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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house Stuff Works dot com where

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Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, what

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Speaker 1: is the smart house? What makes it? Smart? Home construction

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Speaker 1: is one of those things that really has not changed

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Speaker 1: a whole lot for hundreds of years. For example, if

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Speaker 1: you look at the houses in colonial Williamsburg, they all

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Speaker 1: have pitched roofs with shingles, walls with sighting of brick

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Speaker 1: or some kind of wood on the outside and plaster

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Speaker 1: on the inside, wooden floors, casement windows, and so on. Yes,

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Speaker 1: a modern home has central heat and electrical wiring not

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Speaker 1: found in the seventeen hundreds, but the structure and common

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Speaker 1: features are remarkably similar to today's homes. Change is finally

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Speaker 1: occurring in the twenty one century, however, and it's picking

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Speaker 1: up speed. We hear more and more about smart houses,

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Speaker 1: houses that are greener and more intelligent than ever before.

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Speaker 1: Let's take a look at what a smart house looks

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Speaker 1: like today. There really are two sides to the smart label.

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Speaker 1: One side is smart in terms of home's resource consumption, water, energy,

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Speaker 1: construction materials, and so on. The other is smart in

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Speaker 1: terms of intelligent systems that control the house. We can

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Speaker 1: start on the resource side, because this is where a

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Speaker 1: lot of the monetary benefit comes from. When you think

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Speaker 1: about owning a home and the costs of owning it,

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Speaker 1: there are two places where the money can really add

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Speaker 1: up fast. The first is energy, which has to be

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Speaker 1: paid every month, and then the second is upkeep, which

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Speaker 1: often comes in big expensive bursts, for example, replacing the roof.

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Speaker 1: There's been a lot of advancement on the energy side

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Speaker 1: because of improvements in solar energy technology. A smart house

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Speaker 1: can use solar energy in several different ways. First, it

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Speaker 1: can be designed to take advantage of passive heating and cooling.

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Speaker 1: This usually involves the placement of windows and heat absorbing

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Speaker 1: materials to capture the sun's heat in the winter and

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Speaker 1: to provide cooling ventilation in warmer months. Second, a smart

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Speaker 1: house can actively collect solar energy with solar panels for heating,

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Speaker 1: hot water, and electricity generation. There are even solar air

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Speaker 1: conditioners available now. Instead of using electricity and a compressor

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Speaker 1: to drive the refrigeration cycle, they use the sun's heat

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Speaker 1: to drive it. A smart house can lower its net

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Speaker 1: energy consumption towards zero, or even create net positive energy

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Speaker 1: that's sold back to the grid. By making intelligent use

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Speaker 1: of the sun. Even if using more traditional technologies, it's

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Speaker 1: possible to save lots of energy. For example, heat pumps

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Speaker 1: can now use geothermal technology to radically improve their efficiency.

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Speaker 1: Instead of using outside coils exposed to the air, the

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Speaker 1: outside coils are buried in the yard or in a

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Speaker 1: well where temperatures are steady year round, Heating and cooling

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Speaker 1: costs can in some cases be cut in half. Another

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Speaker 1: place where houses can save on resources is in terms

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Speaker 1: of water consumption. A good example of how far water

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Speaker 1: technology has come can be seen in the smart house

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Speaker 1: at Duke University. First, the house collects water off the

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Speaker 1: roof and stores it in six three fifty gallon containers

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Speaker 1: in the basement. This water is filtered, purified with UV light,

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Speaker 1: and then used for things like flushing toilets, washing dishes,

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Speaker 1: and doing laundry. The house also collects water from the

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Speaker 1: roof and stores it in two massive thousand gallon tanks outside.

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Speaker 1: This water is used for landscape irrigation. It's like the

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Speaker 1: world's biggest rain barrels. Some smart houses also reuse gray water,

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Speaker 1: defined as water produced by everything but toilets. Gray water

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Speaker 1: can be treated and used for irrigation or flushing toilets.

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Speaker 1: Many smart homes are also starting to incorporate green roofs

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Speaker 1: rooftop landscapes that can provide significant and energy savings indoors,

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Speaker 1: while also cutting runoff and heat pooling in urban areas.

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Speaker 1: The intelligent side of smart houses comes through homes awareness

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Speaker 1: of the people living inside it. This awareness can come

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Speaker 1: in the form of biometric locks, heating and lighting systems

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Speaker 1: that recognize if rooms are empty, advanced security systems, and

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Speaker 1: camera systems that record everything happening in a home. A

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Speaker 1: smart house can also track energy consumption in real time

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Speaker 1: and suggest ways to save energy. With intelligent systems like these,

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Speaker 1: a smart house can detect when no one is home,

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Speaker 1: it goes into hibernation mode, cutting its energy consumption to

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Speaker 1: the bare minimum. The house also secures itself against unwatted intruders.

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Speaker 1: When people return, the house senses this through biometric locks,

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Speaker 1: motion detectors, and cameras. It wakes back up to provide lighting, heating,

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Speaker 1: and cooling in the areas where it's needed. Be sure

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Speaker 1: to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the

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Speaker 1: Future Doing House to Work st up as we explore

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Speaker 1: the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The Housdufforks

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Speaker 1: iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes,