Hi-tech verses Low-tech
Now things are wonderfully easy. You can have a smart home with everything controlled wirelessly via your mobile phone. How cool, convenient, secure and efficient!! Or is it?
What happens when your parents come to stay to look after the kids and have no idea how anything works? What if you lose your phone and the Apps with it? What if you have a power cut?
Understand exactly what is being installed before it is installed. There’s nothing worse than finally getting the keys to your new home, having to download 10 Apps to “control” it, being totally bamboozled and having nobody to ask!! Think hard before agreeing to have an App for everything including closing the blinds to a fridge which does your next online supermarket order!
Some things may be better hard wired, like WiFi to guarantee even signal around the house. Having an App to control your alarm system also makes sense as then you know if it goes off whilst you’re out. But most others need careful consideration, particularly if you are not that tech savvy or you are relying upon a single household member to know how everything works.
Far better to get the installer to set things like the heating and hot water to a standard weekly programme that you can override manually, when necessary, on the actual machine. Do not let the engineer / plumber disappear to their next job saying that the manual is on line and you can control it “via the App”. If you feel you must, download the App and set it up with the engineer, there is always something not quite right so sort it out together first!
Ideally you will have installed different lighting around your house, but do you really need to press a button to create different “moods”. Daylight changes through the year and you probably have more moods than the light does, just manually adjust the lighting to suit you with on / off and dimmer switches, so that anyone coming into the house can use it easily.
In a well insulated new house, do you really need to switch the heating on via an App before you get back home? Set the timers on the machine. Underfloor heating it’s pretty constant and if you still have gas central heating then come in and switch it on! Ideally you have insulated your home so well it will never be very cold anyway!
In 2025 Spain had a power outage for a huge part of the country for days, so we know that can happen. During the October 2025 Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centre outage I was amazed to find that even my Ring video doorbell stopped working! So many electrical devices are interdependent with the internet that it is worth keeping some things low tech to protect yourself. Think hard about every tech decision, not least of all as it will probably be out of date soon! And if you have a guest or baby sitter, at least show them how to use the boiling tap so that they can make themselves a cuppa!
One low-tech top tip on lighting:
Look on your house plan and work out the most likely spot for a Christmas tree. Make sure that you add a plug socket on the wall or even a floor socket in that location for the fairy lights. Then have the socket wired to a light switch. Switching on your Christmas tree lights from a light switch is highly preferable to crawling underneath the tree!! Not hi-tech, just highly detailed electrical planning!!