The Pros and Cons of a Smart Home

Nowadays, it seems nearly everything can be controlled from a smart phone app… refrigerators, HVAC equipment, garage door openers, light fixtures, etc. There are pros and cons of having homes that are ‘smart’. Being able to turn things on and off remotely is important to some people and can be very convenient. In most cases, as long as your home has a steady and reliable internet connection and you are somewhere in the world with a good internet connection, you can control nearly an endless number of ‘smart’ things in your home. You can control your heating and cooling systems, open or close your garage door opener, talk to your refrigerator, dim your home’s lights, etc. This is sometimes called ‘home automation’ and can include 1 or 2 systems or appliances or can include a full suite of systems working together. You can control your home from nearly anywhere on Earth in real-time.

If you are out of town but soon to be coming home, you can adjust your heating or A/C system so that you walk into a comfortable home. This helps save energy as you didn’t need your heat or A/C running as high or low when nobody was home.

If you can’t remember if you closed your garage door or you need to let a neighbor in to let the dog out or let in a contractor to perform work, you can open or close many modern garage door openers remotely using an app.

If you want to add something to the shopping list stored on your smart refrigerator’s shopping list, you can send it a note remotely to add something to your list.

With some setups, you can play audio or video on multiple connected devices that follow you as you move around the home so you don’t miss anything.

You can also monitor electricity or water usage remotely using apps. These can tell you where you may be wasting energy or may tell you if water is running (leak detection) when nobody is home allowing you to turn off the water remotely at your meter to prevent a flooded home. Leak detection sensors and pans under tank-style water heaters can be a good idea and can send an alert to your phone should your water heater start leaking.

Many home security systems will allow you to control things remotely using apps such as allowing someone in without having to give them a physical key or giving out a keypad combo. They also can let you know if a door or window has been opened or see if someone is inside your home or even walking around the yard. Some light fixtures allow you to turn them on or off remotely to make potential burglars think someone is home just like the old plug-in lamp timers used in the past. Some insurance companies even provide incentives (discounts) for automated homes since they can increase safety and lower your risk of an insurance claim.

According to NAR, some consumers are even willing to pay more for homes that are automated.

There are also some cons to home automation. The first being that they can potentially be hacked by a neighbor or someone around the world. If a device is connected to the internet (hardwired or wirelessly), it can be potentially be hacked without you knowing it. We’ve all heard stories of cameras in some smart-TVs being hacked and, unbeknownst to the homeowner, someone else can be watching you in your own home. Nearly any internet-connected device is hackable. Remember the days of cordless phones and baby-monitors being able to be easily monitored by any neighbor with a scanner?

If your home doesn’t have a reliable internet connection or if your internet or power goes out, that may also lead to loss of communication between a smart appliance and its smartphone app. Some of these systems do have backups built-in in case of power loss, but not all of these systems do.

Another con can be the investment cost in replacing older non-smart appliances and systems with modern smart appliances and systems.

Compatibility between different vendors’ smart systems or appliances can sometimes also be an issue. Before investing in these systems, you need to do your homework to make sure they will work seamlessly with each other. Also, ease of installation can sometimes be an issue. While many of us can easily install and set up these devices to our home internet connections and our smartphone apps, some people don’t know how to do this without hiring a 3rd party contractor.

Also, we often see stories on the news about passwords being sold on the black-web or hackers getting access to passwords. If you have smart devices in your home, it is a good idea to periodically change your password to non-simple ones (such as don’t use “password1234”) and use modern high-level encryption (on your internet connection AND your devices), such as WPA2, so only you can access these systems.

In summary, a smart home can provide all sorts of convenience yet you need to weigh the potential downside of hackers gaining access to your home’s systems if the smart components are not properly designed and configured and if the vendors supplying the hardware or software don’t help keep hackers from getting into these systems.

Here’s another article about Smart Homes.

Matthew Steger is a Certified Level 1 Infrared Thermographer, an ASHI Certified Inspector (ACI), and an electrical engineer. He can be reached at matthew@thehomeinspectorsnotebook.com. No article, or portion thereof, may be reproduced or copied without prior written consent of Matthew Steger.