When it comes to homes, smartness truly is in the eye of the beholder.

Some people are content to be able to answer the phone in the bathroom, or use their computer printer from anywhere in the house. Others want every kind of gadget, including the ability to turn on the lawn sprinkler by remote control and video-spy on the babysitter and her boyfriend.

Chris Wood, Business Edge
Show homes in Panorama Hills, Calgary, have built-in technology.

It’s all technologically possible, and Alberta’s developers and builders are working to deliver houses and communities that are “digital ready.”

Genstar Development Corporation is the acknowledged local pioneer in smart homes. It has been advertising some aspect of “smartness” in its new communities for several years. According to Genstar’s Brent Ree, at the very least, you should get a house that’s wired with Category 5 and RG6 cabling.

They’re putting this “structural wiring” into all homes in their new communities. The connections terminate in an IBM Home Director panel, typically in the basement.

He says Genstar will work with you to plan additional wiring based on how you are going to use the various rooms. So, if you know that third bedroom is going to become a supercomputer centre, tell them and they can put in the right connections while it’s still dirt cheap.

“Some people are taking it the whole nine yards,” says Ree, “putting in very sophisticated security and monitoring systems.”

In theory at least, snowbirds could call up their house from a computer in Phoenix and figure out if the furnace and freezer are still doing their jobs, and maybe even if there’s fresh cream in the fridge.

Wiring alone does not a smart home make. You also need a good, fast Internet connection. David Harvie, VP of planning and marketing at Carma Developers, says the company is working closely with Shaw and Telus to ensure that new homes have good,high-speed Internet access.

Shaw takes pride in offering its cable Internet everywhere, while Telus sometimes has to scramble to get ADSL service up because of restrictions such as maximum distance to the central phone office.

Harvie is working with both suppliers to make sure they put in enough capacity to serve the projected load. After all, a bunch of technology-crazed neighbours fighting over Internet bandwidth would be an ugly way to get a new community off the ground.

Speaking of community, both of these developers tout their “neighbourhood intranets,” which are really password-protected websites just for people who live in a particular community.

On the Genstar sites, such as the one for Panorama Hills in northwest Calgary, you can already learn about things such as when and where a school will be built.

As people move in to the subdivision, they’ll be able to read community newsletters, see the schedules of soccer games, etc. “We really don’t know what it’s going to turn into,” says Ree. “It depends where the community residents take it.”

Carma Developers also shares this cosy vision of merging real and online communities. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” muses David Harvie, “if you didn’t have to line up at 6 a.m. on a Saturday to register your kid for community sports? Or if you could order a pizza from your office and have it ready when you get home?”

He says the residents of the McKenzie Towne community have already set up an active online gardening club.

Carma has already signed up 10 per cent of its customers only two weeks into the free Carma-Connect program, available in four Calgary communities, three in Edmonton and, soon, two in Denver.

Of course, you’ll always get the technophile who really wants to push the envelope.

Ken Nickerson, former head of Microsoft Network in Canada and now CEO of iBinary, built his own “smart home” several years ago in the Toronto area.

With price being almost no object, he designed a house that could handle as much technology as possible.

As just one example, his security system talks to his sprinkler system. If an intruder walks on Ken’s lawn, he’ll be detected by sensors. The corresponding zone of the sprinkler system will suddenly turn on. Then, as the interloper walks to another part of the property, the next sprinkler zone activates.

“We didn’t want to cause any real harm,” says Nickerson, “just to let them know that we know that they’re there.”

He’s fairly critical of the pioneering Newmarket, Ont., Stonehaven community that was wired up almost five years ago. “It was a failure,” Nickerson says, “because it was driven from top down rather than bottom up. The people who lived in those communities may have bought because it would be good for the kids, but they didn’t really think through what they would be doing with that technology.”

How about Nickerson’s own costly, technology-rich smart home – was it a success?

“Depending on who you ask in the family, it’s either better or worse. If you ask me, it’s a little bit better. If you ask my wife, she may disagree, because there are times when the behaviour becomes unpredictable.

“In my house, every light switch is attached to a computer that communicates with a server via DHCP, and they go off and on as a result of pre-programmed events. Certain people find that very disconcerting.”

He says we still have a lot to learn about living with technology all around us. It may well be possible to put a chip into our toaster and our microwave oven and even a loaf of bread, but should we?

Nickerson and most experts feel the jury is still out on that. But should you get a wired house, like the ones Genstar and Carma are selling?

On that Nickerson has no doubt. “A house without structural wiring is going to be like a house without plumbing.”

(Tom Keenan is Dean of Continuing Education at the University of Calgary)