All Together Now: Home Tech and the High Rise

With single-family homes in limbo, the MDU market should see more sophisticated home automation systems.

Source: DIGITAL HOME Online
Publication date: 2008-07-08

By Dan Daley

The city of San Antonio expects to see an additional 6,200 new luxury rental apartment units become available by the end of 2008. In Toronto, now called the Condo Kingdom by local pundits, 33,980 units are under construction, more than are now under development in Manhattan, Chicago or Los Angeles. Only Miami exceeds Toronto's pace, where properties like Jade Ocean, Jade Beach, and Asia continue to make the crane the national bird of South Florida.

Cy Cyr/WPN

A shift in the residential construction market has been away from single-family home to multiple dwelling unit (MDU) properties, which offer developers potentially more bang for the construction dollar. However, in some markets the pace of new MDU construction is creating a glut of its own. That's why several builders have planned to include a broad array of automation technologies that they're counting on to differentiate their products and entice buyers, many of whom are expected to be empty-nesters and younger retirees coming from houses where they have already become used to a certain degree of integrated AV, automation, and security systems.

"Projects like the Jade properties and Asia at Brickell Beach are becoming the templates for the future of MDU systems," says Pete Baker, vice president of sales and marketing for control systems maker RTI. "They've provided for structured cabling from the very beginning, the subsystems they're putting in are logically tied together, and they've partnered with systems integrators that are scaled to be able to meet the needs of the projects."

Systems manufacturers agree that developers of residential housing should be looking at IP as the backbone for MDUs. Devices that are IP-addressable mean a larger pool of products to choose from, since the Internet provides implicit compatibility; it enables wireless and server-based systems to be more widely implemented within units; and in particular it addresses one of the biggest concerns when it comes to putting multiple units onto a common system: data security.

"Every endpoint on the system is specifically designed to require a programmed permission to be used," explains Chad Gillenwater, vice chariman of AVI-SPL, created by the merger in June of national integrators AVI and SPL, resulting in what is now the world's largest professional systems integrator, with residential projects ongoing in North America and the Middle East. "The security of the devices is pretty much built into the operating systems' own firewall and other security measures, just as it is on your PC. With the permissions in place, one unit owner can respond to a doorbell by activating the lobby security camera, tilting and panning it if necessary, and having control of the camera and its content for the time it takes to answer the ring. That way, no one else in another unit can watch who's calling on them."

Another challenge particular to MDU environments will be the fact that any propertywide software will have to be periodically updated. This argues strongly for an IP-based approach. "The touch panels in the unit are the common port of entry for information and for system updates," says Baker.

Jimmy Baikovicius, principal at Ikatu, a Boca Raton-based integrator that's working on the Jade and Asia condo projects, says updating the software is done transparently. "The touchpanel in each unit is programmed to look like a typical button-type interface, but it is actually a Web page on an always-connected browser," he explains. Each unit is a private network that rides on the buildings' common fiber-optic cabling with an ultra-high-speed DS3 connection for the entire building.

High-tech systems integration in MDUs isn't a completely new phenomenon. Luxury "condo hotels" popular in markets like South Florida and Las Vegas have often integrated so-called concierge services, ranging from unit maintenance to valet services, available to the homeowner and any guest using the unit. Gillenwater says these kinds of services, along with entertainment content packages, will help sell systems-connected MDUs, using the same kind of good-better-best approach that builders have long used for single-family residences.

"You're going to offer the same basic functionality to the entire building, such as concierge access, security camera access and cable television," Gillenwater says. "After that, the developer can arrange tiered packages of systems capability that the homeowner can either purchase along with the unit or upgrade to later. Structured wiring and an IP-based network are crucial to being able to do this, because all of the systems will need software upgrades to stay current and that's what gives the systems aspect a lot of resale value. The functionality isn't going to go out of style."

Such an implicit and potentially appreciating value proposition could overcome what Gillenwater believes has historically held back wider and more comprehensive implementation of integrated home systems in MDUs . "Developers did not see the value in systems and as a result were reluctant to pay for them," he says. "They couldn't see the possibility of passing the costs on successfully to the buyer. When you have a flexible set of systems and give the buyer options, you have a better chance of making the upsell and creating an ongoing revenue source."

Residential MDU developers will have many more choices of systems and devices to offer buyers. But systems makers caution that not everything on the market is ready for prime time, and that anything that's not bulletproof could offset the benefits of a well-connected building.

"Energy conservation, in the form of lighting control and automated window shades, is a huge priority for homebuyers now, and the processing power that you can get with a more powerful central server system makes it a real advantage," says Bill Schafer, director of channel development at control systems manufacturer Crestron. "But builders have to make sure that the components going into these systems are capable of working in an MDU environment, which is different from that of a single-family home."

For instance, Schafer cites the wide use of wireless dimmers in MDUs as a way to expedite the electricians' installation work. "But you can't put a wireless dimmer designed for a house in Kansas into a condo in Manhattan," he states. "The RF environments are totally different. The condo wireless dimmer has to be properly shielded against a higher level of RF." Echoing Gillenwater's caution, he adds, "Using components that aren't [specified] for heavy-duty use is taking a chance on making the home automation systems a liability rather than an asset when it comes to using them as a selling point." In fact, says Schafer, the products Creston recommends for MDU use are the same one it specifies for medical and military applications.

The concierge idea can go well beyond the condo hotel concept, using the building's central backbone to deliver a huge variety of services. Thus, connected MDUs offer one additional benefit to builders and building management: fees for services that can be accessed via the system. "These are all things that that can be combined to create incentives for builders to include systems like these in MDUs," says Gillenwater. "There's finally a realistic potential for ROI on the systems themselves."