than happy to help advise and put you in touch with the right people for your situation.

Further Resources

There are numerous national and international schemes for measuring, improving and rewarding improvements in energy usage, including:

• LEED: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design is the most widely used green building rating system in the world. LEED provides a framework for healthy, highly efficient, and cost-saving green buildings.
• NABERS: National Australian Built Environment Rating System is an independent tool for providing simple, reliable, and comparable sustainability measurements you can trust across building sectors like hotels, shopping centres, apartments, offices, and data centres.
• The Built Environment and Global Climate Targets
• New Zealand’s Energy Mix
• UK Government Energy Efficiency & Climate Change Guidance
• UK Energy Saving Trust

The post Improve your energy footprint by making your home smarter first appeared on Ivory Egg.

When you are building a new home and want to include automation in your plans, it is not an unreasonable question to ask, unfortunately, you might as well be asking “how long is a piece of string?” because there is no one simple answer to that question.

One way of understanding the costs associated with automating your home is to consider these costs in relation to the price of a traditional electrical installation and the benefits you gain over the lifetime of your new home.

“What will the cost of putting intelligence into my building be over and above a traditional electrical installation?”

The bare minimum

Firstly, if that traditional installation was only to be a light switch by the door and a pendant light or a handful of downlights in the middle of the room, then replacing that with a modern controllable solution is easy, the user experience is the same and the house will have some preparation work done for adding additional functions later, ‘nothing added, nothing taken away’. To do this is not really significantly more than the original cost. This, of course, will depend on your electrician and how much they add to the materials, but the costs might be 10-20% over and above those of a traditional electrical services installation.

The middle ground

The second option, a more ‘middle ground’ option, is where you take a base-level electrical installation and say, “I want to take advantage of lighting scenes, some fancy switches on the wall, and some additional dimming and be able to control of my house from an app”. Now, you can’t compare this really to the first option as the outcome is completely different. However valuable that might be to you, is up to you to decide – where we are already comparing apples with oranges. The cost is entirely dependent on the size of the house, the switches you choose (there are many different brands supplying these solutions, so it all depends on what you like), and the number of lighting and shading circuits you have. See our discussion of what you get from building control here to see what’s important for you. What is certain is that this option will add between 20-40% to the costs of a traditional installation.

The sky’s the limit

The third option, where we compare apples with artwork, is where you go the whole way, and decide to include the most up-to-date automation solutions possible today and say, “I want to enjoy all of the features, style and convenience of having an intelligent home that controls all the lights, heating, blinds, audio and media.” With this option, you are committing to energy saving and creating a home that will be future-proofed and will continue to add value to your lifestyle. For this option, you might typically spend 50% more on your electrical installation, but by adding speakers, control from a wall touch-screen, intercoms and all the other features you would like when you are living your best life, this cost could increase substantially.

Ivory Egg comment

Our suggestion is to be very clear about what you are interested in achieving with your home from the outset – where do you sit in terms of the three options discussed above? Talk to a knowledgeable installer and get it priced up. Remember to ensure you choose options that will give you the flexibility to add more automation at later stages should you wish to. Then, guard that budget like you would the budget for your windows and roof and don’t let it go. Then as the project progresses you can discuss adding other features that interest you, change the switch styles, or add greater flexibility and control.

Including advanced technology in your new home does not have to be a significant part of the build cost, but it should be well-scoped so you are clear about what is most valuable to you and your budget.

It’s not all about the dollar value today

Adding intelligence to a building is not all about the cost of the installation. If a new house is built today without any consideration of including automation technology, then the cost of introducing this technology later in the life of the home is just adding to the ‘technical debt’ of the building. We believe that not including automation technology in any new building now is simply deferring an even greater cost to the building later in its life when automation technology becomes imperative to meet the living standards of the day.

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