Getting a Grip on Green

Green is the buzzword du jour these days. It's overused and misunderstood. Essentially, we understand green to be good for the environment. We all want to be green, but we don't always like the pricetag that goes along with it. In our homes, being green may save more "green" that it costs and that's a good thing. If we can save money while helping the environment it's a win win.

Most people understand there's an upfront cost that returns back over time. We know for example that better insulation or more efficient appliances are good investments. Unfortunately, there is little talk about gaining better control over our utilities. Lack of control results in wasted electricity, particularly in large homes. As you will see, control is very green and it can easily be added to existing homes at an affordable price. What's more, this green addition brings a truckload of aesthetic and safety/security benefits with it as well.

 

Green Lighting

Let's get it out of the way, "green" lights bulbs don't look good. Most can't be dimmed and they cast an odd-colored light that looks like it belongs above a garage workbench, not in a living room. But green lighting can be about much more than bulbs. In fact, you can save energy without even changing the bulbs. No, I'm not asking you to live in darkness. I'm talking about lighting control.

Let's examine a few facts. Dimming your lights 32% saves 26% on the electric bill. Dimming standard incandescent lights just 20% will quadruple the life of the bulb! Have you priced bulbs lately? Not only can a dimmer pay for itself in no time, it makes your home look better while saving money. There's nothing like the romantic glow of a room with dimmed lights. Bottom line- the more you dim, the more you save.

How many times do you walk into a room, all the lights are on and nobody has been in there for hours? Wouldn't it be nice if you had a crystal ball and the ball could show you which lights are on in the house? Well, such a thing exists and it is especially helpful in larger square footage homes.

OK, it's not a crystal ball, but it might as well be. Touchpanels provide quick and easy viewing of all lights in the home and gives you complete control over them. You can individually control lights, turn them all off with a single button (at bedtime) or have it done automatically. You can even look on your iPhone from work to see if the kids turned off the lights when they left. Sure, it's gadgety but this gadget is easy to use, reliable, and it's saving you money.

 

Green HVAC

Like lighting, heating and air conditioning can benefit greatly from enhanced control. Houses are divided into "zones" and each zone will have it's own thermostat. Typically the thermostat is centralized within the zone.

Commonly, houses have 3 or more zones. In larger homes, we often see 6 to 8 zones and houses over 10,000 s.f can easily get into double digits. That can be alot of thermostats spread out through the house. Again, a crystall ball that instantly gave you the status of all the thermostats would be nice as opposed to constantly hiking around the house checking temps.

Again, the touchpanel acts as your crystal ball instantly showing you the actual temp in every zone, what the thermostat is set to, and what the run state of the unit is. Touching the zone brings up the thermostat for that zone with all the settings. This kind of system not only ensures maximum comfort in your home, it's dirt simple to use.

 

Additional Benefits

With lighting and HVAC, you can start to see a theme here. We are integrating what have traditionally been stand-alone devices. Sure, we still have a simple light switch and thermostat where we need it, but these devices can also be seen and controlled by alternate means.

Our "crystal ball" in this case is a touchpanel. It can be small, large, in-wall, wireless, on your PC, or on your phone. The key is that all these devices have a single platform to communicate with. You interact with the platform using touchpanels, etc. Since all the devices communicate on a singular platform, we can make some really useful things happen.

For example, let's say we add our alarm into the mix. Yep, most alarms have a communication protocol that allow them to be controlled by the same platform we have the lights and thermostats on. We can now set our alarm from our iPhone or from anywhere in the house on a touchpanel. But the real benefit is when we take advantage of the fact that our alarm sits on the same platform as our lights. When someone breaks in, they know the siren will go off and your neighbors will ignore it like they always do. The criminal gets in and out before anyone arrives to stop them. We all know criminals hate the element of surprise. How 'bout we set all the lights in the house to turn on 100% when the alarm goes off- maybe even have a few of them flash on and off? Can you say surprise?

This is one example of many. For more benefits to this technology, click here.

 

Can I Add This To My Existing Home?

Easy. We have wireless light switches, wireless thermostats and just about anything else you can think of. Just take your light switch out, pop in the wireless model, enroll to the platform and you're controllin'.

 

and the cost of going green is...?

This really is the best part. This technology is affordable for anyone. It should be noted that there is plenty of no-name and Chinese stuff out there that is affordable but we think reliability is a must. For instance, we offer lighting control products from 2 manufacturers- Lutron and Crestron. These guys just happen to be the #1 and #2 automated lighting products in our industry. Anybody can be cheap. At AVA, we prefer to be reliable and affordable.

Lutron, the inventor of the dimmer and the #1 rated lighting product in the world, makes a 5 switch complete system with platform and wireless keypad starting at $800. Expandable to 10 switches, this system is perfect for small homes. Systems with virtually unlimited switch capacity start at $130 per switch. A thermostat that can be controlled from anywhere in the house and anywhere in the world can be had for as little as $250 and it's made by the same company that put control in the Pentagon!

This isn't cheap junk from a company that started 3 years ago. These are premium products and you can do this.