27 October 2022
How to help bring your home into the future
With so many products on the market, a great place to start is to think about what you’re looking for in a smart home. Do you want to increase convenience in your life? Do you want a smarter home for safety and wellbeing? Do you want your home to be more energy efficient? Is your house equipped for changing environments and conditions? Once you know what you’re hoping to get out of the process, you can start building. These are our top tips for creating a smart home yourself.
START WITH THE BASICS
For the not so tech savvy people, it’s a good idea to look for a way you can just dip your toe in the world of smart homes. A great entry point is smart lighting. A lot of smart lighting systems work well without needing to operate from a central hub or have some sort of renovation or installation. Smart speakers and displays like the Amazon Echo and Google Home are easy to set up yourself, and smart light bulbs can fit into most fixtures. Once the smart devices are connected to wifi and you see the convenience first hand you’ll get over the embarrassment of saying, “Hey Google, lights on” real quick.
Once you’ve installed the lights, you’ve got a whole smart system to play with. You’ll be able to impress your guests by magically dimming the lights, playing whatever tunes you want from your state of the art speaker, and streaming the latest shows.
SAFETY FIRST
Once you’ve mastered the basics, you can start kitting your home out with the latest safety products. The most recent ABS report showed a decrease in household crime since 2009, aligning with the rise in popularity of smart homes and smart security systems. There are products out there that can light your way when you’re entering via the front door, cameras on doorbells let you interact with visitors, and some systems can even discern if a person, pet or package is at your door.
But safety doesn’t just mean being secure. We’ve all had trouble at one time or another with our conventional smoke alarms screaming at us for burning toast. Smart smoke detectors connect to your smartphone, so not only will they alert you and wake you up if there’s smoke or a fire, but they’ll also send a notification to your phone if you’re not at home. What’s even better is that long gone are the late nights spent searching for exactly which smoke alarm is making that chirping noise - smart smoke detectors will send you a notification when they’re battery is running low.
SMART HOME FOR A SMART PLANET
Once you’ve sorted out your smart home for yourself, you may want to turn your attention to how your smart home can benefit the environment. Smart home innovations can help to optimise our power and resource usage to become our most energy efficient selves.
Smart heating and cooling devices do what other smart devices can’t - deliver both comfort and cost and energy savings. These systems can help establish a schedule that heats and cools your home at the times that benefit you most, and can even detect when you’re home or away so that it only operates when it needs to. If you want to take it even further, you can add sensors throughout your house so your system knows when you’re in and out of rooms and which room you frequent most.
But don’t stop there! Did you know that you can even smartify your water? A smart irrigation system will make sure your luscious lawn stays luscious by getting enough water, but without wasting a drop. In the height of water restrictions, you can program your system to water within the restrictions, but get more out of the allotted water than your garden would if you were watering it yourself.
IT'S NOT A SMART HOME UNTIL IT'S COVERED
Once you’ve decked out your home with everything you need, you’ll want peace of mind that all your items are safe. With NRMA Single Item Insurance, you can pick the items in your home that you want to cover. This could be things like a new TV, a tablet, cameras or gaming consoles, which can be covered from things like theft, storms and floods, and fire. With Single Item Insurance, you save money by only insuring what’s important to you, and you’ll make your smart home even smarter. Get started by getting a quote or making a claim at nrma.insurance that.com.au.
IT’S SMART TO BE RESILIENT
At NRMA Insurance, we understand that your home and its environment are deeply connected. In a recent partnership with Bushfire Building Council of Australia and the Shoalhaven City Council we created open source, affordable options to help Australians build sustainable houses resilient to bushfires, floods, storms, heatwaves and cyclones. As we continue to think of the future of our homes, we know that leading edge technology and innovation is just as important outside as it is on the inside.
To find out more about NRMA Home Insurance, simply call us on 132 132 to get a quote or find us online 24/7 at nrma.com.au.
