Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house Stuff Works dot com where
Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, what
Speaker 1: is the smart house? What makes it? Smart? Home construction
Speaker 1: is one of those things that really has not changed
Speaker 1: a whole lot for hundreds of years. For example, if
Speaker 1: you look at the houses in colonial Williamsburg, they all
Speaker 1: have pitched roofs with shingles, walls with sighting of brick
Speaker 1: or some kind of wood on the outside and plaster
Speaker 1: on the inside, wooden floors, casement windows, and so on. Yes,
Speaker 1: a modern home has central heat and electrical wiring not
Speaker 1: found in the seventeen hundreds, but the structure and common
Speaker 1: features are remarkably similar to today's homes. Change is finally
Speaker 1: occurring in the twenty one century, however, and it's picking
Speaker 1: up speed. We hear more and more about smart houses,
Speaker 1: houses that are greener and more intelligent than ever before.
Speaker 1: Let's take a look at what a smart house looks
Speaker 1: like today. There really are two sides to the smart label.
Speaker 1: One side is smart in terms of home's resource consumption, water, energy,
Speaker 1: construction materials, and so on. The other is smart in
Speaker 1: terms of intelligent systems that control the house. We can
Speaker 1: start on the resource side, because this is where a
Speaker 1: lot of the monetary benefit comes from. When you think
Speaker 1: about owning a home and the costs of owning it,
Speaker 1: there are two places where the money can really add
Speaker 1: up fast. The first is energy, which has to be
Speaker 1: paid every month, and then the second is upkeep, which
Speaker 1: often comes in big expensive bursts, for example, replacing the roof.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of advancement on the energy side
Speaker 1: because of improvements in solar energy technology. A smart house
Speaker 1: can use solar energy in several different ways. First, it
Speaker 1: can be designed to take advantage of passive heating and cooling.
Speaker 1: This usually involves the placement of windows and heat absorbing
Speaker 1: materials to capture the sun's heat in the winter and
Speaker 1: to provide cooling ventilation in warmer months. Second, a smart
Speaker 1: house can actively collect solar energy with solar panels for heating,
Speaker 1: hot water, and electricity generation. There are even solar air
Speaker 1: conditioners available now. Instead of using electricity and a compressor
Speaker 1: to drive the refrigeration cycle, they use the sun's heat
Speaker 1: to drive it. A smart house can lower its net
Speaker 1: energy consumption towards zero, or even create net positive energy
Speaker 1: that's sold back to the grid. By making intelligent use
Speaker 1: of the sun. Even if using more traditional technologies, it's
Speaker 1: possible to save lots of energy. For example, heat pumps
Speaker 1: can now use geothermal technology to radically improve their efficiency.
Speaker 1: Instead of using outside coils exposed to the air, the
Speaker 1: outside coils are buried in the yard or in a
Speaker 1: well where temperatures are steady year round, Heating and cooling
Speaker 1: costs can in some cases be cut in half. Another
Speaker 1: place where houses can save on resources is in terms
Speaker 1: of water consumption. A good example of how far water
Speaker 1: technology has come can be seen in the smart house
Speaker 1: at Duke University. First, the house collects water off the
Speaker 1: roof and stores it in six three fifty gallon containers
Speaker 1: in the basement. This water is filtered, purified with UV light,
Speaker 1: and then used for things like flushing toilets, washing dishes,
Speaker 1: and doing laundry. The house also collects water from the
Speaker 1: roof and stores it in two massive thousand gallon tanks outside.
Speaker 1: This water is used for landscape irrigation. It's like the
Speaker 1: world's biggest rain barrels. Some smart houses also reuse gray water,
Speaker 1: defined as water produced by everything but toilets. Gray water
Speaker 1: can be treated and used for irrigation or flushing toilets.
Speaker 1: Many smart homes are also starting to incorporate green roofs
Speaker 1: rooftop landscapes that can provide significant and energy savings indoors,
Speaker 1: while also cutting runoff and heat pooling in urban areas.
Speaker 1: The intelligent side of smart houses comes through homes awareness
Speaker 1: of the people living inside it. This awareness can come
Speaker 1: in the form of biometric locks, heating and lighting systems
Speaker 1: that recognize if rooms are empty, advanced security systems, and
Speaker 1: camera systems that record everything happening in a home. A
Speaker 1: smart house can also track energy consumption in real time
Speaker 1: and suggest ways to save energy. With intelligent systems like these,
Speaker 1: a smart house can detect when no one is home,
Speaker 1: it goes into hibernation mode, cutting its energy consumption to
Speaker 1: the bare minimum. The house also secures itself against unwatted intruders.
Speaker 1: When people return, the house senses this through biometric locks,
Speaker 1: motion detectors, and cameras. It wakes back up to provide lighting, heating,
Speaker 1: and cooling in the areas where it's needed. Be sure
Speaker 1: to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the
Speaker 1: Future Doing House to Work st up as we explore
Speaker 1: the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The Housdufforks
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